eSigning Product Order Made Easy

Esigning product order

hey guys welcome back to this youtube channel my name is salvador bregman and today we're getting into the step-by-step process behind getting a product to market so if you have an idea in your head for new products you're wondering how to even get this idea into a physical product that other people can buy that can show up on their doorstep you can make money i'm sharing with you the exact process to do that today okay so we talked a lot about crowdfunding on this channel and specifically how do you raise money when it comes to kickstarter right before you go to a kickstarter campaign or an indiegogo campaign you obviously need to have the product you need to have the thing that you can sell to your end customers so i kind of i get a lot of questions about like dude i have this amazing idea but i don't know how to actually make a product out of this thing so i kind of want to use this video to go hyper in depth into the exact system that you're going to need to master and to get a sense of in order to bring a new product idea into the market whether you're trying to create something that's completely new a completely new innovation or invention or just kind of something that's a little bit more thought out than some of the existing products that are out there in the marketplace maybe it's a new fashion apparel item maybe it's a new watch or something like that i want to get into that today so it all starts with what happens in your head where you notice something that's happening in life a lot of product ideas come from when an entrepreneur or an individual observes something that's happening in their life so let's just say they're using a glass and for whatever reason they think that the way that existing glasses are made are inefficient and that they don't really like the look and feel of ordinary glasses and they decide to make their own or they observe someone they observe someone having a problem of some kind where they're out in the marketplace you know they're out just buying a product and this person is complaining about how there aren't any kind of new health and nutrition bars that they all have really not so great ingredients so the person is like you know what i'm going to create something that's new i want to create something that has actually a healthy mix of ingredients and we're going to sell that so usually a product idea either comes from you seeing and witnessing a problem that someone else has another human being has a problem in their life and you're like why is it that doesn't this new product exist or gives you an idea it makes you more creative and start to get your wheels turning or you observe a problem in your life and you're like dude i can come up with a lot better of a solution to this that's typically where product ideas come from product ideas can also come from looking at current and existing solutions to commonly held problems so for many years wallets were kind of thought of as a normal way to you know hold your cash and this is kind of what a normal wallet looks like you know and this is a very common solution to the need to hold and carry around paper cash and also credit cards and those kinds of things your id identification etc so a product designer could come they could look at this and they could say why is it that we only have this solution and every wallet almost looks exactly like this are there are many other ways in which we can carry our credit cards our cash all the stuff that we need so why don't we come up with a different looking wallet or one that serves a different way a different way of holding your bills together and that's why something maybe like a ridge wallet will come into the picture so you can also generate products just by thinking about the existing solutions that we've already come up with as human beings to the various problems in our life our problem is we have a lot of paper bills we have identification we have credit cards how do we put that all in our our um our pocket it's gonna be jumbling around it's not gonna be very organized you might actually rip the you know dollar bills or the paper that you have a good solution for that the first solution that came up was a wallet maybe there are other solutions out there you can think of that could solve that exact same problem that's what you're going to be doing as a you know product designer as an entrepreneur as a creative type however you want to say it once you have this idea and all great ideas solve some kind of a problem in life and i'll kind of get also into those more like aesthetic or entertaining ideas maybe they don't like readily solve a problem but they actually kind of do so once you have this idea or this concept of i want to create a next generation this or i want to create a new type of product that solves this problem in a different way the next step is to get that idea out of your head because when it's in your head you can only share it in a very surface level with other people that are out there you can you know describe it to them you can tell them about it but it's really not going to become visceral and real to them when they can until they can actually see this thing um visually on paper so the next step is actually what we call designing step so there are a lot of ways in which you can um you know put a label on this you could say this is for industrial designers you can say this is for a product designer this could be a sketch um some kind of like a mock-up right so the way that i'm calling is this is just the design stage pretty much behind the product and in my opinion it's where you're getting this idea in your head and you're putting it into a two-dimensional form so i know that sounds really weird to say that but it's a two-dimensional form factor where you're you know you're gonna get a blank piece of paper here this is two-dimensional obviously a blank piece of paper and you're drawing the product and how it will look based on one view of the product so for example if it's a glass right you're gonna be drawing just the one two-dimensional view of the glass or if we turn the glass this is the way that it's gonna look this way and the whole goal initially with you know what we call like rapid prototyping and just getting a sketch together is just so you can have something to work with so don't over think it doesn't have to be the most beautiful looking image you can literally just you know grab a pen and a piece of paper and start to sketch this out and get just a rough idea you'll probably go through a few different iterations you'll probably be crumpling up the paper or throwing it out you know getting another drawing and what this is going to allow you to do is just get a sense of what the product is going to look like and once you start to draw it you're going to start to have a list of all of these different questions and i really start recommending writing those questions down they're just kind of questions that you have in your head so you might be thinking what color is the product going to be how big is it is it going to fit in my hand is it going to be a little bit larger than a traditional glass size if we're making a glass if it's a wallet how hefty is it going to be how much is it going to weigh what is the texture of this going to be is it going to be embossed you know what kind of stitching is going to have you're going to have all these questions in your head so i would just start writing these down as you're drawing out the the prototype but the main thing the goal here is just to get a sense of what this is going to look like so you can start to show other people once you have the two-dimensional version of the product and you have at least a view of it and what it's going to look like it's now time to go to the next stage so the next stage is going to be more of creating a model so by model i mean it doesn't necessarily have to be a fully functional prototype it could be a fully functional prototype there are lots of different types of products out there some products have engineering required electrical engineering other products are just made out of one particular you know a glass one kind of material other products out there have multiple types of materials and inner working components right so it's very difficult for me to make a video just describing all of those so i'll just say the next step is basically to make a model and it doesn't have to be a functional prototype but what it should do is just to give you a sense of how a user might interact with this particular product how someone might use it in their everyday life you can get a look and feel of how this how this product feels in your hand what is the size going to be what are the dimensions kind of like and there are a lot of ways obviously you can do rapid prototyping you know you can do 3d printing etc but i would say the modeling stage is probably the next most important one when it comes to your product now there's a lot of different iterations that go through you know when it comes to modeling and also when it comes to the look in the feel right so some products out there um literally just have more of like a functional component based on the inside of the product so i would never just buy this product based on how it looks i'm buying this product because it's as a set of headphones it connects with my iphone it allows me to listen to music it can do it wirelessly it has bluetooth right so i'm buying this product because of what it can do which is listen to music however i also want to feel nice on my head one of the like really simple details i noticed with this product is it's really like has a rubberized kind of headband here so when i'm putting this on my head if i'm running around it's not going to be slipping on my hair because of this is rubberized it's going to be holding there you know pretty stiffly pretty nicely on my head when i'm going for a run so i'm not have to worry about that so these are all just little details that you come in their iteration i'm willing to bet when they first came out with the initial prototype it didn't have the rubberized functionality but probably with product testing they're like oh this is always moving around on my head so then they decided to do that so kind of the whole goal with this rapid prototyping is to get a sense of answering questions and solving problems and kind of the problems that arise um out of it so maybe as you're making your first prototype you don't make this out of i think this is like kind of like a leather kind of feel you don't make it out of that and it's not as good as sound proofing you're like okay we got to make that out of a different material right or for whatever reason you know the look and feel of this color people aren't liking this we have to change the color like so there's a lot of steps obviously that go when it comes to this rapid prototyping the biggest question which you can answer during this phase is identifying who is using the product which you already should have a sense of but you don't always you know that can change as you're going and you might have like an idea of who the who's going to be the best use case of the product but it might change over time so for example you know taking going back to the headphones you might think that people normally listen to headphones when they're indoors they're just kind of relaxing and chilling and then all of a sudden you create the first prototype you create the first you know workable model if you will and someone tries using it and they're like they like i want to go out and run and then it starts slipping all around the head you're like oh okay so maybe the best use case actually is people that are fitness goers and they're going to the gym all the time so it's really going to evolve as you go but i'd say with this first modeling and like really rough prototype stage it's to get a sense of who's using the product how are they interacting with the product where are they using it and what are they expecting out of it going next is going to be the blueprint stage and this is kind of where you're actually narrowing in a lot more on the functionality of the product of what it does and you're also bringing engineers into the mix so initially it's just you idea you know paper napkin sketch getting a sense of look and feel then a designer getting a lot more intricate when it comes to look and feel how you're going to use it all those kinds of what shapes are are you know is it comprised of then getting into more of the engineering stage so the engineering stage is actually workably how is this thing going to be designed so they can actually render functionality to the end user so there's obviously within this product all of this engineering um electrical engineering within it so it had the product design has to case that when you look at this particular product you know this watch they're obviously the mechanics of the gears within the watch and also you know this latch mechanism that all has to work so once we're getting to more of the engineering stage it's like a little bit more nitty gritty and detail oriented with can this thing actually do what it is that you're promising and what it is that you say it's going to do what are some common problems that other people in the industry that produce these products solve these problems with um creating cad designs creating workable blueprints that you can eventually hand to the end manufacturers the manufacturer can look at these blueprints and be like okay this is how i make you know a thousand of these products this is how i replicate this they're going to use the cad designs and really this this blue printing engineering stage of the product design cycle in order to draw that information be able to mass produce it when you're in this engineering stage there are all these little micro problems that you're going to be introduced to and sort of you're going to have to solve and get very detail-oriented with this and in some cases this product has been designed by other people already so you don't have to solve those problems but in other cases you do so for example a book right we don't think really of a book as a product but it actually is so one of the problems that all books have is like what if you were to just have lots and lots of sheets of paper how do you bind them together are you going to use glue are you going to weave it together what are you going to do so there's a common way in which you create a book binding right other people have already solved that problem so you don't have to necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about it but you do have to consider it when you're saying i want to sell a book what kind of book binding or is it going to be this style book is it going to be a hardcover book how is it that you're going to bind these sheets together also what type of paper right is it going to be more caramel color is it going to be whiter color what is the texture of the paper going to be is it going to be matte glossy finish what is the the overall cover of the book going to look like you're kind of answering a lot of these different micro decisions i think in the blue printing phase and then we get to the manufacturing phase which is really the next part of this process when you get through this initial ideation prototyping design blueprinting phase you're now sort of inching into what i call the supply chain side of things right so you're almost past the point where you're just coming up with the idea now it's like how do we actually produce this on a larger scale so you've answered a lot of the questions you might have obviously some more problems and questions come up or later down the road you might need to refine your designs and refine the end product but you're now getting into the supply chain so now let's talk a little bit about the supply chain and why that's going to be really crucial so first of all we have to figure out how are we going to manufacture and mass produce thousands of these products and this is really the manufacturing and the factory side of product creation so we're going to have to find people who number one know how to work with the resources that make up our products so the various materials that have solved the problems that we need to solve whether that's electrical engineering components or you know assembling a certain type of product and who have familiarity in that area and also are at an affordable rate right so a lot of people might want to get a product manufacturing united states but it might not be affordable for the end customer so you have to get it manufactured in another part of the world so manufacturing is really figuring out who is it that can assemble this product who is it that can create the actual raw materials of the product and mold it into a particular shape so maybe with this one molding it into this particular plastic shape and assembling it all together into the end product and sometimes you have one manufacturer who's making one component another manufacturer is making another component and later down the road a third manufacturer is assembling all those products together in one uniform hole so this is kind of like thinking a little bit about the actual system behind manufacturing but this is really the point where you're also going to get a crystal clear sense of what is it going to cost for you to produce this end product and this is where i want to take a quick pause to introduce you to the sponsor of today's show the gadget flow the gadget flow reaches over 28 million people and they've been around since 2012 their indiegogo and kickstarter experts they featured over 5 000 crowdfunding campaigns if you have a tech or design campaign it is a great platform to generate awareness and get backers check them out at thegadgetflow.com submit and list your project today okay let's get back to manufacturing so when it comes to manufacturing let's assume that you have found someone who can reliably manufacture the product you've ordered a prototype of the product this is so incredibly important you want a prototype of the product not only so you can try out the functionality you can test out the look and feel and design that kind of stuff how it holds in your hand but also um the overall um you know photos and video which you can use for your marketing this is the point in time when you're like okay i got a place a minimum order quantity is gonna be fifteen thousand dollars or twenty thousand bucks how am i gonna come up with the money in order to place this minimum order quantity and that's exactly when crowdfunding comes into pictures this is when kickstarter indiegogo comes in the picture typically people are approaching me either in the early phase or they already have a product they have a prototype they have some images of the product like okay now i want to raise money on kickstarter to get the minimum order quantity needed to get product validation to know that it's a full steam ahead and also get a whole list of customers and media mentions all that kind of stuff i want to now do a kickstarter campaign sell um can you book a one you can book a one-on-one coaching call if you can talk about that um but really this is the phase when kickstarter comes into the picture after you follow the advice that i outline in the kickstarter launch formula which is my book which is available on audible and also my paperback version on it on amazon you can go check out the kickstarter launch formula down below i also have a free course on how to launch a successful kickstarter campaign that you can check out down below and finally um you can book a one-on-one coaching call you can go intensive into your specific product in your category once you have figured that out you've launched a successful campaign you have a bunch of funding you have thousands of people around the world who've already pre-ordered your product now you have the money to go out there and get this thing mass-produced now you could obviously if you already have the funding you already have the money from maybe your previous business or you've just saved it up over the years you could go and do a massive minimum order quantity i would not recommend that and here's why first of all you might be getting lots and lots of inventory buying tons and tons of this product without knowing if you have any customers yet right and that's that'd be the worst position to be in is where you just have a whole warehouse full of products of inventory and you don't have anyone to sell it to because for whatever reason there is a mismatch between the the product that you've created and the customer base and they don't want it or it's too expensive there's some other issue there with kickstarter you're validating the idea you're getting the money you're getting all the media messages it's really like solves so many issues and it's really why so many people have adopted running kickstarter campaigns as a reliable way to create new products so if you don't let's just say you buy a lot of inventory you now are storing that inventory now the question is there's a few other players here when it comes if you're going with a traditional route you could have other people that are getting involved with selling your products for example you could have distributors you could have wholesalers and then you also have retailers so i'm going to break down those different categories but i also just want to talk about for you specifically as an individual you might be doing all of these so you might be purchasing all the orders of the products right you might be storing those products in your garage selling the products via shopify or via amazon and then shipping out those products or you might be using like amazon fba or something like that right so you might be doing all these roles of wholesaling kind of retailing kind of selling direct to consumer obviously retail online and then shipping them out doing the fulfillment stage right so you might be doing all of this i think that's really where it gets confusion because people are like i don't understand i can do all that stuff why do i need other people they're taking a piece of the pie well it really comes into play it takes a lot of freaking time you're wearing lots of hats there's a big switching cost with your time so to scale a business eventually you do need to deal with different people so let's just say that you are focusing as just the person who created the product and got it manufactured once it is being delivered from the manufacturer you're shipping it by boat or via air it then could go to a fulfillment company now we have a great fulfillment company that sponsors this youtube channel you can check out more down below called fulfill right it could be going to a fulfillment company you could also be selling these orders in bulk to a distributor or to a wholesaler so maybe the wholesaler is making a massive order of all of these books right so they stock barnes and noble and they're a wholesaler for bonds noble they're buying tons and tons of these books of yours and also many other authors out there a wholesaler typically does not have a contract with the manufacturer however they're basically buying in bulk and then distributing that to retailers the retailers are the one who have a one-on-one relationship with the end customer the wholesaler typically has a lot of different products that they're pushing and they're trying to supply retailers and they're taking advantage of the price difference between buying in bulk from the manufacturer or from the distributor and then selling to the end retailer so they're not doing any kind of marketing whatsoever they're not doing any kind of ads they're leaving all the customer interaction up to the retailer it's the retailer's job let's just say for example a physical location or an online store front um it's their job to educate the customer the benefits the major promise the functionality you know the proof like why is it that this thing is amazing the customer testimonials they're the one that's doing the marketing and the selling mostly the retailer when you think about it the wholesaler is not now when it comes to the distributor distributor is a little bit tricky because the distributor usually has a contract of some site with the manufacturer so they're agreeing to distribute this product and they're you know purchasing the product for a certain price now that distributor could be working with retailers that distributor could be working with wholesalers that distribute could be working with other partners in the industry it's a little bit more loose and i think the definition is not as exact as you might would say with a wholesaler in addition a distributor could be engaged with pr marketing ad buying that kind of stuff in order to increase demand for that particular product which they're then going to sell in some way and finally you have the retailer who does not own the products that they're selling they just have the license or the ability to sell them if you go into a drugstore you go into a deli in new york city you go to a deli new york city they're selling lots of different types of product products they're selling at home products you know food beer water like lots of those stuff they obviously did not create all those products they just have a license to sell them and they buy them in bulk from a wholesaler or a distributor of some kind and then they sell it one on one to the end customer and then take advantage of the price difference between selling it to the end customer versus buying it in bulk from the the person that they're buying it from that end to retailer their only job is to get foot traffic get customers in the door if it's an online storefront have traffic coming in checking out the products buying those products and then they can place more order quantities of those products so they have fully stocked shelves the biggest difference i think in this process is that a wholesaler or distributor does not really make the product um and they don't have any say when it comes to like changing the product it's the manufacturer the one that does that you as the entrepreneur as the creative type as the individual who's behind this product you are the one who has to decide do i want to sell my products to wholesalers do i want to sell them directly retail don't want to find a distributor do i want to do all of this myself basically and just have a shopify store and run facebook ads and run marketing campaigns and that kind of stuff and have my own email list all the kind of stuff i talk about on this channel do you want to take charge of all that do you even want to do your own in-house fulfillment i've had people on my podcast crowdfunding demystified who say i want to do my own in-house fulfillment i want to be in charge of all this i don't care if i have lots of boxes in my garage other people are like no dude i want to scale like i just want to focus on what i'm good at which is maybe coming up with new product ideas or finding the existing product or doing the marketing um or putting together a team to be able to help with that and instead i want to have a filming company just handle all of the shipping logistics fulfillment returns etc so you are as the entrepreneur gonna have to decide what elements of the supply chain and the rapid prototyping ideation um manufacturing blueprinting engineering stage that you want to use and what parts you want to outsource and get help with it also comes down to the type of brain that you have so for example my brain really likes marketing it really likes sales you know i like enjoy getting customers excited and buying products and having that kind of experience um i don't get as excited when it comes to like the nitty-gritty of you know designing an intricate product or like a usb thumb drive thinking a little bit about like the use cases behind that and the functionality of how this is gonna plug in and the data is gonna work with the computer that i kind of tune out like i zone out but other people when they start to learn about that they're like fascinated you know their brain like lights up and like oh my gosh this is so interesting i'm a techie i love learning about the stuff they're they're engineers so part of this as an entrepreneur is understanding what your brain looks like what it enjoys doing and other people out there how you're going to get help great example of this if you're thinking at steve jobs steve jobs is more of a designer you know he really has a good feel for marketing design sales he wasn't so strong as an engineer he wasn't even a coder steve jobs was not a coder you know steve wozniak was the coder when they just started apple it's the exact flip side when you think about bill gates or mark zuckerberg these people actually are not designers whatsoever and why a lot of initial windows applications really were horribly designed from a look and feel perspective you know and also ms-dos like way back in the day that doesn't even have any design components they're just literally interacting with the screen via typing into the computer but what they were really good at was engineering and figuring out and solving very difficult engineering problems and that's you can have both things be successful you can have a really successful steve jobs you can also have a really successful bill gates you can have other people out there who are very successful at marketing and design you think of like um you know hp or i guess you could say dell computer right um the founder of dell computer he obviously is more of a sales kind of a background he's more about marketing sales a little bit less on the techie side if you compare it with some of these other other friends so michael dell is going to be a little bit more in that category so part of this is understanding who you are the other part is figuring out how other people can help you and if you think you need help with that book a one-on-one coaching call with me down below the final thing i want to leave you guys with is the usp the unique selling proposition the unique selling point the way in which you differentiate yourself from competitors out there in the marketplace with some products the way they differentiate is through the engineering so i'm going to go back to the watch example here okay the watch example some people differentiate their product with unique engineering so for example this product let's just say the functionality is different from every other watch because it not only um you know displays analog time it also displays digital maybe also as gps tracking maybe it also allows you to send a responder a signal to first responders if you ever get into an emergency situation maybe this watch also for some reason um tells you about like your blood pressure or it's a smart watch of some kind so there is functionality within a product that can differentiate itself from the competitors that's one way in which products differentiate the other way is with the materials so a watch that is worth two thousand dollars made out of you know gold or you know silver or different elements maybe diamonds or something like that you know if it's like a ten thousand dollar watch or more that's differentiating from the cut from the competition based on the materials used to create this watch and as a result it makes customers feel a certain way about owning the watch they feel like it's very high quality they feel like it says something about them they feel like it says something about their social class particularly when it comes to within an environment or within a business environment the fact that they are successful if they can afford to buy a 20 000 watch or something like that so also the materials are one of the things that can differentiate products the last thing that i'm obviously over generalizing a little bit here is the actual form factor so something that solves the same problem needing to know time something that is made out of ordinary everyday materials or the materials that are used to create usual products so it's not from a material different but the difference is the look and feel so it's almost like an artistic component i would say where it looks just so different it's almost rethought right the actual form factor of the watch of the wallet of the glass where you look at it like i've never seen a watch that looks like that i've never seen a wallet that looks like this is so ergonomically designed and so minimalistic it really leans on a design principle whether that's looking like a military watch or looking more elegant and kind of design and slim or something that's a little bit more quirky in nature and it's actually says something about the person who's buying the product the aesthetic or the values they have or the type of energy i would almost say that they resonate with whether that's you know wanting to have minimalism and kind of smooth kind of surface whereas you go into another let's say for rooms for example you go to one room it's like a fireplace and really earthy wood tones you go into another room it's more minimalistic looking and like really modern et cetera that's just going to give you a different feel with the end product so i hope you like this video take a second to give me a thumbs up come subscribe to this youtube channel if you want to learn more about this and also go down below for some of those links that i mentioned before my name is salvador bregman and i will see you next time