Starting out as a small business can seem daunting as there are a lot of new areas to cover, learn, and gain experience from. One extremely important area for any inventor and entrepreneur is the product market. If you’re planning on focusing your small business around offering a new or innovative product, it is vital for you to understand the product market, and how the product market can determine and guide the projected success for your future product and small business.
What is the Product Market?
Before using the product market to help you understand your product and guide it to success, it is important to understand what the product market it. Like any other idea of the market, the product market is spread out into different fields. Depending on the type of product you plan to invent (food, beauty product, clothing, etc.,), what is out on the market already determines who your competition is and lets you know what is over or under saturated on the market. Analyzing and researching your products market can serve as a helpful guideline that’ll be useful during the process of inventing your product, and lets you know what audiences are already exposed to.
Why Understanding the Product Market is Important
A common mistake that a lot of inventors make is not doing the proper research before stepping into the design and invention process of a new product. Sometimes the product you plan on making or believe is unique and “never before seen” can actually already exist! Patent searches are a great resource and a smart move to make before inventing a product. If you’ve done the research for the idea of your future product, you can better determine the success and idea of how well your product will perform in within the market. By researching what is already out in the market, you can either create a new product or redevelop a product so that it is improved in a way that is more efficient than what is available to consumers.
How to Expertly Enter the Product Market ft. A Mako Client!
An example of from one of our clients shows that through proper research, entering the product market as a small business can lead to profitable and easy success. Bob Ginther, is one of our clients who approached Mako Design + Invent to create the Tri-Plunger! The Tri-Plunger performs the same function as the traditional plunger, but because of its refined and unique shape, it stands out as a unique and independent product amongst the regular plunger. The Tri-plunger is a great example of how to take something that is already on the market and refine it with an improved design to create a product that is more efficient and bound to stand out within the market.
Alternatively, it’s never a bad idea to test out how well your product can perform in its targeted market. A way to do this is to create prototypes and test out whether audiences, within the market of your choice, show interest. Crowd funding websites such as indiegogo and gofundme are a great resource that allow you to introduce your product to world and let you see the results of whether people are interested in the development of your product through helping to fund its creation. The better the response and amount of support through funding that comes through, the surer it is to say that your product is something that audiences anticipate and want to invest in once it is officially released to the market.
If you have a great new invention and you’d like to learn more about this process, get in touch with MAKO here and visit our website to find out more. Feel free to give us a call at 1-888-MAKO and we can set you up on a call with our product analyst!
About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!
