The chances are that when you start out in business, you are planning on selling something to the broader consumer market. You will have spent an awful lot of time deciding what this product, or service, is as part of your business plan, looking for gaps in the market and seeking out your perfect target audience. Once you have decided this, you will no doubt have carried out extensive research to make sure that your product has selling potential and the sort of price you can charge. Once this is all in place, you’ll be thinking about the next step – actually bringing the product to fruition. This is, of course, the exciting bit, and what you have been waiting for since you first came up with your idea.
The problem is that when we get excited about something, we naturally want it to happen as soon as possible, and it can be tempting to cut corners to make this happen. It is important that you don’t do this – the last thing you want to do is waste your money on creating something that is unusable and can’t be sold. To get you off on the right foot, follow these steps to make sure you on entirely in control of your manufacturing process.
Outsource
As a small business, we highly recommend that you consider outsourcing the product manufacturing process, to someone like Agentdraw. There are many benefits to outsourcing work – one being that you avoid becoming an employer, so you don’t have the responsibility of paying for employee benefits such as sick pay or maternity. You just hand over your design to an experienced third party who can take care of every step of production.
Another benefit to doing this is that you don’t have to invest in expensive equipment and machinery yourself. If you decide to take a different direction, you’re not stuck with a load of machinery and materials that are of no use to you, which is key if your first line of products doesn’t sell as well as you hoped.
Create mockups
Even when you are outsourcing the manufacturing process, it is still important to generate a mock-up of the product first. The last thing you want is to put in (and pay for!) a large order, only to find out the product you designed on paper doesn’t turn out quite as expected. A mock-up gives you the chance to check that the final product is perfect and exactly how you wanted it to be before going ahead with manufacturing it on a large scale.
Testing
Before you launch your product to the wider consumer market, it is vital that you carry out rigorous testing. Your mockup is the perfect opportunity to do this. Make sure it is safe and that it actually works. This helps you to avoid expensive product recalls or even worse, lawsuits should there be a problem with it further down the line.
Manufacturing, of course, can be a long and arduous process. However, once you have your final products in your hand, ready to sell, it will all be worth the time, effort, and money.