NEWSLETTER NUMBER 10

Title:  "Patience, Perseverance and Perspective"

 

If you’ve read the previous newsletters, you know by now there is an overwhelming amount of information to digest to bring an invention to market, and not a strong likelihood of success.  It takes patience, perseverance, perspective and money.  Lots of patience and more money than you probably thought.  The emotional toll involved with ‘your baby’ can cloud your judgment, cause you to make bad decisions, strain business and family relationships, and warp your perspective.  It can be an obsession that may result in throwing good money after bad.  There’s an old joke about an inventor who stated that he was worth $2 million dollars after bringing his creation to market.  Left unsaid, however, was that he was worth $4 million before he started!

If you have been working at getting your invention to market and are still not getting the results you expected, is it time to throw in the towel?  Have you exhausted all your perceived markets and avenues to those markets?  That’s a tough realization.  Maybe the market is there but the emotional toll has burned you out.  Take a step back and try and gain a new perspective before hanging up the cleats.

As an example, if your invention is retail-oriented, it is unlikely you will be able to establish mass distribution through the big-box retailers on your own.  First off, you don’t have 20 or more SKU’s (stock-keeping units) in your line.  The biggies don’t like to take on single item lines, unless, of course, you have dumped massive amounts of money into advertising and promotion to create product awareness.  Then you must meet their discount demands where they want to make 60 points, have you pay the freight, allow 5% advertising allowance, 5% markdown allowance, 2% defective goods allowance, new location Grand Opening discounts and maintain a massive amount of inventory that they can get to satisfy their JIT (just in time) inventory management program.  Oh, yes, don’t forget those discounted and extended payment terms!!!

So you have gone through the lengthy mass solicitation and follow-through process with dozens of retailers and mail order catalogs.  Nothing of any significance has resulted, except tremendous frustration with getting through to rushed buyers, voice mail hell, no call backs and reps who are too busy with their other product lines to even partially concentrate on your product.  There has been some favorable response to your invention here and there, but no takers for varying reasons.  “If we can get just one to take it!” you lament.  This is “Perspective Lost”.

The lack of the desired response, although not the results you expected, is feedback.  It’s what you want – just not what you want to hear.  It’s telling you that you can’t do retail direct by yourself.  It’s telling you to take a different approach perhaps and manufacture your product for another manufacturer or distributor who has multiple SKU’s and established inroads with retailers.  Perhaps it’s telling you to look to license your product to another manufacturer, expediter/importer, master distributor or infomercial production company? 

Another consideration: research companies who manufacture and distribute products in the same category as your invention.  Get names from the product packaging on the shelves at your local retailers.  Search the internet.  Get feedback from retail buyers about your product and market and/or a referral to a company with whom they have a good relationship that may be able to help you.  Imagine the response you would get if you called XYZ Products Company and said “Betty Buyer from MegaMart suggested I contact you regarding a licensing program for my invention….”  What a door opener!!

So before you drive yourself to an early grave, or shelve a promising invention, take a step back and assess the road you have traveled and the signs you may have missed.  That new perspective may make all the difference between failure and success.

If there are questions you would like to have answered in future newsletters, please submit them to harold@solve-itmarketing.com and we will do our best to include them.

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