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 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, makes you more creative, and starts 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 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, 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 the 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 it 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 overthink it. 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 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 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 and the feel, right? So, some products out there 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 has 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 really 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 soundproofing. 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 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. There are 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 blueprinting 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 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 blueprinting 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 manufactured in the 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 whole. 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 the overall photos and video which you can use for your marketing. This is the point in time when you're like, Okay, I got to place a minimum order quantity. It's 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 the picture. This is when Kickstarter and Indiegogo come into 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'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 product that you've created and the customer base, and they don't want it, or it's too expensive, or 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 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 confusing 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 Barnes and 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 ones 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 storefront.

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 sort 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 distributor 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 in New York City, they're selling lots of different types of 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 has 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 smartwatch 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 thousand dollar 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 overgeneralizing 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. It's 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 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, etc. 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.

How to Create, Design and Manufacture a Product from Scratch

How to Create, Design and Manufacture a Product from Scratch