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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.

Hey everyone, welcome to Product Launch Hazards. I'm Tracy Hazard and I have an interesting guest for you today. I have an international guest. He got up early for me and I'm staying up late. Well, not that late really. I'm staying in the office late. I have Rod Needham from MarketSource Asia, and he is a product sourcing expert and a founder of MarketSource Asia. Based in Hong Kong, he specializes in launching products and collections for both global retailers and startups around the world, not just here in the US. Rod has carried out a huge number of extremely diverse portfolio products and projects, categories ranging from travel retail to international fashion brands to homeware, TV infomercials, kickstarters, global sporting associations, and eco-friendly products he just told me on the side. He's had a career in finance and moved to Hong Kong to work with investment banking. And he was running a small toy company where he was sourcing toys from China and selling them on Amazon UK just for fun. And that's where the sourcing journey began. Rod, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad we met. We met at the sourcing conference. And so we sat next to each other and you didn't realize that was speaker and then the next thing we know we were like starting a conversation and really had an enjoyable time getting to know you.

Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, we did. We met at the Global Sources Conference and I remember we actually sat together at lunch. Yeah. We were just chatting and talking about all things, sort of sourcing and retail and developing products and stuff.

Yeah.

We were talking for so long that we didn't even get back to the next speaker.

We were running late.

Catering, yeah.

Yeah, that's my favorite part about conferences though, is to getting to meet someone who you wouldn't meet otherwise. So how long has your company been in play? So how long have you been sourcing really?

About Smarter Source, been around about four years. The sourcing journey began before then, but it was kind of a accelerated journey with Market Source because of the way that things transgressed with the amount of clients we were able to obtain quickly and then we launched a heap of different products and went through a whole different group of categories very, very quickly. So we got a very, very steep learning curve and we're able to sort of refine our sourcing strategy and become specialists very, very quickly because we had no choice. So it was very, very in-depth start for the first product.

You know, I think that's a mistake that a lot of people make. It's like they look like they get their feet wet within one category or one type of product. And they think I'm good, but they don't really realize that as you start to expand into other categories, there's not an economy of scale. It's like starting all over again. You've got a whole new source as a set of factories, a whole new set of quality control factors that you maybe have to learn. It's complicated. It's not actually simpler.

Definitely. It's one of those things where you almost have to start again with a new product and learn about the ins and outs of specifications, what certifications are needed, what particular regions, what testing requirements are needed. So to be able to, as the sourcing part is one part, to be able to find and validate the right factories in that particular network. But the other thing is getting to know the product well so that you are able to sort of foresee any issues going forward. You can't just pick a product, you know, flick it to a factory and hope it's going to be hope it's gonna sell or hope that it's not gonna have any bumps in the road because you know, you hit 100 million bumps in the road and it's being able to sort of foresee them before, set up certain things in place so that you can mitigate the risks and be able to do that on a heap of different categories all at the same time.

Yeah, that's why I'm a big fan of working with companies like yours because you have experiences and what happens over in other categories, you do learn and plan in. or you have materials that cross. And so you start to find out, oh, these materials are issues if we don't quality control them. So you have a lot more deeper knowledge into how you can be more successful and reducing those pitfalls that happen. So that's why I'm a big fan of like that broad experience, but also narrow niche experience too. So you've got a little bit of both.

A lot of it is transferable over. You kind of use the same sort of model and the same techniques and everything to apply across a heap of different categories. So you do use a sort of consistent way on best practices and things like that. And then you dive into the actual product specs. But yeah, you can definitely sort of standardize certain things so that you're able to spread your expertise. But also there's one of those things where once you see something once, you can then apply it and you recognize it. So you see something come up in a certain product and you go, oh we've seen that before on this product and you can then You're going to catch certain issues early and things like that.

Oh, yeah. So I had just had a call with one of our listeners and he came in for a strategy call and he was saying, I'm avoiding batteries because of you. And I was like, I don't want you to avoid them. I just want you to be smarter about them. Let's clarify how that works. I didn't mean to scare everybody about batteries, but he doesn't need rechargeables, which are more risk, right? So there's a lot more risk there. So I was like, but that comes from, you know, massive failure and experience and knowing that there's a big problem here. So, yeah, I've seen that problem. This is going to be an issue, right? Or a cost factor. Like that's the other thing when we look at something, because we have such broad experience, you get to know this is going to be a cost creep. Like it's going to creep over time because the material costs are going up or because things are happening. And so that's really great knowledge that when we seek out an expert like you, we get that experience and that broad knowledge of what's going on in the marketplace as well. And you're right there. So you know what's going and we're having a lot of volatility issues both in labor costs and in material costs as well. And of course over here at Tariff costs. So we've got a lot of volatility going on and so having knowledge of what's happening in the markets are really useful as well. So you watch that for your clients?

Yeah. And you can recognize certain themes that factories will give you there. They'll say they want to work a certain way or they'll try and cut costs, they'll try and cut out steps. So for example, they'll say something like, oh, if there's something that the sample is not quite right, they'll say that, oh, we'll fix that for mass production. And then you then have to wait and it all go wrong if you actually do wait to see if it is right in mass production.

Yeah, don't do that. Never do that. Yeah, so we highlight two sample problems here. One is where it's not actually right in the final version. There's very few exceptions to like, you know, there's like, oh, we're gonna change the stitch color. And as long as they give us a stitch sample, we're good with that or something like that, you know. But there's very few things that I'll accept as a after the fact. And, yeah. And so there's that. And so there's changes that you need to make for that final sample. And then there's what we call the golden sample, right? Which is the sample because it was handmade, especially in upholstery, it's made by some of their best artisans. and so it won't look like that no matter how hard you try because that person is so experienced. And so that's also one to like, I'm a big fan of being there when it first comes off, the first ones off the line and looking at it to make sure all that's right. You can cut a lot of time out of the process if you do that.

Oh, definitely. You can't really substitute being at the factory at the first start when they start that. Because you can have a golden sample signed off and some people don't even, you'd be surprised some people don't try and go through without a golden sample. So to get a golden sample signed off and approved, that's one thing. But to go and actually be in the factory when they're making it is another thing and you can catch things straight away or you can catch certain ways that they set up their production in order to meet that golden sample and you'd be surprised almost every time you make heaps of changes we're in the factory maneuvering different production lines around and different machines.

Finding better ways to process it through it and make it right. Yeah, absolutely. It's actually my favorite time because there's Lots of really exciting things that you can do at that time that will get set in place that will mean better quality later. So you can actually have a really big effect on your overall quality and cost for long term.

Well, and just the quality upfront is just a huge, huge cost save. If you look at the whole lifecycle, to not invest a little bit of money into the initial QC is a huge, huge failure. They're nine and a half times out of ten, the end product won't be right and you have to send products back or you have to redo products and you lose time. Then you have huge sales implications on the other end because you now miss, you know.

Yeah, it's a timing issue, right?

We've had times before where we were doing a summer bag collection and there was just a huge, huge QC problem and the whole thing had to be changed. And the summer bag collection was so late that it arrived for the winter collection.

Yeah, wrong materials. You're going to have to find a different part of the world to sell that in now.

Flowers don't really work in snowy Europe.

Yeah, we might have to send that one down under. I know, I love that. Well, you know, you guys have, because you have to be efficient, because you have so many clients and you have so many factories that you're working with, you have systems you put in place. And I think that that's a lot of what our startup entrepreneurs don't have, and the ones listening to this podcast, What are some of the systems that you felt work for you? Maybe some of the things like contracts and sign-off samples, like your processing for all of those. What works for you?

I would recommend honestly creating a workflow chart and implement every single decision that's made throughout the whole life cycle of end-to-end product. So where, for example, if you, and I created this actually and created and send it to some of my clients where You create the first stage where you're validating the factory, different decision-making processes that go into validating the factory. Once you get that, then you're down into the sample, and then all of the sample validation implications you have with that. Before you've even decided whether you're going to brand it, the packaging. So if you have everything in place as you go, and then that goes through the whole thing from sampling and then to get sign off, to get the golden sample. That's even before you even thought about mass production. And then you have to book, you know, booking your QC, which needs to be at the start. Most people make the mistake that you do QC at the end. Oh no.

Yeah, no, no, no. QC starts at the start. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're so right there.

And getting everything in place at the start, so you have contracts in place where and you have the specifications and the information down on black and white for the factory so that you leave absolutely nothing to the assumption of the battery. You have everything spec'd out in a product info sheet and in the PO, and you have a contract that securely is tightened so that anything is outside of that black and white writing, you have grounds to move on it. So having the contracts in place at the start is very, very important. And we actually, I'm sure you probably have good contacts that we use a Hong Kong lawyer to do all our stuff so that it's actually enforceable in China. So a lot of the people think that, oh, it's China, so nothing's enforceable. If you use certain legal teams, you can have something in place, but it's also just the key thing is to have something in black and white so that the factories are then accountable to exactly every single specification.

Right. And what I found over the years is that there's a stage for what I would call contracts, right? It's more like if you treat it like a memorandum of understanding, like that's something we talk about here. And, you know, we have here in the US. And so that's kind of how we treat it. So we're not looking at making a legal hassle out of it. We're just making sure that we're being clear on our communications with our factories. expectations on who's doing what and what it should be. And we tie that specifically, I call it a critical factors or product info sheet. There's a bunch of different ones. And I have one that's for the manufacturing side of it, one that's for the quality side of it, and one that's specifically for the marketing side of it. So in other words, marketing information that needs to get put on the box or other things. So it's this logo that's being used. So some of people would call that a style guide as well, right? But I don't want to put a guide in Because if we put a guide in there, it's open to interpretation. I want this is it, right? So we have those three pieces and they happen at three different times in the design and development process. So that way we are keeping and adding. So our memorandum of understanding can fluctuate as we learn more about the process.

So like you said, it's less, probably less about the actual legality of the contract.

Yes.

It's about setting the tone and setting the standard for the factory to keep. and also if you're a startup or it's your first time working with a particular factory, then it demonstrates that you're serious and it's an official agreement that you're keeping them accountable to. Whether actual legal teams end up having to get involved at the end is usually very, very unlikely and doesn't really happen. It's having that backup is actually what starts the whole relationship on the right foot. I agree. So, and then it's obviously a course about, you know, building the relationship with the factory. On top of that, you don't want to be like, oh, we're just gonna sue you or we're gonna waving this contract around saying we keep you to this. You want to have that so that they know exactly what's expected of them. And then you build a good relationship with that factory so that you're then trying to help each other, you know, try and create as many sort of win-win situations as possible. So when things, because inevitably things always do go wrong in the factory. So you need to be able to have something where you're working towards where you can both benefit rather than just, you know, you have some sort of brittle relationship where the moment they put a foot wrong, then you come at them with this giant contract.

Do you guys actually physically sign your samples and things?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, we do too. And that's a really good practice. For everyone out there, when you receive a sample, when we receive it here, we put a label on it. When it was received, information about it, because you get through multiple samples and it gets hard sometimes to remember which one came first. So you have like all these samples and they look kind of similar on your desk and you're like, which one came from which batch? And then you start making changes to the wrong ones. So we always put labels on them that we have that. But when we get to our final sample, we usually go, we're usually at the factory, but we will sign two of them, one we keep and one they keep. And so then that's how we do it. So we have two side by side. We make sure they're very similar. And the only time we'll do more than that is if we have a color range. So sometimes there is a wood finishes. You're allowing a range of color. And so we'll, we'll say, here's the lower limit and the upper limit.

So we'll assign multiples in that case. But, yeah, I mean, it seems simple, but it's very important to basically stay very organized with the samples and you're having Lots coming in with different specifications and which ones are getting improved. And that's just on our side. And then obviously when you get to the actual factory, we have the golden pre-production sample that's signed off with a date and takes photos as well rather than just stick a label on it.

Yeah, take photos. All of that is important because sometimes it gets lost. So yeah, you do want to have that too. I love that. That's a good plan.

We're doing a production of a product and we signed off the golden sample as signature. And then a few weeks later during mass production, we went into the factory and the golden sample that we had signed off was just in the corner of a room and the box hadn't even been opened again. So a couple of years ago, we were just like, you need to make sure the golden sample is actually being used in the production and that your QC teams are very, very familiar with it.

Well, so sometimes with my bigger clients, they have QC and QA teams. So quality assurance, not just quality control. And the QA teams usually maintain the control of those samples, whether it's in a factory or not. And so the factory usually gives big QC teams a room within their office space. And so the samples are usually contained in that room. And they get pulled out the minute there's an issue or the minute there's a question about whether or not something looks exactly like it's supposed to.

Yeah, QC teams obviously super important if you use a third party one or you use in-house one. I also feel there's no substitute for being there yourself as well. So we use QC teams, we have a partner that we have, you know, sort of internal, we partner with this QC third party for our company and they're there all the time and they're very, very good at checking the physical products and the specifications. particularly when you're doing a, like us, we have quite a diverse range of products. I, for one, am not an actual QC expert on, you know, jewelry to make up to kids.

It can't be all of those things, right?

So to have a QC team that is large enough that they have to have specialists in certain categories to check physical products and the testing and things like that is very important. But for me to be there at the start to know actually the whole concept of the production and how it's going to work. There's no substitute for that because the QC teams are technically good on the product, but they won't advise as much on the layout of the whole production and what goes where and to prevent things from going wrong. So we will always have us there as well as the QC specialists.

So I want to talk about the development process for you, though, because, you know, most, I think, people who are, are expanding out of Amazon private label and into doing more products and broadening their lines and everything, they're very daunted by the idea of, I can't just quickly buy this from Alibaba, or I can't just quickly buy this and just move on it, that there's a development process and it does take time. And, you know, how do you combat that? How do you work with that? Are you just really set in place the understanding that this is what it's going to take to make it right.

Yeah, I mean, actually we're quite a collaborative company. So we will work with engineers, depending on the complexity of the product, we'll work with engineers that will be able to map out a full timeline of what is actually going to take to get this product created through the prototyping stage.

So you're giving them a sense of that to begin with.

Yes, we give them a huge sense because a lot of the time, you have to be realistic and say that for a very technical product, it's going to cost you $50,000 to make this and it's not going to be developed for six months to a year. And then you map out every single stage of the process, month by month, of what it's going to take to get there. So then they can forecast and develop that into the whole sort of business plan. And then the actual, in terms of the factories as well, the key is to work with the factories that are producing that product, or that something product of that nature. We've had clients in the past that have decided they didn't want to just dive straight into a factory that makes a pretty, their products weren't that related, and use the factory designer, which is just a man in a garage He's got CS.

I've seen it before. I know what you're talking about.

And then they make up some bot sample based on what the client's grand idea of this product. And you end up just wasting far, far more time in the long run because you'll get to the initial prototype faster because they'll create something. But that initial prototype has no way any capability of becoming the real product. because it doesn't have that, the whole process in place. It's just they just ODM some other product and modified it slightly.

Yeah, that's usually the case. Exactly. So, yeah, it's hard to get to original product ideas. It's hard to get to original design. It's hard to get them to do a style that's saleable as well. So style is something that you must guide from the side of whatever country it's going to be sold in. So, like, I, you know, I don't usually take projects over in Europe because I'm not a European style expert. And so, you know, if you want to take a European product and bring it to the US, then you call me and I'll help you with that. But it just doesn't, it doesn't translate to just depend on a design source like that to guide you on those many different things.

Yeah. And you need people to be able to give you that insight. So some of our designers worked in the Puma innovation team and they've worked on products huge category of different products and they've worked with BMW and Ford and all that sort of thing where you'd be absolutely shocked to understand the amount of input that goes into the creating of a minimalistic product. So for example, like something to become to look minimalist and look simple like an Apple iPhone is 100 times more thought process and systems have gone into place to making a product look like there's nothing gone into it. So all of that, every single aspect needs to be thought about from the color to the design and all that stuff where you wouldn't have thought that if you're an entrepreneur or a startup and you have a vision for a product, you need that insight to be like, this is why the customer buys this product and subconsciously. This is why they buy it, not knowing why they're buying it. and that needs to go into the design process. Like I said, it depends on the product. We work with sort of technical ones where we really use these engineers to go into detail or just mechanics and things like that. But for example, we do some backpacks.

Well, so this just happened in the call today. So I won't reveal because it's a private call, but from one of my listeners. And what they were saying is like, you know, this is a common thing I hear. It's like, oh, I want to make sure and make sure that it's smaller than Amazon's size constraint. And, you know, and I was like, well, that's a really good thing because you don't want to tip over and end up in their oversized category, right? Because you screwed up and made it a half an inch too big or something like that or worse, a millimeter or two. I've seen that happen too. And so you don't want to make that mistake. But that's not the core criteria because their product has to fit onto something else. That's something else. And surveying the market on the size of that is actually the critical factor. And so He hadn't thought of that before. And that's exactly the kind of thing that a good designer has an awareness of. This has to fit with this or consumers won't buy it, you know, or they'll return it because it didn't fit at the end of the day. And it's not something that mattered to you because you were making something in isolation.

Definitely. You have to think about the whole end scale and even on a more technical level, you have to look at what testing and certifications are needed for that particular region. So we've had times where our clients haven't actually looked into the details of what certifications are needed for that region. I mean, we were talking about Russia at the time.

Is this a story about how you might have ended up on Russian TV? I read that in your bio that you sent me. So I definitely want you. This is that story. I'm anxious to get to it because that was my next question.

Okay. Yeah. So one of our With MarketSource, we got a contract with a big retailer in Europe towards the beginning of the company. And this company has sort of eight different brands, 300 retail stores, you know, a million hits on their website a day sort of thing. And they also, the other thing they have is a PVC type home shopping channel. We were launching a collection for them. it was a jewelry collection. So we've done the full design and developed the line for them and they were launching it on their TV shopping channel. So they thought it would be impactful to have the designer come to Moscow and come on to the live TV show and present the collection. So that's what I did. I flew over to Moscow But the interesting thing about that one was the brand, it was a women's fashion line. But the jewelry, they wanted to have it in Russia, like fashion is not a thing. There were these ghastly big gold pieces. So there were these big sturdy necklaces and big bracelets. So for someone in the UK or the US, it wasn't exactly Fashionable.

A delicate fashion that we have here, yeah.

Yeah, and the other thing was they wanted it to be sturdy. So they wanted it to withhold sort of these drop tests and things like that. So one of the things they tested during the production was they wanted to do like a two meter drop test.

And that's such an obscure thing that you wouldn't know if you weren't working with them time and time again, right? I love that.

So we, and also, you have to do pretty well to have a piece of jewelry to withstand a two-meter drop test. I think so one of the things they wanted to do was have this shown on the actual TV show. So, and in the development of the line, we had done this drop test. And of course, dropping a piece of jewelry from two meters on a hard wooden board, it broke. So we had to do some development on this product. to fail this drop test. And it was very touch and go because it already failed. And we had the factory come out and it was, well they said they had changed the glue. So it was this 24-hour glue they put in, which obviously we didn't believe. So we had to try and had to put them in these prongs to keep this pearl piece. There was a pearl necklace to keep this pearl piece in. But we hadn't, they had done that. So we get to Russia and during this TV show, They bring me out and they say, you know, they're bringing the design all the way from London. London had more of a design impact, sales impact than Hong Kong.

So yeah, we didn't fly you from Hong Kong, yeah.

Yeah, so I came all the way from London to design this and launch this collection for them and they gave me a big intro and I came out like I was, you know, on Jonathan Ross or something like that.

With your jewelry all on a tray, I love it.

And they have these models and I've had to, you know, present each model with the pieces and tell them how beautiful they looked and things like that.

You didn't know acting was in the job of designer.

Exactly. And then comes the dreaded drop test. So online TV, they say like, one of the best things about this jewelry is that it's sturdy and it was designed in a certain way that it can withhold any impact. So they say, go on, Rod, let's.

See the-- Go ahead and drop it.

So they gave me this pearl necklace and they asked me to drop it from, I think it was like a meter onto the wooden thing. And you know when sort of time just stops and your heart's pounding and I just drop it. I just have visions of it just shattering all over the table on live TV after we'd just given this huge intro that it was so uniquely designed that it could do this. So this pearl pieces drops and this studs onto the table and I looked down and obviously nothing broke and it was absolutely fine and then they were sort of clapping and then they were so impressed that they asked me to do it again.

Oh no.

That was like, you can't be serious. So I had to do it again and then I was even more nervous the second time and then it was fine. But it was a story I was on the show for an hour talking about What goes into jewelry design for Russian, the Russian market?

I love it.

Talking about sort of the red color reflects sort of regal nature of, you know, the royal family in the UK and that was a big thing for them and things like that. So that was one of my main claims to fame in Russia.

I love that. But you learned so much in that process, though, of how you have to design, right? Because, I mean, that's the reality is there's a lot of us who design just on that end. You never go through the presentation part. You never go to that consumer side of it. There's a silo there. That's not been my personal career. My personal career has always been to also make the presentations to the retail buyers and possibly even do the test market research with consumers. So having a broader view of it has really helped me. And it sounds like it helped you because now you start to understand this has to do with how they're going to market it. It has little to do with You know, it seems silly on our end to be designing to this odd criteria, but it has to do with what they know is going to make it marketable.

Definitely. Because they say design with the end in mind. So, you know, everything that goes in at the start, you have to have a clear vision of the whole process is going to look like and what's going to be the sellability of the product.

Yeah.

Mostly with, and we're now through the years, we're able to advise the clients on this, whereas at the start it was more a case of they would give us a product and we would make that product exactly to how they wanted it. And we wouldn't ask questions further when we first started.

And that's a risk of working with factories, right? Because they will do what you ask them to do, thinking that you are the expert. And if you really aren't, you're taking a lot of that risk and burden then.

Yeah. And it's one of those things where if you give something to the factory, they'll do it exactly as how you give it. So you don't have to think about the end process with the client and what's the sellability of it, design it in a certain way, and then translate it into certain communications in the factory so they can create it exactly how you want and not leave, like we said, anything to the assumption of the factory themselves.

You know, something else that I think is a great benefit of working with a company like yours with systems in place and team in place, I see this happen with my entrepreneurial clients where They lose somebody like an assistant that was on their team or someone who was handling marketing or communications, and they lose all touch with where this information lies. And so they come back to me like, you must have this. And I'm like, you're lucky that I do. I save everything, but you might not get so lucky. You were working directly with a factory and those people leave and you're in trouble. You don't know their source, you don't know all the information, you don't have the relationship. So working with a company that does is critically important.

Yeah, and just having everything stored in black and white. So what a lot of clients, a lot of pitfalls are within the communication is everything goes on an email. What you end up having is you have these long email chains of back and forth of amendments to the product and then then confirming certain parts of the product but then asking to change another part of it. And then you end up having this long, long chain that gets lost, and then you're expecting the factory to decipher this whole thing into what the final product should look like. And it's almost unfair on them. You need to have these product sheets that map out in black and white exactly the specifications to the absolute letter. And you leave nothing. So for example, with a bag, we have every single side specification and weight and thickness of material all in the sheet. And then when we make the changes, we obviously will email and we'll talk via communication. Once that's changed, we will then change the kind of the golden sheet so that then you have something at the end when they create it and you can compare it to. Then you have something tangible that you can vet against and say, this is correct. This is what we assigned up for. Whereas you can't expect them to say, you know, When they say, oh, we'll make that change for mass production, and then when they don't, you say, oh, but I've got an email here of you saying that you're going to change it. It doesn't work like that.

Yeah, and be sure to sign and date all of those changes. So thinking about it like change orders, that's how we always talk about it. There's a lot of people who do this, and when you do house construction, right, and you have a contractor, you do change orders. It's the same idea. So we always assign and date every change order. Yeah. Initial and date, just so you know who did it.

Yeah, it's very important because you have to keep everyone accountable throughout it. And then when you get to the end of it, you can then see the whole life cycle. And then if there are delays, you can see where it went wrong and then you can make amendments.

So you've talked a lot about hazards, about some of these pitfalls and other things, but is there anything that stands out as a really interesting story, funny story, things where you go, oh, I wish we knew more. It was on us, it was on our client, but wow, I wish we did this different.

Well, I mean, throughout the years, you come across a ton, so I could be for ages. One thing I would say is just to be super diligent. One is with testing. So when you test a product for reach or whatever it may be, you have to do that test yourself and be sure of what you're testing. So for example, if you leave the factory to send you the test reports and everything like that, you don't know what they actually tested. We had an example a few years ago where we did a large order, about 100,000 pieces of a product, where we then obviously went through our model and everything and the checklist of what needed before the production started with testings and certifications on that product for that particular market. It was going to Poland. So we did all the reach tests and everything like that. They sent us that and we had signed off and we had all the tests necessary. We then shipped the product to Poland. In Poland they did another test and it failed the test that passed when we did it. Now we were wondering what the discrepancy was and what had happened is they had failed the test that come out of the mass production from the shipment. But the product that passed in Hong Kong from us we weren't sure that that was actually from the mass production lot or it's from the sample. So what happens is the factory had sent off a sample to be tested that had all of the, it was material that was high in lead, for example, that failed the test. They'd send off the sample that passed and they had all the credentials and all the certifications. And then when they tested one on mass production, that failed. So what they had done is they use some products in the mass production with a slightly less expensive material that then fail a test. So to have that, and then we ship 100,000 products back from Poland, back to China.

Yeah, so I'm actually a fan also of, when you, if you can, and it depends on your time cycle, but if you can ship the product to the place and then have it tested there as well, we do that frequently for our mass market clients. So when we do Costco and Walmart and Target and that kind of thing, because you know they're going to pick it off the shelf. They will, it's part of, they're allowed to, they're going to do it. And if they don't do it, this is a, it's kind of cutthroat in the US. Your competitor will. The one who didn't get that spot, who lost, you know, their product didn't make it on the shelf and yours did, they will pick yours up and they will whine about it and they'll say it's bad and they're just looking for something to go wrong in it. So we like to, you know, if it's, sometimes we ship a product across the sea, even though ahead of time, because we want to see Is the packaging going to fall apart is, you know, what's going to happen in transit that's different from us air shipping and handling it in a different way. And we've had moisture problems like other things like that, right, that you have because of going across the sea. And we have a lot of problems with wood because when you manufacture at this time of year, it's kind of warm where you are. It's kind of humid. And then the product goes across the sea, it gets even more moist. And by the time it gets to the shelf in some place dry and arid like California, and where I live, you know, it's a disaster of what can happen to the wood quality. And so we have to do things like that. So these are things you would never think of. So I love, I love that you pointed that out because it is so critically important to test on both ends.

Test on both ends and make sure that the test is done out of the mass production lot.

Yep.

And you're there to verify that. And also, that was another thing where we had a good contract in place so that the factory, they take the products back. 100,000 products because we had a contract in place. Getting that testing from mass production is super important.

Right. But a lot of our smaller players, that would destroy their business. So that's why you want to do these things on the front end, right? You want to do them smart. You want to get advisors like Rod here. You want the smart information because you can't risk that time loss and that money loss of just the sales that you didn't get from this large run that you ran.

Yeah, if you don't have the contracts in place and that something like that happens, yeah, it's a disaster and then you've got a whole heap of products shipped already that need to go back and then you have, you know, the.

Just- you-'re done before you even got out of the door. Yeah, I know.

So you make sure you have to have that upfront and get all the testing and the right testing on the right products at the start. And this is very important because we even see it with the golden sample. If you test them quite on the golden sample, and it's not the pre-production sample. They can change. We've had times where the factory have tried to change the material of a handbag, where we have the golden sample, they go through the production and they've used a slightly different material, a cheaper material, from PU to PVC.

Yep.

Which is cheaper, but then that PVC is toxic, it's not allowed.

It fails a lot of tests around the world, right? There's a lot of, I mean, I don't even think you can ship it into Europe at all.

But to the naked eye, if you're starting out, you can't tell the difference.

Right.

So you need to have that testing on the golden sample and pre-production sample so that you can mitigate that. So we've caught that straight away. But if we didn't know that, we would have shipped the products to where it's not allowed. Everything has to be done upfront. And like I said before, you have that workflow chart of every single sort of decision within from the start so you can then see it. You see the whole production lifecycle at the start and you get things in place because if you're doing this sort of thing after mass production, then you're destined for problems.

So Rod, when do you like to see products and projects from people? When in the process, how early in the process do you like to see projects?

I think it's very important for the startup to have a very good, at least be halfway there in terms of having a prototype or getting at least a very, very clear understanding of what the product's going to be in terms of before you start getting into CADs and designs. Or if you have something that's very, very similar and you have a very good brief about what you want it to be. So it depends. If it's very, very early on, we have engineers that will actually can help develop that whole product for you. If you have an existing sort of prototype and you need the manufacturing side of it, that would go much faster because we can then lock it into something in our network and pair with a designer to help take you through that. So ideally, you'd want to have at least get through the first stage so that you have something tangible that you can work with, which then we can then plug into a battery that's suitable rather than go through the whole design stage.

And one of the other things that I think is a great benefit of working with you is that you have this broader reach worldwide. So if I've got a great product and I want to be selling it in the US, but I'm really concentrated only on that, but it might have great application in Poland or some other country or Russia or wherever, you guys have reached through those areas where you might be able to present them to distributors and catalogers who might want to take them on and broaden the ability for you to make a larger run, which lowers your costs here. That's a huge advantage for you guys.

Yeah, it's awesome actually. We have that capability to assist on both ends. So we can help create the product or get it manufactured and take you through all the design and production stage. Also at the end, we can then see if we can put that product into our vast distribution network in retailers, which is globally. So it's quite nice for some startups to have that kind of reassurance. when they're going through the production stage, that there is opportunity to have outlets set up before the products even made so that they can have that confidence that at least the product we can put in front of some big retailers and then pitch it to various different channels in different regions. And a lot of it is transferable over. So we have, for example, a startup in the States. And with that startup stage, they're always worried about maybe meeting MOQs. so, you know, if you want to work with a good factory that's quite well established, you have high MOQs that you need to hit. So having that outlet, for example, for us to put them in into a different channel or in a different region can help alleviate some of those high MOQs.

Minimum order quantities for those, I like to define it in case they ask them, at least once minimum order quantities for those. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, you know, it's great. And because you might be able to work with multiples, it might help you, you can also help build an MOQ over time. So in other words, within six months, we're going to be buying these volumes because it's going to hit these different countries and you can get faster shipment and smaller MOQs upfront for a need. So you can also spread that out. So that's really great leverage that you have and can help your clients with. So, Ron, I'm so glad you came on the show today. Is there anything else you'd like to.

Share with our audience before we go? I would say just get started. It's not a better time in the whole of sort of human history to get started on your own sort of entrepreneurial endeavors and start a product or start a brand, particularly now with e-commerce and things like that. And there's so much out there for you to be able to collaborate and learn from different people and get different experts helping you with each different aspect of the whole process, like yourself. So I would say just get moving and you're in a great spot to be able to capitalize on this time. Well, thank you so much, Rod.

Rod Needham from MarketSource Asia, all the links for his company and how to find him will be in the blog post for this episode at ProductLaunchHazards.com youm can also reach out on social media and connect with him and with us through HasDesign. It's @HasDesign everywhere on social media. Wow, I'm sure we're going to have you back again. I'm sure we're going to have some great success stories. Want to hear some more in the future. Rod, thank you so much for this. I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Awesome.

Thanks very much, Tracy. Everyone, this has been Product Launch Hazards. I'm Tracy Hazard, and we'll be back.

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