Launch It Right: A Proven Product Development System for DTC Brands

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From Manila. I'm here your regular host in our workshop and webinar, Lara Guevara. And I am joined today by my growth partner Omar Kari, who has been who has an experience as well in new product development and sourcing. And in fact if you've heard us from any Andrew Farris podcast, we are the team that created his product Resolute. And so I have invited Omar in this workshop so that he can actually share more actual examples and give us a little bit of insight in an actual experience. So for today, our topic is Launching It Right a proven product development system for DTC brands. And this is exactly what we're doing in move. We we're sharing with you what we're doing in MOVE so that you can apply it right away if you have an NPD products right now that you wanted to launch, especially if you wanted to launch it in dfcm, we have two months left, two and a half months left for that. And maybe this is the solution and the steps that you can take to ensure that you can launch on time properly with right cost and right quality. So we want to walk you founders through the exact steps to launch a product from idea to PO using the same proven NPD strategy that moves supply chain runs for top DTC brands. And we will share the process the templates There are like six templates that we're going to share today, tools and decision points. But we will also highlight what what typically goes wrong and where experts can save money so that you can learn right away the hard truth about launching new product and chat us Comment in the chat box if you've ever overbought inventory to meet an moq. And if you've launched late because of endless sampling and surprise activities from your vendors or if you found out that your margin was gone after placing a po. And the hard truth is most product launches fail quietly and not because the idea is bad or the product is bad, but because the process is broken. So it is the supplier, the timing, the margin. Those are the hidden process that if not done correctly it will definitely affect your launch negatively. So to explain this further, these are the common mistakes that kill your BFCM launch or whatever launch that is all year round. It will definitely delay it, especially just mostly most especially this peak season. So first is the bomb creep or the bill of material creep, margin erosion because of this. And you know that feeling when you you set initially the budget and suddenly everything costs just a little bit more. It's what you call the bomb creep. Maybe you started with a target of $10 per piece and then every small upgrade in the material or packaging added up. And so suddenly from 10 it becomes $13 per piece. And if your selling price stays the same, like it's good if you can adjust your selling price, but if you can't because of the market price or competitors, you've lost margin without realizing it. So sometimes you just don't know it that you have to pay. Assembly, packing, extra label barcodes, all of those have extra cost and your vendors are going to charge that to you before they even deliver it to your freight forwarder. So as an example, if you wanted to launch a bag and you want a different hardware or zipper, you want YKK instead of the regular one, then you make the logo instead of heat pressed, you want it embroidered and you wanted to add pocket. And these are the obvious increases you while changing the specifications of your product, you know that your price will definitely increase. But there are also hidden costs like what I've shared earlier, that they have to assemble it, to pack it, to do a little bit of QA cleaning. They also if it's required to do extra of that, they will also charge you of that. So it's definitely something that you should be aware of. Maybe in the beginning you can set a target with a good padding so that you have an extra. If you wanted to upgrade the specifications or from the beginning, ask your vendors what are the costs to deliver this. Our freight forwarder don't ask. Unit cost. Unit cost is how to create the product itself. It doesn't add packaging, it doesn't have the assembly. The other things labeling if you want them labeled right away. Some of our clients do that. They want it barcoded. If you want all of those, make sure you ask that to your vendors from the beginning so that they will give you a cost that includes those and not just the unit cost. So yeah, so for moq overbuying the second bullet point, it stems from the lack of vendor options. If you have an idea of the product, you use Alibaba or you use Google for sourcing and you have limited vendor options, you just have to follow what they said, what they say about their moq. And even if it's higher than your target, especially if it's a first time, you will be launching it, which means you have to test the market first. Now you have to commit to a PO based on their moq. So what do you do here is first of course is to make sure that your negotiation power in the beginning is already good. Let them Try to explain and let them understand. Buy in the idea that if they allow you to buy this small moq, then eventually you'll order more, something like that. Or you should always have an extra vendors in your list that you can definitely approach if the first choice does not meet your MOQ. If what you can buy is 100 pieces, you have to buy 100 pieces. You cannot buy 1,000 pieces. It's very tricky and it's very hard to sell extra products even especially if it's new one or first time you're launching it. Next is extra sampling rounds. This is equal to lost time. So every extra round of sampling pushes your launch date back. If you plan, if your plan was to launch in three months, but you're stuck in like three to four iterations, you might miss the peak season entirely or any launch date that you set. Just to give you an example, one sample round can take you up to three weeks. Like if the vendor said they will do it for five days to seven days and then the shipment, it's definitely via courier, you want it fast, it will take another five days. So for you to check the sample to test it, it will take another five days. So this process is super inefficient in the process of NPT because founders owners feel that it's not a very important part or it doesn't kill the time but, but in reality every extra round will kill your BFCM launch. So make sure, how do we solve that? Make sure that the specifications, if you have tech pack product specification sheets, that these are communicated very clearly and transparent to your vendor so that they can do it as much as they can do it right the first time. It's a collaboration, it's a working together part or process where and your vendor is relying how complete your information is, they're relying on your tech pack or product specification sheet. And if they're not complete, they will definitely do a wrong sample. So there's also, you have to account also some communication barrier in this part and so do not use very difficult language or words in describing your product. Ensure that it's basic, very basic, easy to understand. Because sometimes we thought or the vendor thought they understood it, but in reality because of language barrier, it's the reason why they created a wrong sampling. So we've done thousands of sampling in our career and I've seen that the only reason why the sample is wrong is either we weren't able to communicate the specifications properly and we didn't explain it properly, very rarely that the vendors made mistakes because it's their mistakes, it's from their production, because they were the experts here. They already know how to do their products. And most of the time the reason is because we have given incorrect information and at the same time or incomplete information. We didn't say we wanted a label like this and then eventually we added that. So make sure that everything is set in your product specification sheets or tech pack before sending it to your vendor for sampling because this will save you a lot of time. And then next is rework from a wrong supplier, just in case the next bullet point, the fourth bullet point is wrong supplier. It's very related to bullet point number two for MoQ over buying and this one hurts the most. Choosing the wrong supplier or skipping proper vetting can leave you sitting on a lot of cash worth of inventory that doesn't sell. Wrong size, wrong color, wrong market fit, poor quality, that's cash that you cannot recover. And it's like buying your entire launch plan and realizing half of them are in bad quality so you cannot launch them anymore. Lastly, the rework from missing compliance testing, skipping proper compliance checks or testing early can mean reworking an entire production run, which is expensive, stressful and can delay or can kill even the BFCM launch. Imagine launching a product for winter and if it doesn't meet the target deadline, the next your product has to wait for another year so that you can sell it. And I've experienced it multiple times in apparel companies where we launch like heavy jackets, heated, very heavy robe for winter just to end up not selling it in time for bfcm. That's so painful for our cash flow. So avoid the rework. Start right in quality and compliance. You can hire third party QA testers in China at a very cheap cost, $200 to $220 per day, full day. You can ask them to test any product within eight hours at that price with complete result. And these are the experts that we should trust in quality, not the internal quality system of our vendors. Of course there will be a little bit of bias there for their qa, but it's always better to get a third party one. Okay, so what success looks like. So if the old way, five sampling rounds, one supplier, no timeline, you're not tracking it, you don't have project management. The new way is margin. First three quotes minimum, clear launch plan. These are the only three things that you have to memorize by heart. It's very important. And once you have this built into your system, you will never go wrong in any of your launch, whether it's for a special event or BFCM or just regular launch or all throughout. So I will be sharing with you mistakes I see founders make again and again. And honestly my team, I in my experience of NPD and sourcing have made some of them myself. So if you have mistakes that you wanted to share as well to the group, feel free to chat that we want to learn from your mistakes and we wanted to give a little bit of insights for that and maybe next steps or solution if you wanted to share, just feel free to do that. So these are the common mistakes. Picking a brand, picking a product based on gut and no data. I get it you feel like this is the next big thing. As a, as an owner of a brand myself, I am guilty with this. But if your decision is based only on instinct, you're guessing with your money. And if you don't have a deep pocket like me, a product you love doesn't automatically mean it will sell. That's the reality. And even if you love that product, you still have to do the steps to avoid launching a product that is not gonna sell. So example one founder I worked with launched a premium insulated bottle without checking the demand or the competition. It turned out that the competitors were selling similar bottles for half the price. Inventory got stuck and cash flow froze. That client is not existing anymore. So key takeaway here is back every product idea with data, competitor analysis, search trends, margins and estimated demand. We cannot launch a product without this. And then number two is designing first. The number two mistake designing first, costing later. A lot of founders start by making their dream product all the best materials, features and packaging. And then later realizing it's too expensive to make. By the time the costing comes in, they either have to cut quality or increase price, which breaks the strategy. So example is imagine you're designing $100 hoodie, but later learning your cost is 80 for that hoodie. So that leaves you with no room for profit if you're selling it for 100. Always cost first. This is what Andrew and maybe Omar can share more about this later on. But this is what we've experienced with Andrew. We were given a very clear cost target and then design comes second. They gave us target, then design comes second. Although Andrew was very aware that given the complicated design that they have for the packaging, they're aware that probably we need to downgrade the design. But we did not change the cost. We will downgrade the design if we cannot make it, but he will not change the cost. So fortunately we made it all the specifications, all the designs that that they told that they gave us, we were able to hit the target cost. But if not, they're open to downgrading the design or changing the design doesn't have to downgrade. There are other ways to make it even look better, but cheaper. But design should be always the second. Your design choices should align with target margins from day one. Next mistake is committing to one supplier too early. Founders often find a supplier they like, they lock them immediately, they put all their trust and then just one supplier, they stop sourcing already. And in one single supplier you and entrusted your whole brand and your first launch or your BFCM launch in a single supplier without backup, which is super super risky. We've seen suppliers raise prices last minute. So if you only have one vendor and you didn't know that price is going to be will have an increase by peak season, then you already your stock with their new price. Or if you wanted to search another vendor because the price is unacceptable, then you will miss your deadline or delivery. Inconsistent quality. If you don't have plan B your stock and always look for two approved suppliers or at least one backup. It's always China plus one for me. China plus one, China plus one. I will repeat that 100 times. It's your insurance policy against surprises. Fourth mistake is sampling forever without clear criteria. I've discussed this earlier. Some founders spend six to 12 months sampling. This is a reality. We've seen this. We're sampling endlessly because they don't know what they're looking for. So they wanted to see it first. Change the design, see it again. Change the design. It delays launch. Waste money, burns energy. So this is an actual experience to me that we went through 11 rounds of samples before realizing that our client does not have a clear approval checklist. So if you don't define what's good enough from the beginning, you will keep chasing perfection and you will not have enough timeline or lead time to do the sampling. Set clear criteria for materials, fit, quality and testing. Approve fast when sample hits your standard. So once you receive it, do the proper testing and then communicate the result right away. Passed or be decisive about the result whether it passed or rejected. Let them know right away the next. The fifth mistake is forgetting testing and compliance. Similar to what I've shared earlier, a lot of brands skip compliance check thinking it's unnecessary. This is very common for dtc. For the companies that I've worked with, worked with before dtc, this is never an option. We cannot skip compliance for multinational companies, big companies. And because DTCs and E commerce is small to medium sized businesses. They think they can skip this? No we cannot. There are cheaper options to ensure that we are still testing compliance and I've seen brands spend more than 10k on inventory only to find out their labels did not meet US or UK standards and they have to redo everything. Key takeaway here is build testing and compliance. Build that step into your NPD timeline from the start. Safety, labeling, materials, packaging, QC testing. So if ever to give you an idea, if ever you've you'll be working with a third party QC testing like VTrust. It takes two days for them to schedule you. So make sure that if your product will be available by August 31st, inform them by August 28th so that they can schedule on September 1st by that date. After the checking you will receive the result within 24 hours. So there's still a lead time there that you have to ensure you capture. And these are all part this is part of the PERT that we will be sharing with you and I will be showing you as well. Lastly, last common mistake underestimating launch lead times which relates to not having project management tool or PERT or anything that will support you and will guide you with the timeline. So new product launches often take longer than expected expected. The real NPD launch lead time is roughly five to six months and that's considering that we will not skip anything. And if you want to ship it via C it can be fast tracked, expedited but you're only left with one sampling round. You're only left with via Air option, no via C option. So if you can pay that cost then yes you can launch. But if not you cannot launch anymore. So especially if many founders set aggressive timelines but forget to account sampling, production, testing, shipping. So don't forget that if you want to launch in October you can start designing August. By the time you're ready peak season will be over. So use per timelines that I will be sharing. Paul if you can share it in the chat box so they can have like an idea what it looks like. Use the per timelines to plan each steps realistically and avoid costly delays. You can open that file, you can copy, you can create a copy and use it yourself for your brand. Okay, so next is we are going to share with you our own system, our own NPD system that we use in Move. So we have three major critical steps in our timeline in our pert and this is the Discover and design phase two is design and source and then phase three is Sample PO Let me open my pert very quickly. So I'm showing my pert and it's like Gantt chart but vertical. So at the end this is where at the bottom you will be starting your activities from ideation to design, sourcing, sampling, supply chain, finance, production, inspection, finance, shipment, quotation request, logistics, shopify, updating or Amazon updating and then launch. And then in here you will have the standard it came from us. But you can definitely change this. This will change depending on on your process, your vendors, your timeline. And you have options to see if you want to ship via air, via sea. There are situations where we split the shipment. We send 30% via air just to launch on time and we send 70% via sea so that it's not very costly. Of course the categories or the list of specific tasks here can also change based on your type of product. If it's formulated like a shampoo conditioner or anything related skincare formulated, then you have to incorporate for example market consumer test. You have to allow other people to test it. You have to do some laboratory test as well. So add them here. All right. Okay. So yeah, so we've shared the pert template in the chat box. Get it. We will also receive it after the workshop. We will be emailing you. So phase one, before we design or source or negotiate, we need to know if the product is actually worth launching. And this is where phase one comes in. Usually we don't do it in move. We have two talents who can do this. Very seldom that we incorporate this in our costing because we are expecting that you as a founder has a marketing team to do this. Yeah, so but in case you don't have a marketing to do this, we have talents also to support. They are not always available but we can set some timelines when there will be available for you. But again there are other talents who can work on this like marketing with marketing background. So we always start by understanding the market first. This isn't just about looking at competitors. It's about knowing if there's a real demand. So check trends. Competitor pricing reviews, bestseller rankings. There are so many tools now available for this helium. For example for Amazon, you'll see that ranking bestsellers product in Amazon. So there are AI tools that you can use for this. Spot the gaps in the market and understand what's missing and where. Can you differentiate what additional features you can add to your product and ask are we solving real customer pain points or just making another me too type of product? Think of checking reviews before booking. It's like checking reviews before booking anything. You want to know what's out there before spending your money. It's the same thing with this part. Next is target margin. This step is where most founders slip. They forget they fall in love with the product before checking if the numbers work. So decide on your target landed cost, not unit cost. Landed cost tariff plays a huge role now, so you have to decide on your landed cost which includes unit cost, packaging, shipment cost, tariff, duties and taxes etc before designing anything, work backwards from your selling price to set your maximum cost. And if, for example, if you want 70% gross margin and plan to sell it at $100, our total landed cost, materials, packaging, duties, freight needs to stay below $30. That's a basic math that you can that you can use. So it's like setting your budget ahead of time before even buying something. If you don't do that, you'll end up at the PO level or the PO step shocked at your invoice. Next is product shortlisting. Once you've scanned the market and you set your margin, which is your 1 and 2, you should shortlist only the product that makes sense strategically and financially. So rank ideas based on demand, feasibility and profitability. Cut down the list early, focus only on two to three strong contenders instead of chasing 10 ideas and avoid shiny objects syndrome. More options doesn't mean more success, so avoid that. And number four is the Go no Go template. Paul, please share that in the chat box. This is a template that we use before sending on samples to our tech pack or product specification sheets to our suppliers. We run each shortlisted product through our Go no Go template. It's a decision filter for you. The criteria includes target margin. Does it hit your profit goals? Market demand? Are people actually buying this supply chain feasibility? Can we source it reliably? Strategic fit? Does this align with your brand vision? And if the product fails the checklist, it's a no go. Don't waste time and money if they didn't pass your checklist. And of course, if it passed, move confidently to phase two. This workshop aims to. Let me. Let me share with you the next slide. Phase two, right. Phase two is design, Source design and source phase where you have your target cost, supplier codes, cost sheet and tech back. All right, so target cost that should be available in the beginning of the process. You now can freely source vendors that will be within the budget, so it will help you a lot and it will screen your vendors really fast because you have to let go of the vendors who cannot meet your target costing. So it's very from that initial steps that you've made, you are going to be expediting the process and that's going to help you with the timeline. Then cost sheet, keep it, follow it and then tech pack. So tech pack or product specification sheet, make sure it's complete. That's where the sampling is relying on in terms of making sure they are correct. Who does this? There are tech pack makers, graphic designers, we have that in our teaming move. If you want someone to do that to do this. There are also freelancers who does this like try up work, online job ph. There are so many freelancers who can do tech packages or product specification sheets. They're a little bit more expensive than the usual graphic designer, but not as much. Like for example you can get a $10 per hour tech pack maker. If you want 3D, it's a little bit higher at 1512, $15 per hour. But because it's a project based, you can definitely hire them as a freelance and project based type as well. So you don't have to hire internally a designer. And then next is the easiest part for me is the sample and PO because we've set our foundations really strong in phase one and phase two, this is the easiest part for me. But if we didn't set it strong, this is the hardest part for you. So choose your battle, choose where you'll spend your time. For bfcm is it doing what founders should be doing, growing the business or doing a lot of sampling? Because we didn't set the phase one and two strong. So sampling with confidence should be our target pass and fail criteria. Make sure that again and again I will say that the tech pack and product specification sheet should be very well thought through. Communicate properly, make it simple, over communicate to your vendors. It will never go wrong. Always update your pert, always update your timeline and then quickly finalize supplier terms, lead payment terms, etc. Negotiate everything and then QC plan or quality check, hire someone outside third party and then launch. You wait once your PO is done, you have to wait for the production and do not. If they say that the lead times 30 days, do not come back to them on the 30th day. This is a common mistake. Don't do that. As much as possible. Talk to them every day. How was it? How's the step? Where are we? How's the quality? Are we good? If you don't do every day, try two to three times a week. But don't go silent and wait for the 30th day because you'll be surprised how many supply chain disruptions there are there in a production line. So you thought you have a production schedule and then suddenly they prioritized company that is 10 times your size because it's more volume, more money for them. You should be working closely with them even if it's in the production stage. So that's the three cases and I think this is where Omar will help me a case study and a very successful NPD client that we have. So yeah, take it away Omar.

Yep. So hi everyone. So just to give you guys a little context with, for this jewelry brand that we worked with for a couple of months now it's a founder led, which is a lot of DTC brands that are looking to sort of let's say launch something right before peak season or bfcm. So to give you an idea how we did the new product development, of course this is a little bit different from startups just because they do have existing product. And how we typically do, how we typically did our support for them was it was more on launches every quarter. So how we do it is we will take a data driven approach for new product development. And so it's just so that every decision is always backed by real insights rather than guesswork. Because when you want to release, let's say a new product, you always need a basis and a baseline for it. So we always start with the competitor analysis looking at top brands in the jewelry space and it helps us understand their best selling products, what are their collection strategies and typically how they position new launches. We learn from our competition wherein a lot of DTC brands that are looking to launch, sometimes you do get an A, I want to launch an apparel brand. So you, you have a sort of type of brand in mind. So that's, that's actually something really helpful that that's helped a lot of a lot of DTC owners where they can have a look at their competitors as sort of inspiration. So alongside that we, we always conduct a sales data deep dive for this, that that data is available just because they are an existing brand. So we, we map out which products and collections were driving the highest revenue and also identify the peak sales months so we, we could time launches strategically. So this part we would have to sort of lean a little bit on our inventory planner, demand planner just to get an idea as well when we, when we put time those launches. So then next would come the product gap analysis. We combine customer feedback with the sales data and we identify missing product categories and styles that had strong demand but weren't yet part of the brand's assortment. This would definitely give us a clear roadmap, of course, which products would resonate with the target market because we are listening to customer feedback. You would definitely hear from let's say reviews online or sort of get an idea as well from your existing customers if you are an existing brand. And it's really good to hear that from, from them and use that as a sort of driving force for any ideas that you have for new products. And then we'll look at, develop, we'll, we'll then develop a product calendar which of course to ensure that future launches align with seasonal demand, the industry trends, emerging materials design innovations and evolving consumer preferences. Just because there are trends, maybe something like comes up on let's say social media specifically for this type of brand that's suddenly boomed. So you have to be flexible in that way and it would help your brand stay ahead of competitors. So yeah, definitely the result has definitely streamlined the product development process for that specific brand that we're working with. And it's actually accelerated launch times but also ensured that the product was backed by customer insights and competitive data and clear sales strategy. So I think it's very helpful for startup brands at the same time existing brands that are looking to launch something on let's say like a quarterly basis. So yeah, that's for that jewelry brand.

Thank you, Omar. So brand profile for supplier RFQ or request for quotation. This is a good template for you to use so that you can inform all the important details to the vendors. It has your brand overview, the product details, forecast and production plan. This is very important in negotiation and I'll explain later why payment and terms, term preferences, contact information, why partner with you? Why would they support you? So moving to one very important part is the negotiation before you even close it out. So once you've chosen the right product and the right supplier, the next step is structuring the deal. So it protects your cash, secure supply and build leverage over time. When you're sourcing, you do a little bit of negotiation but do not forget to lock in those negotiations through contracts before you even po. The most common payment terms in China is 30 70. 30% is the down payment, 70% before they ship it to your freight forwarder. And the goal here is to protect your cash and minimize risk when working with suppliers. This is the most common. If they say 5050 can negotiate at 30 70. If you now have a good relationship with them, you can even say 10% deposit 60% before shipment and then the 30% once it's. Once it arrived in US. So there are different negotiation structure here. That's the standard set up. Never pay 100% upfront, never pay that. Don't do that unless you've worked with the supplier for years. And if it's not a huge amount, if the supplier insists, for example 50 50, try to negotiate better terms once you establish the price. Pro tip, tie the 70% payment to final QC approval. Don't pay it without the QC approval. So you have the leverage if issues arise. Because once you pay it after production and it ended up being so problematic in quality, you can take that money back. And now you have to fight for them to replace the rejected products. Next is volume incentives. This is a negotiation tactic that works really well if you know you're scaling negotiate benefits upfront based on committed volume. So even if it hasn't been in the market, tell them that once this go live and become successful, then of course it means more volume for them. Secure better pricing. As you order quantity increase, ask for price breaks. If you don't know what price breaks is, it's asking different quantity and getting a cheaper price as the price increases. So for example, for 500 units, it's 10k each. Once you go to 1000 units, it's now 9.2. Once you go to 2000 units, it becomes 8.8 and then that's the price break. And then align incentives. Supplier love predictable volume. You save on cost. If you say that for the whole year, this is my target, they will love to hear that. So they can also see and feel that you have a plan. You have a good plan for your brand. Use volume commitments as leverage. Even if you don't commit all at once, you don't have to po 10,000 for the whole year, you have to say I am targeting 10,000 pieces for the whole year. I will order 1,000. Now. If Q1 goes well and we order two times, can we lock in this price? Those are the types of script that you can use for that. And then lastly is the forecast roadmap. Suppliers plan their capacity months ahead. Sharing your forecast isn't just polite, it gets you priority. So what is that capacity planning for them? It's the raw materials, buying, production planning, manpower, hiring. Those are the things that they have to think in advance. So if you share your forecast, they will prepare for that in a safe way. And you can create a three to six months production roadmap with estimated orders, sizes and timelines. This is like an open PO strategy. You don't have to commit to it. You don't have to pay deposit for this. All you have to do is to share with them. Your plan supplier will then allocate resources for brands that keep give predictable demand signals. Without a roadmap, your risk is longer lead times, stuck outs during peak season, losing your place in production. This always happens. And we are going to also share in the chat box our roadmap that builds trust and strength in the negotiation for pricing. So we'll be sharing that as well. I've shared the part earlier. Make sure you update those. It will really protect you from the delays. So another real case study, a product called Resolute. This is the one that we've mentioned earlier from Andrew.

Yep. So Resolute. I think quite a few of Andrew's listeners might have had a little snippet when they had a podcast episode with Lara when we did the sort of new product development and sourcing for Resolute. It is two parts just because we're looking at a really customized packaging and also the formulated side of things. So to give everyone an idea, just because it was quite a lean team, it was me, Lizelle, another sourcing specialist and Lara that started this. So it was very lean, but at the same time we learned a lot. So our team mainly focused on three main areas. It was just the sourcing, cost optimization and lead time alignment is because we are gearing up to launch the product at a specific date that Andrew had in mind. So first we ran an intensive vendor sourcing process of course, at the same time. I mean before this we were given sort of a price target by Andrew and then what are the requirements? What are we looking at? So he had a designer in house who helped us in a lot of the process and at the same time this for the packaging. And at the same time he also sort of had an idea, general idea. It wasn't sort of pegged down. It was a general idea on the solid cologne type of fragrances that he wanted to sort of release. So with that, in the span of, let's say a month, we looked at over 60 fragrance manufacturers and 18 packaging suppliers and we narrowed it down to top three for the fragrance and top five for packaging vendors. And then we we completed multiple sampling rounds just to ensure that we met both quality compliance requirements. And I think currently we vetted the formulation side of things and we've also tied down the packaging. They also had took a little bit longer on the packaging side of the things just because we wanted to look at our alternatives mainly in this, in this case, it was going to be Vietnam just because I think during that time it was just at the peak of the tariff issues. So, yeah, secondly, once we've tied that down, we worked on the cost optimization of things. After we did, we vetted and we found the right vendors. So we worked on cost optimization. So this is where a lot of the negotiation skills comes in. So, like through negotiations we were able to bring unit costs for fragrance and the packaging combined to under $10 per unit. This was the target that was set. We managed to hit it and this was a major win for us. And then we managed to save costs just from the initial. Yeah, we. With cost savings ranging from 5% to as much as 47% per unit, plus we secured lower MOQs just because it is a new brand for more flexible production runs. So it is a newer brand. It might be a little bit more difficult if the approach isn't right specific with Chinese vendors looking for higher and higher MOQs. But for this, it was so good that we managed to actually lower MOQs and hit the targets that was set. And finally we focused on the lead time and product launch readiness just because we were initially looking to launch earlier. But of course with a little bit of a sort of hiccup just because of tire issues, we were sort of delayed, which is perfectly normal. And it just goes to show that sometimes it's good to sort of wait that little bit longer just to ensure that your product quality is there. And then finally we focused on aligning the fragrance production and packaging development. I think Lara mentioned a little bit earlier for sort of formulated products that testing has to come in and it does take a little bit of a longer lead time. Specifically, if you're looking at some requirements when it comes to, let's say, is it skin safe, are we looking at vegan, are we looking at organic, are we looking at cruelty free? So these are sort of things that we have to keep in mind in our pert, our project management tool. And we have to make sure that that's all laid out just because it does take a little bit longer, depending on the sample size. If, let's say we actually also helped Andrew in sourcing these testing facilities. So that's something that we've got sort of experience in as well. And with that, you have to ask yourself, okay, am I going to be testing on let's say 100 people or let's say 50 people? Just because, just depending on that specific range, it will take a little bit longer. So by the time that the final vendor agreements were in, so the final negotiations for the contract we had to ensure the smooth transition from sampling is going to go straight into full scale production. That's where we are right now with Resolute is there. That brand is right about to be prime for, for launching and for that initial stage. And of course as they'd want to place those POS earlier just so that they can work a little bit on the marketing side of things, just because everything is super buttoned down and it's just the final basic touches on let's say qa, final vendor contracts moq so that's where we are with Resolute. So hopefully they'll be able to launch and I'm 100% sure that the quality is there and they'll definitely geared up to be launching by the time peak season comes.

Thank you for that, Omar. And as for that second case study, definitely another success for us supporting a brand from ground up. This is actually from ground up. So we've sent all the list or all the links in the chat box. But again you will be receiving a copy of the recording of this workshop. Feel free to share it to your supply chain managers, your peers and listen to it again if you need to and then copy the templates that we have shared so that you can use it right away. And your next action plan. If you are doing new product development right now, simulate your margin, it's not too late. Get three RFQs minimum, three shortlisted vendors, build your PERT lock your PO date and finalize QC and then you're launched. And if you want to support us on your launch, you can book a free discovery call. Omar and I will be there on the call and get the templates. We've just shared the calendly link in the chat box as well. And yeah, if you have any questions you can either share it now or email me. It's laramovesupplychain.com Omar movesupplychain.com so we'll be here to respond to your queries or if you wanted to book a call so it's faster with turnaround of questions. Let us know how we can help. And I hope that if you're planning to launch on Q4, we still have time. Let's invest on the first on a very strong phase one and two of the product development so that we have an easy phase three and we're looking forward to support you. So we also have a supply chain lounge, it's a slack community group where you can also ask us. Tag us very quickly. We will send you questions. It's not just me and Omar. There are inventory planner experts, demand forecasting experts, logistics operations, supply chain managers. All our experts are there whenever you need them. Just use the proper channels in asking questions. We are going to share that as well to you. The link of that supply chain lounge, Paul if you can. And then of course follow Unboxed Weekly. It's our newsletter where I send a weekly supply chain updates especially catered for DTC brands. There you go. Thank you so much everyone for joining today. I hope it was a good learning session for you. We were so happy to do this. This topic is very special to our hearts and we are very happy to have shared this with you.

Thanks everyone.