How to Avoid Falsities in the Invention Marketplace

Michelle Westfall: Hello, I'm Dan Gonyea This is Ambrose We'd like to welcome you to another Pitch to Product podcast today. we're gonna talk a little about Some falsities out there in the marketplace ⁓ in our industry I use the word falsities because some people might use that ugly four-letter word scam I truly believe there's nobody in our space that's scamming anybody, quite frankly. I do think there's a lot of misunderstanding at what different do. And that goes back to an podcast about communication, right?

Communication is the to everything. So again, ⁓ just to clarify, I want everybody out to understand what it is that we do at 52 Launch and what other competitors in our space do, which are all fine companies. It just depends on what direction you want to go. Right, John?

Right. And at the end of the day, we're different than any other company because we've decided to take the hardest approach possible because we love a challenge and we do the A to Z approach. We want to control the entire concept to revenue portion of a product launch. And I will say from Right now, we are not for everybody.

think if I'm not mistaken, we might be the most expensive option out there. But that doesn't mean that we don't have the value to back that expense, right? A lot of people come to us. ⁓ We've been enough to ⁓ talk to of people.

They come to with designs already done by a designer. ⁓ They might come us with all their marketing already done. And, you know, in the end, you know, that company necessarily, or that person, that inventor isn't necessarily right for us. Again, we're all about successful launches.

And in order to be successful, it needs to be under one roof, in our opinion. I mean, we've mastered that part of it. You know, if you're looking simply for a licensing deal, there are companies out there that strictly deal with that. That's something that we don't do, but they do a good job at it.

If you're looking for a designer, to design your product. There are companies out there that do that, tons of them. again, there's tons of agencies and marketing companies out there, all companies. I would caution you that understand what you're getting and where you want to be, where you want to go.

If your goal is to get a product to market, which means create revenue and profit, we're that company. I'm quite frankly, we're the only company that does that. And we do a job at it. You want to add anything else to that, John?

Yeah, I would just, agree. And I think the ad is that when you really get into the details ⁓ someone who has a product idea at any stage, whether it's just in your head or physical prototypes you've tinkered with or anything in between, you find there's really a lot of different steps ⁓ to actually have inventory sitting on a shelf ready for sale. And I think that's the... the problem people discover over time and end up getting really frustrated is that they know what they know and they begin working on their product, but then they get stopped by something.

And they realize that maybe I wasn't ready for licensing or this is an amazing design firm I hired, but now what do I do? How do I manufacture it? And when you go to actually find a factory if you even can, which is really hard to do, especially at low quantities, they say, we love your design, but you didn't do design for manufacturing. And by the way, even if you did, it doesn't work with our specs.

You have to change it anyway. I think telling Dan your story for you is ⁓ kind of discovered bit by bit you had each of those capabilities you could bring together. ⁓ that ultimately when you think about serving clients, it's not even like a business to client relationship. It's just a lot simpler.

It's like what are product entrepreneurs trying to accomplish and understanding that holistically is something you never get if you piecemeal out the services. You're 100 % right, John. ⁓ And what ends up happening is you've spent the money somewhere, then you go spend a little bit more money somewhere else. And then you've got to go find someone to make it.

Then you're to trust that they're going to do a job making it. Then you've got to actually have somebody there to inspect it before. the time you end up adding all those costs up, you're pretty close to what we charge for everything under one roof. And is a perfect segue into why we're also different than anybody else is that we have a flat fee, which, believe me, has been told by experts that we should never do a flat fee.

You're going to get killed in that scenario. But again, we've managed to figure out how it works for our clients. Right. Not even care if it works for us.

It works for our clients this way, because again, we make our money on the manufacturing component. So we wanted everything has to be driven to making a quality product at the right price. You want to speak to how we do our flat fee pricing? Yeah, it's I think it's the it's the challenge and the benefit of the of the process is that I your your example earlier of if you leveraged a lot of different service providers, I think you'd spend way more total than you spent 52 launch.

So ⁓ that's of the value proposition is collectively everything you need is more accessible by having it under one roof. But that said, this company really only succeeds if there are some of expert process and practices inside of the flat fee model. Because you can't, I mean as a business, can't endlessly provide hours ⁓ clients without some additional benefit or fee to it. So the punchline the story here is we came up with a term called minimum successful products.

I mean it's been used before, it's not like we're the first to say that term. But the message is that The term minimum viable product is overused and misunderstood and frankly used by a lot of companies as a cop out. We talk about consumer feedback is the most valuable feedback and this is classic to any ⁓ any new business in the world. Whatever your idea is, great.

Show it to customers. See what they think, iterate upon that, build that next version and the next version after that. In the product entrepreneurship space, you can really only do that with tangible products. So we have to find a way to get inventors and entrepreneurs to have 500, 1,000, two, 3,000 units maybe depending on the product.

But how do we get them to actually manufacture a few thousand units so they can give it to clients or sell it to clients and get that client feedback and iterate to make it better and better and better? So that's the whole goal. And what we found is that a flat fee model works if we can truly define what the best practices are within each. of those key functional areas.

So broadly, that's industrial design, it's marketing, and it's manufacturing. Those are the three areas. Most people think design a great product, find a factory to manufacture it, and then sell it. actually, that's backwards.

Wait, is it that easy, by the way? Well, ⁓ is that easy. It's not that easy. ⁓ also, that's backwards.

That's wrong. Right. Everyone, ⁓ you know, anyone who's worked in the world of marketing understands this deeply. Marketing is, or I should say, selling is a small part of What marketing really does is understands what the market cares about, what people are willing to buy, why they're willing to buy it, know, who, what, when, where, why any framework you want the four P's all of those things need to be understood and used to inform the design process in the first place.

Correct. Otherwise you're building the wrong thing. You're right. Absolutely.

I love your idea. That's brilliant. But actually this is the thing that matters to this audience. Right.

And if you make that change, it'll be a winning product. Right. If you don't make that change, it won't. Right.

And if you wait to figure that out until the end, lost all your resources. right. That's exactly, I mean, that happens almost on a daily basis, you know, with someone that's calling us. We clients even asking for their packaging before we've developed their product.

How can we package it if we don't know what it is, right? But they've got, they're fixated on a certain package that they want. So the way it works at 52Launch is as I mentioned, those three areas, design, marketing, and manufacturing. We have defined a set of tangible deliverables we provide to clients in each of those areas.

Clients review, offer feedback, eventually sign off. We talk about a flat fee model, but it's months of interaction. It's a comprehensive set of services. the client can sign off on these things along the way.

⁓ what we have defined is that Here, I mentioned frameworks before, processes before, but we have defined here are the ways to think about each part of the process. So again, marketing is competition, target audience, value propositions. What are the winning compelling points of difference in terms of what competitors are doing and how they're marketing and selling versus you are? On the design side, we've structured it's usually two, sometimes three formal design reviews.

It starts with a design plan where you say, look, are we coming up with a new concept based on your idea? Like, you don't really know exactly what the product looks like, but you have an idea. Or do you have a really tangible idea and you want us to go deeper on it? Or are you already past that stage?

You want us to jump right to design for manufacturing? Whatever the answer to that question is, you pull the marketing information in. And because we've done this so many times, frankly, we can do it efficiently. It's not that we're the best in the world at any one of those areas.

It's that we are quite good at each of them, or experts in those areas doesn't mean you can't find it elsewhere. It's just that we've done it enough that we can do it efficiently and we know how to put it together. And in office, we open space office concepts, square feet. Where does the design team and the marketing team sit?

Yeah, right next to each other. Right next to each other. And that's on purpose, right? mean, they are interacting throughout the entire journey.

this product life cycle and purposely have them sitting in that space together so they can collaborate. Well and then the third part of that is you've got a team dedicated to ⁓ manufacturing the product. really helpful for them to know ⁓ the guidelines ahead time about for example what's the target end price point to the consumer. Right.

That certainly informs a lot of things in the manufacturing process, like what materials are used, what's the complexity of the components. back to my earlier example about a small quantity produced first, there are a lot of decisions that are made, and I think rightfully so, about this is the version that will sell. That minimum successful product, it exactly that. What's the simplest version of this product that we can actually be proud of that solves the customer need, whatever that value proposition is for that specific audience.

we also recognize there's a lot more that could be done. Right? Of course. Right?

Like, what's your dream for this product? Like, we'll talk all day about any product. Exactly. Now, you've been with us for almost three years now.

Over Yeah, getting there. Seems like it's been longer. So you've been long enough. My point is ⁓ You've seen the that we manufacture.

What's the highest quantity that you've seen us manufacture all the time you've been here? Several thousand. Was there a wait? No, there was there's been a few 10s and 20s, right?

Yeah, couple but majority of our orders are small orders. ⁓ on purpose, the way, we don't let our clients order ⁓ more. I don't know if I was being set up on a trick question. Yeah, that's right.

thought it was several thousand. okay. Usually we can finish each other's sentences. But the point I'm trying to make is that we're also an insurance policy for our clients.

We want to make sure that you're putting in an adequate order, meaning we're not going to let you order 10,000 if we're feeling that we might have another value problem in the container ready to go in that next iteration. again, we're... We're more about, you know, crawling, walking and running. We like that approach.

We do it ourselves with our own products. Shoot 21, for example, we did a regular 21. It's a board game. Go to shoot21.

com ⁓ and, or a backyard game, I should say. And we did a lighted version. ⁓ We it the Glow. We ordered, you know, containers of both.

You know, we thought we were being smart ordering, you know, one that's 20, $10 less than the other so two different price points come to find out no one wanted the regular they all wanted the glow right because why wouldn't you want to glow in the dark version? Yeah, so again had we put a huge order in we would have been stuck with a bunch of product that is not as sexy and appealing to the client or to the customer out there purchasing so again We've test our own theories. I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, it's like it's stuff that we've already done ⁓ made the mistakes with ⁓ we never make the same mistake twice. yeah, we I the point is, is that we're we're going to make a quantity that's reasonable for you to first sell that first 1000 2000 pieces and then iterate on top of that if we need to. Sometimes there's no need to iterate. Sometimes the product hits it out of the park on the first like Dart links again.

Yeah, Dart links.com great product. Hit a home run on that product right from the ⁓ Right from the get go. Yeah.

And look, I don't want to, I don't want to convey, you know, we were trying to push clients into something simpler that they don't want. The, the idea is kind of go slow to go fast. Right. So go slow upfront to really be clear about what is being built and why the gets to sign off on this.

Like our flat fee model actually is pretty, pretty comprehensive in terms of client has approval rights, you know, a dozen times throughout this whole process and the client can say I'm unsatisfied. We're on the hook to do something about it. Right. But the way this works in practice is that we and the client essentially align on whatever that minimum successful product is.

And that might take a while up front and we're bringing all these people in. But once that's aligned upon, that's really where this flat fee model comes in. Because once that's aligned upon, our team is then doing the work, all of the myriad details to bring this to life. So on the marketing side, there's pre-order websites and landing pages and content and copy and labeling and packaging.

On the design side, design for manufacturing is not just an in-house process, but you have to literally interact with factories and talk to them and they have feedback and, you know, communication. Samples come back. So along this process, clients oftentimes will say, ⁓ you know what, like, I realized I'd love to do something differently. And that's frankly...

an okay thing to have happen and this happens a lot. And we talk about, look, is this a necessary change for the product to complete or is this a degree of preference? And I don't mean preference in a negative way, it's just reality, it happens a lot. So the conversation is then, the client can say, you know, it's just what I want.

I just really want this thing, I love it. And we say, great, no problem. The nice thing about having all of these services in-house is that if you need a scope change, we can do it at a pretty reasonable cost. It's not an arm and a leg, you're not like stuck.

Right? Like we're able to accommodate a lot of things. But also we take the same, the other side of that is we have the same responsibility. We tell the client, hey, during this design for manufacturing process, if we discover there's something about what we recommended that can't actually be manufactured at the price we need it to be, it's on us to change it.

Like we owe it you, the client, to make this actually work based upon the specs we agreed to. So that's how the client's protected that once we agree on what this vision is for the product, both sides are equally aligned to bring it to life. And again, down on purpose. draft our contracts so they're fair for ⁓ parties.

Which goes back to the topic about falsities, ⁓ miscommunication, misunderstandings. things going to happen naturally in any business. At end of the day, our tagline is still the thing. We're successful when our clients are successful.

client centric and to make sure that everybody out there feels comfortable with 52 launch that we are definitely the real deal. It's taken a lot of a lot of blood, sweat and tears to ⁓ to get where we are. And I'm very, very proud that we're a company of high, high integrity. Well, before we wrap up just on there, I just want to ask you a follow up related to little bit in the weeds perhaps of our company, but one of the most difficult things ⁓ copy, I think, in what 52Launch does is it's our relationships with all of these different factories and the fact that we've done hundreds of clients before, because one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs is to access ⁓ manufacturing at lower quantities and especially lower prices.

So a lot of people ask, well, what... What actually goes on in this problem? What do you guys actually do? Right?

A lot of us behind the scenes, I don't see. But like, how do I know that what you're doing is actually going to work in the end? Because I see all the marketing, I see the design, and then kind of off we go into manufacturing, and I don't really see a lot of that. So what happens there, and why is it so impactful?

Well, when you say not sure if the product is going to work, is that what you're thinking? Well, no. I'm saying from ⁓ client's perspective, they really don't know much about the world of Especially when it comes overseas, mean, stereotypes are negative. Absolutely.

So what I'm thinking about is, you know, the sampling and tooling process and the approvals and just simply our relations. Like we literally go overseas. kind of. Yeah, this is kind of what I wanted you to elaborate on.

But like, because you're the expert in this space. Yeah. About some of those things, because a lot of people just don't know what they're going to get. Again, it's it's you know, it's a funny comment.

Some of you laugh at this. It's you know, I'm old. Right. I'm older.

I'm in my 60s. I've lived, you know. I have the experience. I wish I could be 30 again.

If I could be, I wouldn't have the experience to do what I'm doing right now. yeah, we've built a tremendous relationship with factories. ⁓ We base it on trust. Look at, know, ⁓ we hear negative connotations with, you know, Chinese manufacturing or overseas manufacturing.

And, you know, it's it's generally negative. ⁓ I couldn't disagree more with that. It probably is for most people that are putting their, stepping their toe in the water, But we've built relationships for 30 years with these factories and we have employees who ⁓ have long-term relationships with factories. Like else, it's just, it's researching and partnering with right factories.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times there's been dinners ⁓ and... ⁓ factory tours and lunches and you know, it's like anything else, building relationships and trust. And that's quite frankly, our biggest value prop is that is the difference between us and another company that's at Gemba is a very good company out there in the marketplace. They have a network of factories ⁓ you can that you can call on.

But you're dealing with the factories directly. And ⁓ I good luck trying to deal with the factories. It's hard enough for us to deal with our factory sometimes. with the language difference and time zone difference.

But we have ⁓ employees work in China ⁓ and in Asia, in ⁓ Vietnam Bangladesh. So we have people on the ground reviewing our products, ⁓ reviewing and inspection quality control. ⁓ And these our that we have great relationships with. They'll do small runs for us because they know ⁓ they're going to get reorders and why do they feel like they're going to get reorders?

Because we're part of the marketing process of the product as well. As a matter of fact, we do a lot of marketing for our overseas manufacturers who are selling their own products. So again, there's just trust that's built. And unfortunately, that's something that just doesn't happen overnight.

It happens through a long term relationship and we are very loyal to our factories. Likewise, our factories are loyal to us. And that's what separates us from everybody else. And again, We take the responsibility to make sure that your product lands in perfect condition.

And that's on us. back to your all under one roof, you're dealing with one company that manages the entire process. Why our marketing team so successful? It's because they were there from day one helping develop the product.

They know the product better than probably anybody in our company because they've been living and breathing that product for ⁓ six eight, nine months. So again, it's ⁓ You know, all of this was done on purpose in the, uh, the procedures that we, in the processes that we use, um, work really well. Like you said, we're not, I wouldn't say we're exceptional every single thing, but we're really, really good at everything. Yeah.

Well, which brings it back to, you know, at the beginning, we talked about everything under one roof. mean, my view is that it's frankly a relief for a lot of people who are really dedicated and excited about building a business. to meet a company that they just want to say like, look, I found a partner who gets it. Like, you know, if anything along the road breaks, that means I don't have a product business.

My dream dies. I just want a company that feels the same way and is going to look out for me. Right. And that's kind of at the end of the day, why it matters to be under one roof.

So yeah, another kind of talking point internally, I think is the hard way is the only way. ⁓ Ask the hard questions up front. You know, the hard way is actually going overseas and not just we talk about overseas a lot. Obviously, we have partners and factories all over the world, including in the US.

But going and going and having the face to face conversations with contractors, partners, vendors all over the world, asking for references is a difficult thing that takes time. Exactly. So exactly. Yeah, again, you know, ask for references, make sure that you're you understand what that company that you're hiring does.

You know, those are important. check to see if the company is is always in trouble with the law. That's another big thing that you should check on. Well, look, but again, I don't think that there are companies out there that are deceiving people in in the invention space.

I do not believe it. I think they're all good companies. It's just a misunderstanding as to what they're required to do for you. I would have what they offer and if that's right for you.

Exactly. If what they offer is right. mean, so many times We've spoken to clients that get left short of any destination that they were hoping to get to. That's usually when we get involved.

unfortunately, it's already after the client spent a lot of money somewhere else. And a shame that had to happen. you know, make sure you make the right choice. The right choice is where you want to end up.

Well, and I, yeah, just add to that. I give, the advice I give our clients. It's the same advice I give anyone working with any other company is you have to be your own champion. You still have to really be proactive and understand what your own goals are.

You have to ask questions if you don't understand something. You've got to make sure that the other side understands what you want and who you are. This applies to us as well as anyone else. And really be proactive throughout the whole process.

Because the people who think, even with us, they're like, my point is, us being an all under one roof, it's still the client's business. Like we are their partner, but we are not the entirety. Right. We can't be the CEO of 700 clients.

Yeah. They still need to be the CEO. They still need to drive the vision. They still need to beat the drum and say, here's what I'm trying to accomplish.

And I need you to help me get there because those are the clients, frankly, they get the most out of the process. Yeah. And look, I've always said this too. It's an education and we're an inexpensive education.

when you look at the grand scheme of things, what you spend for years of college or even a single year of college, ⁓ you learn over the next nine months to a year, working if we the privilege of working with 52Launch, then yeah, it's quite an education. Right. All right, well, until next time. Thank you.

All right. Good job, John. If you have a product idea and want to it into a business, contact us at 52Launch. You can visit our website, ⁓ 52launch.

com, follow us on social media, or just give us a call. love to talk to you. Or click the link below. You slayed it?

Slayed it.