Launching a Product - What Are Some Signs That a Product Idea is Likely to Fail?

Hello, my name is Ian Peterman, and I'm CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm. And today I'm gonna answer a question that I get from clients that are looking to start a new project and want to be aware of of some signs of when their product is going to fail. And it's what is— what are those signs? What are some key signs that your product idea is likely to fail and be able to adjust before you actually hit the point of failure? So there's 3 areas that I'm going to talk about. 3 signs is price point, it's customer base, And competitors. And so I want to talk about the first area, price point. Price point, you know, a lot of people are afraid of price point is too high, and that is definitely a problem and a sign that your product has a higher chance of failure. So if you're going into a market where everybody's product is priced at $35 and you come in at $100, while there is a chance that you're going to be okay, it won't be because you're actually targeting those same exact people. So if you're really targeting those people that are currently buying a product for $35, you need to be in that price range. Too low is also bad, but you can always come in lower and you'll probably be more okay than too high. Too high means that no one will buy it. Too low, people may think the quality is lower, but you may— you'll still be able to win those people over because you are price competing. So underpricing is definitely a way to get into the market and get customers to switch over to your product. Price point too high, you may not have any sales at all. So if your price point is too high, or if someone is trying to, launch a product with a price point that is too high, that's typically a sign that this may not do really well and, and its chance of failure is definitely higher. Next area I want to talk about is customer base. So if you have no customer base and, or it's really small and you're not doing any marketing and you have no systems and no process in place to grow your customers, your product has a high chance of failing. And the failure won't be in a, you know, spectacular way. It's not like it's going to not sell at all. You might sell really well to that small customer base, which is okay. But for most people, that's considered a failure because it's not going to make the right amount of splash. It's not going to make A product launch that's worth all the investment that you just put in. So if you don't have a high enough sale up front, if you're not able to gain that traction that you really need, then your product is likely going to be one that's going to be cut. Bigger companies, if it's not a product launch that's solid enough, the product is probably going to get phased out or killed. Rather quickly, and they'll just end the product and not keep the launch. For a startup, that can mean the difference between still having a startup and going back to square one with nothing. And so you want to make sure that your customer base is as big as possible. Or if you have a small customer base, it's totally fine. Start with none. Every, every company starts with no customers, or maybe just one customer, right? But you got to make sure that you have things in place to grow your customer base easily, quickly, and effectively, because otherwise you're going to end up with a product that's out there. Yeah, you may have sold to your small base, but it's not going to be enough to really get the momentum. You— it'll— it's going to be a rough start, and if it's too rough, you'll end up having a product failure and potentially company failure. Now, the last area that I want to talk about is competitors. And the part that I want to talk about with competitors isn't necessarily having competitors, but if your product is unprotected and, you know, maybe it's something that can't be patented, but it is really easy to copy, uh, just in terms of what it does or how it works and and it's something that you can't compete on pricing, if your competitors are able to easily copy your new product and they're bigger than you, then they will be able to put more— there's a potential there for them to be able to put more resources and more money and more effort into launching a product. So you may start out in the lead, but you may be pushed out of that product segment and that product may end up failing because they're able to undercut you or produce more or put more money into marketing and really just kind of crush your startup product that is new to the market. And this is especially the case if you're new to a specific market, if you're not— don't have a huge base already, if you're not really established. So you want to make sure that you are developing a product that is either not easy to copy, so you're doing something and it's protected, you've patented it, or you are able to push it out quickly enough and in enough volume so that anybody else that would try to immediately copy and produce their own version is going to be behind enough that you won't be crushed by the competition. So making sure that your product is going to survive in the market and not be crushed by competitors. If it's really easy to copy, then that's a red flag. And that's something that we look for. I look for it with clients of, okay, you have a product that's great. Is it easy to copy? Can I as a designer look at it and in less than 10 minutes, design a new product that's identical to it. That can sometimes be a red flag, but there's a caveat to that in that maybe it's a— it can be a market where a lot of that product is in high demand. So you also want to be, you know, while it's a sign that it is more likely to fail, it isn't always a definite thing. So we talked about price points and customer base and ease of copying for competitors. And each of those, you know, they all come with that caveat of while it can be a sign, there is no guarantee. There's products out there that are, you know, they're a single part, they're stamped out of metal. You know, there's a lot of those mini tools and tools that are size of credit card. Right, that, that's super easy to copy. But there's a ton of them out there, and there's enough differentiation between them that there's not really a risk. You can launch a new product. Your biggest risk, um, in failing is that you don't have a customer base. Actually, it's not actually the ease of, ease of copying. It's not having a customer base or not having anything in place to grow that customer base. And so, you know, you look at these things and you are aware of them, but if, if even if you have one or two of these, don't see it as a complete no-go for a project. Just look at it and be aware and say, okay, well, how do I overcome this potential hurdle that could really lead to a roadblock that is product killing? And how do I work around it and make sure that I'm able to really push forward. And so, you know, these are just things that we look at. There's signs that we look at, and sometimes they tell us which way down we should go, what road should we take in order to make sure that it doesn't actually fail. So hopefully this gives you a few ideas on some things to watch out for in your product development that you can use to avoid potential points of failure. Hey, thanks for watching. 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