How To Invent Must-Have Products

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hi and welcome back to Product Launch Hazards. Today, Tracy and I want to share with you another recording we did a few years ago that it's very valuable still today about inventing must have products and really how to do it.

Well, it's not. We don't really talk about the nitty gritty details of how to do it because there's a whole bunch of ways that you approach it. But really it's getting at why you should do it. And I think that that's critically important. There are two kinds of members here. You guys fall into two buckets of people. You fall into people who are marketers first and you fall into people who are inventors first. And so it's actually the same problem. So it's about creating longevity and demand through invention. And so if you're a marketer on the sort of Amazon seller side or E commerce or brand building side of things, and you come from that direction, it's critically important to have a product that is differentiated, that has longevity, that, that is competition proof, as we term it, where you can keep trolls from it. And how do you do that? And that is through intentionally inventing something that has those features. Right? Now, when we use the word invention here, we don't always mean patents. It just means it's inventively different. But it can mean patents, it can mean intellectual property, it can mean those things, proprietary technologies, formulations, whatever that might be in your world of being distinctly different from everyone else's. And then on the flip side of that, we're talking about inventors. And part of the problem that we see from most inventors is that they love their idea, but they don't know if people really want it. So it's not a must have, it's not the most critical and important feature. And so dialing into that and inventing into that opportunity gap is really where we've made our success.

And I think one of the big misconceptions that I want to set up here in the beginning, before we cut to the recording from before, is that it's not accidental. I think a lot of people who are not inventors or are not familiar with all the aspects of intellectual property think that it's kind of magic. Or if you invent something or that you've tripped on it. And there are certainly stories of inventions that were happy accidents. You might say that they didn't intend to do it, but that's not what we're talking about here. You can create something unique, you can invent something. You just really have to decide that that's your goal.

Yeah. And our premise for what we've always done is that when you do that, when you intentionally invent something, the most important thing to understand is what is critical to the market opportunity. So what will make it a must have item? What is the most important thing that you can be designing into, Inventing into. And so that's kind of how we set up this video that we had done before. And we're going to share with you audio track for how we talk about that and kind of get this as a setup. And this is going to be an ongoing theme throughout our podcast. You're going to hear this again and again because these things are important about being a differentiator, being solo, having competition proof design, having products that are inventive and of value to the consumer. I see from your website you use the term intentional inventions. What's your approach in designing a new product for retail?

Intentional invention. For us, invention is a key part of the design process. You know, I think a lot of companies and even a lot of designers regard invention as something that might happen or is accidental part of the design.

Process, or it only relates to gadgets. You know, it's like, you know, you have this crazy guy inventing in a garage or something. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about invention as being what's novel, what's innovative and new about what we're designing. So it could be something small, it could be a feature that's invented, it could be something big, it could be a whole product that is disruptive that you've never thought of before.

But the point of what we do is that it is absolutely strategic and intentional. With not every product we design, but the majority of them, we specifically look at the competitive landscape, the market of other products that are out there. And how are we, for ourselves, for our clients, going to set this product apart, make it better, more desirable, and in some ways more protectable from foreign competition, factory direct competition, things like that.

The dynamic is so difficult in the market today. So you have suppliers who are competing against you. And going factory direct, you have customers who are, you know, you're selling to These retailers, and yet they're also sourcing direct. So everybody is competing for everything. So in order for you to stay competitive and to keep your position in the marketplace, you have to have products that are highly differentiated, very special. And that special can come from design, it can come from engineering, it can come from a patented feature, it can come from something invented. And that's what we look at is we look at the whole thing and we call it intentional invention. Because that's what we're intentionally doing is we are intentionally creating a product that is, I must have, and I must have it only from you, rather than a commodity.

And this works for different kinds of companies. It works for the market leader who has the dominant amount of market share, but wants to maintain that or needs to maintain that against, you know, upcoming.

Competition and price pressure.

Price pressure, that's right. It also is critical for the up and comer who's trying to get their foot in the door into this market and try to establish themselves.

Yeah. And that up and comer doesn't have to be just a new startup. We've seen it where a large company, you know, one of our clients actually wanted to start a new division and he couldn't even get himself in the door because they didn't want to let him have that much business throughout the retail store. So, you know, in order for you to create and break into a new category of products or a new retailer altogether, sometimes you have to take it so much farther than the next guy.

We apply intentional invention in the majority of the work that we do.

We've done it throughout our career that way. I mean, we use intentional invention as a strategic advantage for both us and our clients. We do it because they need to be differentiated and they need to create a significant market advantage for the particular look or design or feature or whatever that it is that is inventive about it. But they also need to make sure that they can't get easily knocked off. They can't get easily replaced by factory direct.

And we've been doing this throughout our careers. And that's why we have over 32 issued or pending patents. And we have 95% of the patents that we've applied for have been granted.

Right. We also have, you know, at this stage we have 81% commercialization rate, meaning 81% of those 32 patents have been commercialized, turned into product. It's actually kind of low for us because it's not realistic, because six of them we just invented. So we haven't had a chance to like commercialize them yet.

We just filed them.

We just filed them. So they'll be commercialized. If we don't commercialize them in a year, I'd be surprised.

You know, it's been really a very strategic part of the services that we offer our clients or the products that we pursue on our own. And not only have we commercialized them, some we've licensed, some we've sold, and some we've licensed and sold multiple times, in fact. So it is a key critical part of business.

Right. And part of it is something that you had said earlier, and that is there are, you know, three types of people who can take advantage of it. So you can have the corporation who is looking to create a corporate asset level. So in other words, this just happened to us recently. We had a client and we gave them almost a dozen patents and then they got acquired. So those assets of those patents became a significant part of their acquisition value and a part that the company bought to exploit in the marketplace. And so that's one way to look at it. So it helps prep you for your.

Exit strategy, but it also for a market leader who needs to sort of strengthen their foothold on a market or further try to be the dominant player and corner that market, it gives them a better defensive position to do that.

Yeah, we just did that last year. And it was a really good example of it is that there was all this litigation going on around a specific feature. And what we did was we developed three other patentable features that were ways around that. So it strengthened a patent.

That's a really important key point about strategy. I mean, if we were working for that market leader, we would be coming up with those alternate ways to get around the patent for them to use to further strengthen their position. But if you're an up and comer or one of the competitors who they may have sued for patent infringement, to try to kick them out of the market. You know, companies have to make a decision, are they going to spend millions of dollars defending that patent hoping that they'll win the lawsuit? And that's a risky proposition. Or what we would recommend is to invent and design around that existing patent so that they can compete unencumbered by the big player.

Right. It's a whole lot easier to say I give and I'll try and do it. Totally alternate method, then you can patent. And I think some of those three that we designed are actually lower cost. So in the end they were actually beneficial. So, you know, it's not just a defensive strategy.

And you know, a lot of companies think that invention is something that is accidental or if they end up developing a product that's patentable, that they were lucky that it's not something you can actually set out a goal to develop a product that is not only patentable, but has a meaningful patent to protect it. And that's really just not true. You absolutely can make that a goal, set it out and go and do it.

Yeah, I mean, we set out, yeah, we set out that we plan to do 10 inventions this year and we filed six. We filed six so far.

So we're halfway through the year.

Yeah, we're in perfect timing to do it. Maybe we'll take Christmas off. So anyway, but it's just one of those things where when you intend to do this and you have a market purpose for it, you also make it more commercial applicable. And so that's the thing is that we don't recommend that you go out there and just file patents to file patents. In fact, we discourage that because it's costly, it's time consuming and it's not worth it. But if you are going to market this product and if you're going to commercialize it, then this can be a competitive advantage for you.

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