How do I manufacture globally?

Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I'm CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and I'm going to talk today about how to get your product manufactured overseas. You know, being a US-based company, a lot of my clients as US-based clients, they ask me, you know, what about getting manufactured in China? Is it good? Is it bad? You know, most most people still are afraid of their product being you know stolen with security things like that. And you know the the case is the same with any other country. As soon as you leave your borders to get product made and then bring it in, there's an additional set of you know costs and risks and effort that has to go in. In place, but at the same time, you know, there's quite a bit of work that goes into trying to find manufacturing in your own country. We live in a global economy, so the days of you getting your product made completely in your own country aren't dead, but some manufacturing processes you may not even find happening in your country. You know, there's specific types of metalwork that barely happens in the US now because other countries provide that and the US provides other, other manufacturing methods or assembly or things like that. And so, you know, it's, it's mostly based on, you know, what your project need is, whether you need to do this or not. But, you know, I want to answer the question, how do I go get my product made elsewhere? How do I get it made, you know, not next door? And so, you know, one of the first things that when I'm working with a client that we go through is what are your actual specific needs? So, you know, does it— is— what is your driving need? Is it a cost factor? Is it a sustainability factor? Do you want the product to be, you know, made with a certain process that we have to go overseas? You know, there's a range of of things that we go over. And then, you know, once something's decided, okay, well, we need to go, we want to look overseas, you know, the kind of the first steps to do is start reaching out to companies. And, you know, just blindly reaching out can be good, but you often want to have that kind of security of knowing, am I talking to someone that actually knows what they're doing? I can't actually just go drive over to where they're at. It requires a passport to go talk to them in person, to go see their factory. And so, One of the first things you can do is talk to— there's manufacturing brokers, so they're a little bit of middlemen, and basically their job is to find and source and maintain good relationships with good manufacturers and be able to be a single point of contact. And so I worked with those my entire career. I've also worked direct with manufacturers and There's a slight additional cost. Usually a manufacturing broker, they get a commission, but they also are that point of contact. They often have people in the factories that they're connected with. They're a rep for them in some way. And so they're able to give you a certain level of security in knowing that once you talk to them, they probably have someone, or they should have someone who speaks the language of the actual country you're getting it made in. And that helps avoid communications issues because unless you speak Chinese or any dialect or variation of any language outside of your own language, if you don't speak it, it's going to be really hard. And if you don't speak technical language, there's a whole other level of communication. You know, when you learn a language in school, you probably didn't learn the technical version. It's just like a medical world, and you learn medical Chinese versus medical English versus medical German. There's a whole other vocabulary that you probably won't get in any normal course of learning, and so it's something that you want to have an expert who actually understands the technical language involved in both languages. Of course, getting much better with that, you know, things like Google Translate and other translation services are making it really easy to do that. However, most of that's focused on general conversation, not technical, where saying the wrong thing means that you get a metal that can't handle what you want it to be doing versus getting one that does. And so one of the— one of your, you know, one of your other first steps is making sure you can communicate at a technical aptitude level that you'll be able to understand them and they'll be able to understand you even if you're both speaking the same language. So if you don't know all the technical jargon, you should probably learn a little bit more. As far as sourcing, you know, outside of your country, and we'll just use China and US as an example. A lot of people come to me and they're US-based and they have a concern about their idea. They don't want it to leave the country necessarily, but they know that manufacturing is done elsewhere. And so that security question is something that people are very aware of. And the reality is, I can reverse engineer pretty much any product that you would ever put out there, as can any really good designer or engineer. So the idea of protection is really more of a legal one. And you can do that with international patents, You can get, you know, a US patent. You can get patents for Europe. You can get patents for many different areas. And China is actually one of the places that's really trying to do that more because they see the value in wanting their things protected. And so, you know, basically what I tell people is I've never been afraid to ship product over there. I definitely have worked with companies that have had bad manufacturing out of China. I've worked with people that have bad manufacturing out of the US or any other country. So, you know, a lot of it comes down to understanding what is your quality control process and what is your validation process to making sure that that company can actually produce. And, you know, at the end, the same process is applied whether you're working with someone in China, you're working with somebody in Brazil, you're working with somebody in Africa, Europe, it doesn't matter. There's— you need to have a process of Saying, you know, here's, here's what I want done. I want to see examples of what they've done. I want to see examples of what the manufacturer has done. I want to be able to visit the site. And, you know, that's not your thing. If you don't want to go through this whole process, you can hire design firms like you can hire someone like me. You can hire a consultant. You can bring on board a sourcing agent. Or you can get a manufacturing broker involved. And they do all these things. They, you know, validate that the manufacturer can actually produce it. They get quotes. They get, you know, quotes on both the production, the tooling. They get samples. You know, there's a lot of ways you can work around getting samples, and it's all the same whether you're doing overseas or, you know, next door. You should do the same process. At the end of the day, unless you have actually worked with the company And, you know, you've, you've built a history. You should treat every company the same way. You don't know them, and you need to, you know, see what they can do, and they'll show you what they can. Obviously, if you want your idea to be protected, don't push them to give you proprietary parts that they can't actually share without breaking an NDA, because if they do that really easily, one, Don't work with them. It's not a good idea. And 2, if you're the one trying to push someone into sharing information they shouldn't, the likelihood that someone's going to share— you know, they might say yes and they'll share it and you'll go, oh, this is great, I'll work with you. Well, that person is now going to be susceptible to the next person who pushes them to share your project. And that just feeds this whole, oh, well, just share with this one person and it'll be okay. And, you know, if you're really concerned about it, don't ask to see proprietary things. Make sure that you are clear, you know, that you don't want anything shared. NDAs are wonderful. At the end of the day, any legal document is only as good as the lawyer you have on your team. And so, you know, part of it is you just have to put it out there. And so when you're looking for Like, how do I, how do I get my product out there and get it manufactured by a company? Well, you have to get it out there. At some point, someone other than you is going to see the exact drawings, specifications, and plans for your product. Even if you have your own company and you do it in-house and you're the only person that makes it, right, you're one person. But as soon as you hire somebody else to, you know, hire your first employee, Because you are selling so many of the product that you need more help. Well, now that employee needs to learn more things. So just, you know, and even, you know, companies that have trade secrets or, you know, Coca-Cola is a great example. They have their formula, their exact ratio. You know, people have tried to figure it out, maybe have, but at the end of the day, their exact formula that they use today is locked up in a vault. Well, somebody has to see it in order to get it manufactured, so it's not 100% secret. More than one person knows how to make it. More than one person knows how to make pretty much every product on the planet. And reverse engineering— we can definitely reverse engineer pretty much any product ever created. If somebody really wanted to, they can reverse engineer a product. So The way you different— you protect yourself if you're concerned about sharing is be the best company you can be. Develop the product, launch the product. Don't develop it and just sit there and wait. That increases the chances of somebody being able to steal your product, because if you're not making it but it's a really good product and somebody sees that you're not making it, it makes it way easier to steal because you're not doing anything with it. And if somebody's been producing it for years made a bunch of money, it gets really hard for you to sue because you're going to have to spend a lot of money in order to go after them. So the best safety, if you're going to be worried about this manufacturing, is to just get it out there, get it produced, get it made, launch it, and be the best company possible around that product. And then you'll be the number one choice, right? I mean, if If fakes killed products, Rolex would be out of business. So would every other luxury company that makes a product. There's ripoff cars that look exactly like Rolls-Royces. If that really worked, Rolls-Royce wouldn't exist because it's way cheaper to buy the knockoff version than the real version. So be the real version, make a really good product, protect it, you know, look at international patenting, things Things like that, if you don't want to invest in that, at least get a nondisclosure agreement with your vendors and do that whether they work there in your country or another country. It doesn't really matter. If you don't have those things in place, if you're not trying to protect it in one spot where you protect it in another, that protection really doesn't actually do anything. And it's really more of a dissuasion tactic of saying, this is mine. I am serious that I don't want you to share this. And all the general law-abiding citizens in the world will look at that, they'll sign it, and they'll say, okay, well, I won't share it. And you're not going to stop all the people who won't follow the rules because they would sign it and do it anyway, or they won't sign it and they'll just steal it anyway because people that steal steal. They break a law. So it's more of a good faith Motion on your part of saying, I would like this kept secret. And let's do that, do it this way, and people will understand. And, and in the product development world, you also have to understand that there's, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into developing a product. So if your idea is super, super easy to steal, It doesn't matter how much patenting you're going to do, someone is probably going to copy it. And if you produce it, if you're, if you're really afraid of, you know, someone in China stealing your idea, you could put your product out, you sell it, somebody from China can buy it, and then they can go reverse engineer it. So that's where this whole— to me, there's, there's not really a fear level there. You want to protect it legally, you want to You know, help put out the best product possible and make it work really well. But there's no reason to be afraid of going to manufacturers outside your country. You can honestly have a lot better impact in the world with working with countries, other manufacturers in other countries, because you can produce something that's better, cheaper, more accessible. And you may only be able to do that by working with somebody outside your country. So Those are the things, you know, NDAs and patents, international patents, and, you know, just vetting your vendors out before you give them everything. You know, talk to them first, learn about them, see if they have reviews, talk to other clients, get them to sell you on working with you. And you, you also have to realize that with you having the product, you're the customer. Let them sell you, let them show whether they can do it or not. And the ones that can, they can show that they can actually do the work, then start sharing actual information with them. And that'll limit— so you're not just sending— don't just send your drawings to everybody on the planet and see what happens. Make sure you're talking to people that you actually want to do business with and then share the project details. So that's all for this episode. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed and like the video. If you wanna learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description. And of course we're on all social media as well. So check us out there. All right, thank you. Thank you.