MBA1475 Q&A Wednesday: How do I create an MVP for my physical product?

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar Me A Show. Because there's ups and downs in business and we're here to put you on firm ground every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes I answer a question from one of our listeners. Yep, somebody just like you. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar MBA Net. Today's question is from Lance and Lance asks how do I create an MVP for my physical product? MVP stands for Minimal Viable Product, a prototype. Lance writes in says I'm really excited about a new physical product that I'll be selling very soon. I have all the designs and even created a landing page to start collecting some interest. But I need a minimal viable product. I need to be able to sell a few units to make sure I've nailed the specs of my product. Where can I get somebody to create my physical product for me? What are my options? Thanks Omar for the amazing show. Really appreciate your help Lance. Thank you Lance so much for listening and for the question because I know there's many people who are listening to the show that may have this question in their head. So by me answering it, by you asking it, you're really gonna be helping a lot of people. Creating a minimal viable product for a digital product, like a course, a training, a book is quite easy. But what about a physical product? You need a manufacturer, right? You need somebody to actually craft this thing into existence. Many of you don't know, but I used to have a physical product business. About a decade ago, I had my own clothing line and I had to go through this and actually come up with some MVP products. And it's not only at the start of the business. When I'm launching new product lines or new ideas or new things I'm going to add to my catalog. I don't just want to launch with mass production. I want to launch a few of them, sell them, get some feedback, and then refine later before I mass produce. So in today's lesson, I'm going to go through some recommendations, some options when it comes to creating a minimal viable product for your physical product. I've done this several times with different types of products, so I can't wait to share some of my experiences and, and give you my tips when it comes to this topic. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So in today's Q and A Wednesday, Lance asks, how do I create an MVP for my physical product? The good news is, Lance and everybody listening is that this is the easiest time ever to create physical products. Whether it's just a prototype or you're going to be producing it en masse, there are so many options and they're so cost effective. I wish I had these options when I was creating my physical product a decade ago. Nevertheless, I'm going to share with you your options now. And some of the things I did that really had lowered the cost and allowed me to get a prototype, get an MVP in my hands quickly and efficiently. The first thing I want to mention is of course you can do this overseas. Of course, the first place people think of is China. And we're going to talk about that as well as an option. It's a big option, but I want to encourage you, if you can, your first option should be to try to create this prototype locally somewhere you can actually go fish physically. You might be surprised, in your local city, in the capital of where you live, there will be manufacturers that actually create these things, depending on the product itself, whether it's an electronic or a clothing item or an accessory like an iPhone case. Many people are actually bringing manufacturing locally because it's less expensive when you factor in a lot of things, especially when it comes to mass production. We're talking about you're going to save money on taxes, you're going to save money on shipping, you're going to save money on a lot of things. But most importantly, you're gonna have direct communication with the person that's producing your product. You can touch and feel it and get to know the people behind the craftsmanship of your product. So my first suggestion is try to get this done locally. Now, some places will be easier to find. Now if you're trying to produce clothing, there's plenty of places that will create custom clothing for you. Even just a prototype. You can even just go down the street and go to a local tailor. We're talking that simple. Like you're gonna pay a little bit more to custom tailored. Whether it's a hat or a dress shirt or a pair of pants, you're going to spend a premium for maybe five pieces that you could sell. But it's totally doable and it's local. Now there are other companies that do this for you, print shops, clothing shops, and you can find them on Google pretty easily for smaller, less complex products like accessories and clothing. This should be quite easy. Now, if you're looking to produce something a little bit more complex like electronics, even something like a battery or a some sort of memory for the computer or something like that, this still can be done locally, but it may be harder to find online. A lot of these manufacturers are not so simple to find. You might have to go old school and go to the yellow pages. You might have to do a roundabout search on Google like trying to find a list of manufacturers in your local area, in your state, in your country, where you're gonna go through the list and try to find one that would fit your needs. Now, going locally will always be time efficient. You'll also not have to worry about any kind of miscommunication or language barrier. This is true because I've done a lot of foreign manufacturing and this is a challenge. You're gonna have to get through that if you go foreign or if you go overseas. So if you can get it done locally, I highly recommend that because you're gonna be able to get the product as quickly as possible, sell it to other people, whether it's in person, at a fle, at a, you know, local market, or even on your website. Now if you're looking to do this overseas because you can't find it locally. There are options. The number one option when it comes to this is Alibaba. Alibaba is a website you can check out. They have another version called Alibaba Express. And this is like pre made products that you can kind of buy and sell, kind of like arbitrage. But Alibaba will actually have all the manufacturers there. Now the issue with Alibaba is sometimes these factories have a minimum order or a minimum spend. So you're going to have to do some searching. And there's a lot of companies, a lot of manufacturers out there who will produce anything you want, from a pencil to a mechanical keyboard to, you know, computer screens. They can do anything. Okay. This is where everything is made. Now the reason why people go to Alibaba is because they run on a review system and you can really take a look at who really gets great reviews and actually delivers. It's gonna take longer because it's coming from China and there's gonna be some lead time and all that kind of stuff. But if you have time, it's worth exploring, especially if you can get it at a minimum spend or a minimum quantity. I was selling some accessories with my clothing line, like cufflinks, and I got it done through Alibaba as a prototype and I actually had to order at least a hundred pieces. Okay. So I spent, I think, I believe $300 to get this done, plus some shipping and all that kind of stuff. But I had a hundred pieces. I sold it on the website as a limited time. It's something that we're trying out and luckily we sold out really quickly, like within a month. And I immediately saw what sold, what didn't, what really sold out quickly, which designs. And now I can go back to the drawing board and get a thousand pieces, ten thousand pieces, and I know what price point I can sell it for, so I can know what kind of profit I can make. Now, obviously, when I order more, my profit margins are going to be higher because when I order an MVP from Alibaba, it's going to be really, really expensive compared to the mass production. Now you might be surprised, it is actually quite affordable. I say expensive compared to the mass production because of course, the more units you buy, the better deal you're going to get. Now what's great about Alibamba is that you actually can go back and forth on email and even some of them are willing to get on a phone call. Some of the bigger manufacturers have people that can speak English. It's not great, but it's doable, right? You're gonna be able to communicate on the phone, but overall their email response is pretty good and it's pretty standard. You send them designs, you send them specs, you tell them exactly what you want and they send you prototype examples. They even show you pictures of the first ones they produce and then they send it over, even with tracking and everything. So I recommend Alibaba because I've used this several times. It's an absolute giant in China and it's for good reason because they've built a great reliable network of manufacturers. I actually know people that have produced electronics through Alibaba computer accessories and sold them in their local kiosk in their local mall and made a pretty good profit. The key here is make sure you read the reviews thoroughly. There's a lot of reviews. If you go to a very popular manufacturer on Alibaba, you'll see like literally 50,000 reviews and read every single one that will be applied to your business or your type of product so you can understand what to expect. It's all about expectations. When you're doing business, understand what you're going to get and understand how to plan around it so you know when it's going to come and what it's going to look like and what to charge and all that kind of stuff. So if you can't produce it locally, I highly recommend Alibaba. It really is a great option if you have some time and you can make sure you can communicate back and forth and get the specs right of your MVP.

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To wrap up today's lesson, Lance asked in today's Q and A Wednesday, where do I create my NVP for my physical product? The important thing is Lance, as well as everybody who's listening to focus on is that this is just the beginning. This is version one. Okay? This may not even be the product I sell. The whole point of me creating this MVP to see if this is a viable product to sell, I want to find out. That could be a no. So your job is to try to do this as efficiently and as inexpensive as possible. Okay? Especially if this is the first product you're selling in your store or in your business. If this is something that you, you're adding on to your collection or to your offerings, it's a little bit different because you have some cash flow and you can invest a little bit more. But if this is your first product, go as minimal viable as possible. If you can't do it on a budget, if the product is really expensive to create as an mvp, think about, are there any other products you want to sell in the future? Can you start with the ones that are less expensive to create first before you launch this flagship product? That's totally fine. Try doing it locally. I did my clothing line locally. First produced, you know, enough samples so I can sell them and validate my idea and see what works and what colors work, what sizes are going to sell the most, all that kind of stuff. Just see if my whole system of, you know, delivery and refunds and all that stuff works in my business, in my E Commerce store. That would be ideal. Doing it locally if you have to go overseas. You know, Alibaba is a recommendation that you, I would like you to check out. I think it's pretty efficient. It's worked out for me now. One more tip. Many of these manufacturers will be able to render you a model of whatever they're gonna produce, whatever that product is. And it look real, like the photo looks like the actual product. Now what's great about that, you can have them send that over to you and you can put that up on your website and pre sell the product. Okay. Give all the specs and people can actually buy it in advance. And then you can send it to them once it's ready, set up expectations from the customer, let them know how long it's going to take for it to be ready. But now you have an actual photo that you can use on your website and sell that product and pre sell it. This is a good way to get the cash flow going and also validate the idea before it's actually manufactured. So you can even make a deal with the manufacturers, like, hey, I just need a render first. That's the step one. Give me that photo first. And then if I get a response, I'm going to definitely place an order for an mvp. And this is a good way to do it, even on a shoestring budget. So you have orders before you actually produce the mvp. I did this with the cufflinks I mentioned where I got a rendered photo and I emailed my list and said, hey, would you guys be interested in these designer cufflinks or we're thinking about adding to our line. If so, answer this one question. Survey. And it was just a survey. I just wanted to get the information. But you can pre sell it if you want. But in our case, we had enough people saying, yes, I would buy that, that we said, okay, let's manufacture 100. And then from there we sold them. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I hope today's lesson helped not only Lance, but everybody else who's listening to today's Q and A Wednesday. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar MBA Net and we'll answer it right here on the show. Don't forget to hit subscribe on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get instant access to over 1400 episodes. 1400 business lessons in our archives. It's the only way to get access. So make sure you hit subscribe right now, and it doesn't matter what you're listening on right now. Whether it's Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Spotify or Overcast or Himalaya, whatever podcast app you use, hit subscribe right now, it's absolutely free and it will automatically get you enrolled. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This is an exciting phase where you're creating your prototype, where you're actually going to get to see your actual idea come to life. My advice to you, document the process, take notes, take pictures, even blog about it if you can, or even just maybe share it on social media and share the journey with your audience. People are so fascinated with the creation of a product and by pulling back the current and showing them the process, they're going to get excited to buy it. So take advantage of this moment. It's rare when you create something brand new, document it and share it. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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