The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Entrepreneurship => Topic started by: couscous on March 22, 2020, 11:30:56 AM
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I work in marketing technology/ operations, but I’ve always wanted to build a brand and learn how to bring a product to market. My goal is to develop a product for a niche group, with the longer-term goal of generating a small amount of income for when I become FI.
The past four months, I’ve been developing a housewares product -- a broom and dustpan combo that is rich in color and design with a brand personality centered around minimalism and a bit of rebellion.
Here’s an example of the spirit of my product/brand:
If you look at house cleaning ads, it's all about the woman cleaning up an already clean kitchen with khakis and a cardigan. I want to sprinkle some personality into the cleaning tool industry. And bring style/rebellion into your home by creating everyday items that are interesting. I want to create a broom and dustpan combo with unique color options and thoughtful design. Proving that everyday functional household items can reflect your style. I want my brand to be real and honest and with a bit of humor-all of which I don’t see in the cleaning tools industry.
What I’m doing now
I’m working a local chapter of SCORE (a program that helps entrepreneurs work through their business plan and help you get to market) but I’m really stuck on creating the first physical iteration of a tangible product. I want to develop something so I can get feedback, refine the idea, and get additional advice on materials/market research.
This past month I’ve reached out to 6 artists and fabricators in my area with a product brief and background of my idea, but there has been little interest. I even met one guy in person, who was great but didn’t have the bandwidth to add a smaller project like this.
From this post I hope to do a few things:
1) Get more involved in the MMM community, since I’ve followed it since 2017 and it’s been a life-changer… this is my second post on the forum
2) Hold myself more accountable by talking with a larger group of people (you) about my “stucks” so it can help me see my issues differently and move forward
3) Get suggestions from this community about how to get un-stuck and produce my first working prototype so I can get feedback and interest on the product
Although we are going through a worldwide crisis I still want to move forward with this. Producing something has always been a dream of mine, but the excuse of being busy and not knowing what to do has stood in my way.
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Hi there!
It's a nice post for real :)
I see, you know about Agile and Lean methodologies of product development and that's the first good news.
However, what a problem to make your first, rough prototype by yourself? It's a basic step in Design Thinking. Prototyping as much as possible to collect as much feedback as possible. Otherwise. there always be blocks.
Just think about that - if you build really useful product, no matter how ugly or unfuctional it could be, the core idea would be representative enough to provide you with very first insights.
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Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Cheers, SpdLoad (https://spdload.com/)
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I have 0 knowledge of prototypes but for a broom and dustpan id be tempted to explore the following:
Can an artist sketch several artistic ideas to represent your dream?
Can you take an existing broom / dustpan combo and modify it to get the concept?
So much 3d printing resources are available also.
As a side note, the reason I remembered this post is because my GF commented on "needing" a cute broom for her salon the other day. Before her comment, I honestly considered your idea to be stupid... I guess I dont get style/ fasion.
Stay the course!
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Hi @couscous, I spent about a decade in product development consulting helping clients bring new products to market. If you haven't already, check out some resources on human centered design and design thinking for tools and processes to shape your product idea.
The key will be to spend as little time, effort and money as possible to get the feedback you need as you progress. What do you really need to learn at this stage? What's the cheapest, easiest way to accomplish that? Based on what you've described, you may not need a physical prototype just yet. I'm saying this because it sounds like you're trying to differentiate your product based on style rather than functionality or ergonomics. If this is the case, concept sketches and renderings would be a good first step. You can get these done by freelancers on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. Having multiple variations to show potential customers is a good idea early on. Once you have homed in a 2D concept that potential customers love, then it makes sense to move into 3D (which will be significantly more expensive) for further validation and planning for manufacture.
Housewares is a saturated market, so your marketing, branding, pricing and channel strategies will be just as important as the product itself, if not more. Iterating and testing those elements alongside your product concept will be important as you move forward. I'd imagine SCORE can help with this.
Good luck!
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Hi @Jeo ! I will be taking a deeper dive into books on human-centered design – thank you for the recommendation! I've read a bit about this, but your post reminded me of how much deeper I could go.
When I’m building this product, I’m following the “form follows function” mentality, but I like how your recommendation goes even further. One article said this (which I really loved) “[Human-Centered Design] … considers every product touch-point as an opportunity to surprise, delight and deliver benefits to users.”
Asking a more human-centered design question related to what I’m trying to build “How can I make this chore less lame?”
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Hey @Kroaler and @JangoTraveled - I know it’s been a few months, but I wanted to say thank you for the reply. I’ve made progress and am working with a family friend who is a metal fabricator. I plan to take the rough prototype to a local metal stamping company later this month to get help with a more refined prototype.
I am taking it as far as I can before paying for services, but metal stamping is a bit out of my league and my family friend doesn't have the tools. A core part of why I want to do this is to learn more about product development… and I can’t believe how much I’ve learned so far—I even tried to pick something simple (a broom) to start our product development journey, but opportunities are endless for how you can improve it!
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There's so many engineers in this forum I'm surprised no one has provided more details on best practices.
For example (learn from Tesla's early mistakes on model 3)
You want to ensure you develop a product with the simplest assembly process and be mindful of that while designing.
A metal fabrication shop seems the wrong place to start price wise, but if it's a friend that's different.
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This is the kind of thing students are great for. Approach your local training center for product designers or people using software like Inventor. You will need to pay them, but not at the rates of an experienced professional, and they usually bring a degree of enthusiasm.
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Can you 3D print any of the parts of this thing?
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Can you use cardboard or wood, something relatively easy to manipulate?
Plastic is hard because if you are looking at injection molding its very cheap to produce but high upfront costs for molds, $10-20k potentially. Metal is similar, especially if you want to make it easy to produce.
It sounds like the design of the product itself isn't the innovation, it's the designs/colors of those products.
I'd look at buying as many existing brooms and dust pans as you can and then modifying those. This could be something like getting the design/pattern printed and simply gluing it on an existing product. If you don't already have a design hire several freelancers on Fiverr or a similar site and have each of them produce a few designs.
At this point you just need a minimum viable product to get feedback. If that's an existing broom and dustpan with a pattern printed off your computer and glued on, so be it.
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I'd look at buying as many existing brooms and dust pans as you can and then modifying those. This could be something like getting the design/pattern printed and simply gluing it on an existing product. If you don't already have a design hire several freelancers on Fiverr or a similar site and have each of them produce a few designs.
At this point you just need a minimum viable product to get feedback. If that's an existing broom and dustpan with a pattern printed off your computer and glued on, so be it.
This is good advice. You can use other people's research and knowledge. Obviously, you don't want to go so far as messing with their IP, but simply working with their products as a starting point from which to gain knowledge will take you that much further than starting from scratch.