Product Launch Timing is Everything

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.

Hey, product launchers, welcome back. We have a big critical issue to talk with you about today.

It's really an often overlooked issue, especially with people that are new to the product launching, don't you think?

Yeah. And it's almost not an issue. It's a factor. Let's talk about it like it's a factor. It's probably the most significant and critical factor to success.

Yeah. And it can sneak up on you because it happens in different ways for different people. It's not the same for everybody, but it is super critical.

So what we're talking about is product launch timing. Right. And we're going to talk about it on multiple levels because it's not just the timing of, like, the stages that you do. It's also the time of when you decide you're going to go to market. It's also the timing of the speed to market. And then of course, it is the timing of, like doing each of the stages so that you can get accomplished and you can have your product launch timing flow quickly and smoothly without a lot of time creep in it.

And that time creeps up on you fast. I mean, you think, oh, yeah, I want to launch a new product. I want to launch it for holiday fourth quarter of the year. And if you're in June, you're already too late. You're way too late. You got to think about when you want to be the market and work it all the way back. And people often ask, well, what's the right time to start? And I'm always like, as soon as possible.

You should have started already. Right.

Speed to market is important, but honestly, what that really means is if you've got a product you want to bring to market and you want to bring it at a specific time, you got to start the planning process as soon as you think about it, because you got to look at what the reality is.

Yeah. And so this is what I find so often is like, either people have a sense of overestimating how fast everything is going to take to get to that stage. So they were like, I can launch my fourth quarter and it's just July. Yeah, not gonna happen. Because there's a whole bunch of other factors that you have nothing to do with, like, oh, there's tons of packages flowing through Amazon in October and November and the amount of time you thought you could get into the warehouse within 24 hours doesn't work like that. If you've listened to Brenda Crummy, you know that it doesn't work like that. And so then you're out two weeks, and then you miss all the critical sales and you overestimated again what you were going to be able to do and accomplish. So, like, there are little things like that, and then there are big, gigantic things that go wrong in that you think that you're going to go and present to a retail buyer and you're going to be able to get in holiday sales. You're like, I'm starting in January, I'm good. No problem. But you're walking into Lowe's and you don't know that their timing is two years in advance. So you're looking at holiday 2020, not 2019 or 2018. So your way out. And so these things all are factors, and it's a significant part of the planning process.

Yeah. And you know what? There are always exceptions that can be made. Like in that example, with a buyer, if a buyer really likes your product after they've already experienced it, maybe they've done a test and had some success. If they want to accelerate things or insert things, they may be able to do that. But until you have successful some traction with them, until you have some history with them, they're not going to go out on a limb and make any exceptions.

Yeah, they rarely go out on a limb for something new. It would have to be something that was, like, in demand and on request and like they had been looking for it and searching for it to plug a hole that they knew was an opportunity. So you'd have to just be in the right place at the right time. So, again, we've talked with Timothy Bush about it, and if you haven't seen this, guys, you really need to take a look at it. We have an entire week of episodes that are completely focused on holiday seasonal strategies. We have holiday color trends, holiday design trends. We have, Timothy Bush has shared with us seasonal strategies for how to get into retail. Brenda Crimmy and I had a great chat about just the planning process to running your first product launch or first time you've launched a product, even if you launched it earlier in the year, which is highly recommended. But how you handle that first season, that first holiday season, because you don't have a sense of how it's going to sell at that seasonal rate yet because you don't have history. Right. And these are fabulous episodes. I learned so much from them myself. And so I know these are going to be really powerful. But every time they talk about it, there was something about timing and Timothy Bush was talking about it in terms of the overall timing of it is like, really sometimes you're making decisions and you don't even have this season sales to know how it's doing. And that's the way the buyer prefers to work. You have to be timed perfectly for them. So these are some of the critical planning things that need to happen. Right. So you have to have a global understanding of the timing of it and don't assume that your time is going to trump everybody else's. It just won't work like that.

This is really a good case of if you're launching a product in a different market than you've ever used before or accessed before, or using a different supplier than you've ever bought from before, or it's a different type of product, maybe it requires a different kind of testing. So many different things. You've got to find out what you don't know about that process because it is going to negatively impact your timing. If you make assumptions, you think, oh, sure, I'll find the supplier and then I'll order a sample. And that should take about this long. I mean, whatever amount of time that you're originally estimating and you really don't know from experience, I would double that estimate right away. And until you know, and then when you really know and you find out and you get more accurate data, then you can start adjusting that calendar and figuring it out. But the timing is everything now. So this is mostly Traci so far, like logistical timing.

So what about planning timing? I would say this is planning timing. And so I do want to mention before we kind of move on to a different discussion of timing and a different sort of viewpoint on it. Right. That in planning your timing, lots of things go wrong. Right. There are lots of hazards as we talk about constantly in office hours here. There are lots of things that go wrong. And when things go wrong, time creep happens, lengthening of time happens. So we have it happen where everyone assumes, oh, I'll just get a sample and it'll be fine. And I'll be able to then make my order by such and such a date. So two weeks later I'll place an order and then I'll be able to get it four weeks after that. And it doesn't work like that. It never has. We are professionals in this. We do this every single day. And I can tell you, even still, I am always like, tomorrow, you can't tell a customer, we're going to have that sample in two weeks. It's not going to happen. You know it's not going to happen because it never does. It usually takes three times as long as you anticipate it is for sampling, going back and forth from Asia, because there is time delay in communication. That's one of the pieces. Why? So, like, they ping you, but they don't ping you until late in their day when they realize they don't know whether they should choose this material or that material. And you have to make a choice. So the sample's now on hold, and by the time you get it back to them, it's not until their next day. So now you've lost, like, 36 hours at least. And so these things compound and add up to delays, Right. Then you have to, of course it's done. You've got photographs of it, and it looks great and you think it's going to be great, but you still got to get it in. And then when you find one minor change or one problem with it, you now have to have another sample. So these things go on. And it does take longer than you anticipate it to. And it's great to have this. But I can also tell you that if you rush things through and approve a sample before it's time, because you're like, oh, they'll make these changes. It'll be okay, I'll just place the order anyway, it will be wrong. And then you will have inventory, you will have ad costs, and you will be completely off your timeline at that point. And so that is not worth doing. Taking a few extra days or a week or two weeks to make it right and make sure that you've made a complete checklist and sample that is a perfect match to what your expectations are of what you're going to get in your full inventory order. That's important. This is, again, critical timing decisions. So lots of times we make decisions because we're in a rush, and those decisions actually cost us more time in the overall. So these are just things to think about.

Yeah. And I think the financial aspect of it is another issue of timing is if you're saying you have your business plan, you're saying, all right, well, I need to make sure we have more revenue at this point in time in our business. And you assume that you're going to have a product in and selling by then. If that doesn't happen in that same timing, then you could be in trouble from a cash flow perspective because you're not selling yet, you don't have that revenue. Right.

This happens all the time in marketing. So I hear this all the time. Like you do a funnel three months later, four months later, we're still not transacting on that funnel because the testing took longer than anticipated, the team didn't work fast enough or get the assets right and we had to redo things. These things happen in the process. And so there's a lot of things that, because we're overallocated of you solopreneurs out there, you know what I'm talking about, right? You're wearing too many hats. And that 24 hours before you get back to someone to advise them on the marketing piece and then they've gone ahead and done it anyway. Now it requires a redo and it takes three days instead of you responding immediately because you're over allocated because you have too much going on. And so these are where that planning process comes back in again. And if you've planned right and you're working on the critical path items that affect your timeline, which affects your revenue, these are the critical items where no matter what happens, you're going to drop out everything, you're going to answer it on your phone if you have to because you can't take the delay in keeping that going. We do that with sampling, so we do that with certain types of things. When working on marketing pieces that have a critical time path, we might use slack. So we use slack which pings you or basecamp or text messages, whatever we've got to do with the team members so that they can get us at 11 o' clock at night, right before we go to bed, and make sure that they get an answer so they can be productive for the rest of their day. And so we make that happen, but only on the critical path items. Otherwise we'd go a little crazy with the constant off hours. Right? So what we do, we say this is an okay thing for you to text me on and I expect you to. And they know that. So these are timing things, timing associated with when revenue is coming in. You must plan, you must be responsive about it and you must take care to understand which one of those factors are. And if you are overallocated, you better hire someone or assign someone to do it to make sure that you stay on top of it.

Good advice, Tracy. Now what about market timing you want to talk about that, too?

So, yeah, I mean, we can talk about market timing. So I had the pleasure of interviewing Walter o', Brien, who, if you've never seen the TV show Scorpion, he has, like, a high iq, extremely high iq, to the point at which he has very little eq. And so anyway, that's what the TV show is about, but that's who he is in real life. And so he's a genius. And I had this great interview with him. We were talking about all kinds of innovation because he knows a lot about the innovative path. He's always on the cutting edge. They're testing out new coding and new technology and all kinds of new things that we don't even know about that might be in government development or in high private enterprise development. And so he's always testing out all these stuff. And I sort of. I asked him at the very end of the interview, is funding is resources or what is the most critical factor to product launch success or technology launch success, but essentially launch success of any kind. And he said, timing. And I looked at him like, wow, really? That. And he said, yes. He said there's two kinds of timing issues, market timing issues. So assuming because we're in the consumer market, it would be market timing issues, but it could be society timing issues. If you were working on some, let's say you came up with something to help provide shelter in hurricanes, right? But you didn't finish it in time for hurricane season, right? So there can be social timing, right? Or environmental timing or whatever that is. Okay, so what he said was, is that there's the timing of making sure that something's right for whatever the market conditions are. Like we said, fourth quarter is the biggest sale time of the year. But if your product's a summer beach towel, like, that doesn't make sense, right? So it is whatever your market timing might be for your particular category, your particular product, your particular innovation, that's one factor. But it is not getting there in the right time that is more costly than anything else. It is more costly. It is more of a high risk of failure. So not getting something done soon enough, it's okay to be in front of it. So in other words, be a little early, but again, not too early. Because if you're the very first entrant or if you're way too early, that you have to educate the market in some kind of innovation or technology, that's just as big a problem as missing the boat and being behind the timeline. So you want to be in the sweet Spot of timing, and getting that right is the number one thing. So he has this really cool thing. Walter o' Brien has their Scorpion team. They have this really cool thing where they. I think it's like, it could be about $5,000 or something, where basically you can challenge them with a question. Now, they won't necessarily take it if they think it's below their skill level or if it's not important to them. But they said, basically, for $5,000, you can challenge them with like, I have this critical burning question, can you give me the answer to this? Or find me a solution for this? And he said, I have yet to get people coming in saying, can you tell me the optimum timing to launch this? He's like, that would be the best question someone should ever ask me. But it's not the question they usually ask me. They usually ask me, how do you solve this? Or, how do you code that? Or, what can you do with this? But if they asked me to calculate the optimum timing for success so that they should decide whether or not they should do something. So to decide not to. To do something. And I thought, that's brilliant.

It is brilliant.

So to spend $5,000 to not waste millions in some cases for high technology or high innovation anyway, that kind of market timing, right, that's the timing we're talking about.

And what I think most happens to people is that what we don't understand is a lot of why we shouldn't do something is calculating the cost of that to ourselves. The cost of being late to the game, the cost of being too early to the game.

Well, we were talking about another timing aspect from another company just recently, Tracy, you and I, and this company was faced with, 10 years ago, the option of paying $75,000 in tooling to make a version of their product for a certain market. And they opted not to do that because that was a big investment for them at that time. But then 10 years later, they wish they had done it. And ultimately, since they're still in business, I guess they've been in business 15 years or something, but ultimately their business would have been a lot better off and be at a better revenue place had they made that decision. Now, that's, I guess, an unusual occurrence for most companies.

The opposite of what most companies deal with. Right. So here's what Tom's kind of mentioning. So what they were faced with was, we spend $75,000, and we can access a certain market area that has lower barriers to entry, meaning that there's not a Lot of regulations because they were in a regulated industry. Like they required approval. They might be an area in which you're like FDA approval or you might need to get government Medicare approval. Right, it's kind of like that. And so they could go into this segment that didn't require that, which was going to take them a lot of time and a whole lot of education and paradigm shifting and all kinds of stuff to get that, to get that other market going, more valuable market, mind you, but a shift in an entire industry. So like they really were making a big impact, but that was going to be a harder way to go. But they were early in a startup and they just didn't have the 75,000 to access the simpler market, the easier.

Market to access, pay for tooling to manufacture their product in a certain material.

Right. So it was a material difference between the two products actually. So yeah. And so it's like kind of having different grades of a product. Right. So this lower grade, but it required more tooling in order to produce it. And so the interesting part about that is that analyzing that would have been extremely difficult because it wasn't a known market. This is truly an innovative solution. So it was a 50, 50, it was a 50, 50 choice, right? I mean you could spend the money and still not get traction. And you have to scrape together the money and he didn't have it. But at the same time, what he didn't calculate was what if it did take me 10 years and 10 years of almost no to low income before I could get enough traction where I could be successful. And so he was very frank with me and he said to me that over the 15 years and hasn't taken a vacation, he's still not barely making enough money to feed his family and keep afloat. It's just starting to get better. But he's constantly having to reinvest. He just had to invest in a new machine. He has to spend this money now on that tooling because he has to access that market in order to grow where he needs to grow. So all around he's still at that place. And the question is, hindsight is 20 20. But you look back and you go, had he spent it, would he have accelerated it? So instead of 10 extra years, it only took 5?

Personally, I think he would have, I think the example that we can look to, that's a parallel. His decision on this 10 years ago and investing $75,000 was to access the youth market. And this is a product that the youth market would continue and want to use through adolescence and into adulthood and into their even professional careers. So think of Apple Computers. There's a reason why they make their prices for their computers much, much less. If you're an educator or a student, because they want you to get hooked on the product and then you're going to want to continue to use it through the rest of your life. It's that type of a situation. The other thing I want to say about this is this company and we're not really getting into exactly what the product is. Cause that doesn't really matter. But the issue is this was a company that the owner is the inventor and he was really laser focused and decided, I'm going to dedicate my life to this thing. And he's done it. He's been doing it for 15 years. So if you're that committed to your product, then I think you can say, all right, we're going to do this one way or another. I'm all in. So what's the best way for us to grow as a company long term? And I think there are some other examples like Apple Computer and others, where if you invest in a youth market and you use a sci fi term, assimilate the market at an early age, get them hooked on your product, then they're going to continue to grow and want to buy good hooks. I think they would have a good hook.

Good hook. Let's not go back to that FDA thing. Good hook.

No, no, no, no. This was all.

This is actually a safety product.

Product of intent, integrity. But it was a paradigm shift. Like you said, Tracy, it was a paradigm shift. So it's easier to, I think, to shift that paradigm in a youth market. And it is a.

Well, because as parents, us parents are always looking for ways to keep our children safer. Right. So a safety product is more likely to happen there. When you're an adult, you'll be like, yeah, but I got to where I am doing it exactly the way I'm doing it. Why do I need something new? Right. You're just entrenched in your ways. So, like, this is a really good example. But I want to shift to the opposite way of looking at it. And so someone asked us last night because we were at this 3D print meetup event. And so someone asked us about whether or not they should invest in a 3D print run of 1000 pieces or 250 pieces or just invest in the tooling.

If prices were equal for tooling to manufacture a convention.

Right. Let's say it's just going to cost you $3,000 to tool for the product and then you buy it for a quarter apiece or something like that. Or it's going to cost you $3,000 to buy 1,000 pieces of something. And so you've got those two things. And so when you look at that, you're like mathematically right, you look at it, you go, well, that's a better deal. However, this is the critical path that we found. Unless you absolutely know that the market wants what you have to sell, that your product is refined enough and you've gone through enough iterations of it, user tested it with the market, not with your family, with the market testing, and you know you're not going to make any changes. It's locked, you're ready for tooling. You've gone through that whole stage. Unless you've done that first, you should always go with the 1000 pieces, 3D printed or made in a small run, made without tooling. Because when you go to make that run, if you've never done it before, if you've never market tested it before, you are going to learn something you did not imagine if you had tool for it, you might be stuck. And now you have to pay for another tooling. I have seen it done again and again and again.

And this comes back to the central issue of timing really. I mean there are many issues here in this example, but I think people all too often get hung up on the oh my gosh, I can't pay eight or ten times the cost of what I really would be paying if I tooled for it. For an item I'll be so unprofitable.

They get like narrowly focused pennywise and pound foolish. Right?

Where in reality is do 250, 500 or 1000 I think is a really good sample size where maybe you're not making as much money, maybe you're not making any money. Even if for those thousand pieces you're losing a dollar per item. So you're sending $1,000 out the door more than what you're selling it for. But that actual market proof of whether the product will sell and how quickly it will sell and is it at the right price point. All that information you learn, valuable to inform what you do next that it actually accelerates your profit potential and accelerates your path to the market and to better, more profitable sales. So you think that people get hung up, I got to be making money from the start. This doesn't make any sense. Well, I don't agree with that. You can cause yourself Like Tracy said, a lot more expense and a lot more lost time. And time is money. So you're going to lose even more money than you did thinking that you revisions and tooling for something twice and.

Lost inventory that's sitting on a shelf that you can't sell because it's all wrong.

Just lost sales, lost time to market with the right item.

Yeah. So the critical path that we see is the fastest path that you can accomplish two things. The fastest path that you can find or the fastest plan that you can find with good estimates. Or making sure that you've like tripled your estimate on the timing. Right. So making sure it's still realistic within the market timing, but the fastest path that you can get into market proof plus revenue. So the fastest path to do those two things, even if you have to sacrifice the truly innovative thing that you want to do. So I love the Amazon sellers. I know there's lots of people out there who are just like, they are just making knockoff stuff and there's a lot of negativity about that, but I love them because they got one thing right. You guys out there who are doing this, you got the one thing right. If it's not working with the marketplace, throw it out and start something new. And you do it quickly without wasting a ton of money and time. And so once you get that right, though, that's where a lot of you Amazon sellers go wrong. You don't take advantage of that and exploit that and use that opportunity to now do something innovative that makes you competitive, proof and does all of those things. You don't take advantage of this sweet spot you found. Right. You don't exploit that because you don't know what it is. Maybe you don't know what that thing you should make is, what that innovation truly looks like, because it's not. You didn't come from that invention mindset to begin with. That's where I really look at it as. That's your opportunity, your opportunity to exploit that and make it last as long as possible for you. And when you do that, you make your brand truly valuable. But you've got the formula at the beginning of this quick start, that timing is going to not only be utilized to prove that you have a market, but it's going to give you something to keep selling. So we use this example all the time. And last night we were just faced with this. We were making a decision on our own business. So we're going to bring some microphones in for our podcast clients. And so we're bringing some microphones in. And the supplier came back to us and said the thing that we wanted to do, which is just kind of a minor change to it, but the thing is going to require was $1,000.

Tooling, $1,000 of a niche tooling and.

Fixture, which is not a problem. Not a problem. We could totally pay $1,000 for tooling. But it got my mind going pause. If we're going to tool and make this one minor change, we have a plan for a slightly bigger change that we were going to do down the road. Is it worth it for us to take an extra 30 days to make sure that we've done a little test on that minor change and make sure that additional change can be incorporated when we do this tooling so that we could do two things at once because we have to spend it anyway. And so the flip side of that is that our team in China pushed back on us and said, hey, but you can still buy the other one right now that exists without making your change to it. You could start selling that one today and you'd be saving a third of the cost of what we've been buying it for. Because we've been doing it in the like, minimum volume but high test, right? And we've already been through that stage. So that was like, of course, that's our model. Why didn't we do that already? So we'll be placing an order initially for one that's not special at all. It'll have our logo on it, but other than that, it's nothing special place in the order for that one. It's not ideal. We won't be doing it long term, but it'll bridge that 30 extra days for us to be able to make the changes we really want to make. And we'll spend that tooling dollar once. So we decided to extend a timeline on something, but we still didn't lose our ability to make revenue in the meantime. So these are the thought processes you want to go through, the strategies you want to think through. And when you're faced with this tooling, you're like, yeah, I'm going to make this change. But I know that 60 days to 90 days later, I'm going to make another change because I had planned to do that in the process. So that doesn't make sense to spend that twice. So extend the time, Split the timeline. 60 days. We'll spend the money anyway. And so these are choices that you need to make, but they are strategic market timing choices. They are strategic timeline management. They Are strategic. Get into revenue fast and get market proof fast. Timing. So product launch timing success depends on a considered plan strategy to make sure that you are checking all of those boxes on yourself and you're not making a gut reaction to the price of something.

A gut reaction or any assumptions really.

Right. You can't make a plan based on your pocketbook or your checkbook balance. You can't make a plan based on that. You're not making smart decisions. You're not making best long term decisions. And sometimes you're not making the best short term decisions. We see the flip side happen. Companies get a ton of venture capital in and they make dumb decisions.

Yeah. It's not just about. I mean I think all decisions in business in some ways are checkbook decisions. But it's not just about what's in your checkbook now I guess is the point. Right. The decisions you make now will have a bigger impact on your checkbook balance in the future.

Right. I find too often that people kick themselves more for not spending the money sooner that delaying and waiting and spending the money later. And they spend it anyway. But now they've gotten lower revenue because their timing was off. That's usually the biggest critical timing issue that I see happening out there. The other one I hear is that they cycle through too many companies to help them with something. So like they might cycle through three or four PR firms or marketing firms or experts to help the sales. We see this a lot with sales reps. They'll cycle through three or four sales reps in a year with no success at all before they find the right one. And they feel like really burned by that over time. And it's mainly because they hired the wrong sales rep because they didn't have a checklist of criteria and their expectations weren't clear. It's like, can you do this? And the sales rep go, sure, yeah, I can do it. But they really can. And so there's no double check on that. This happens in marketing too. I see those as the two areas where it goes wrong the most. From bad hires or money spent and wasted and time lost.

Well, I feel like we could go on and on forever on timing. But in the interest of timing and responsible for our members time, I guess we should probably wrap it up. And if you have any questions about timing, feel free to reach out to.

Us on the platform. You guys have access to us, right? Use these office hours to ask us these questions. Ask us about the strategies, ask us the planning. Timing. This is your time to be able to get to those critical path items and set up appointments with any one of the experts you think that can help you plan a segment if you need to. Because it's critically important for you to make sure that you find the information that you don't know, that you don't know, so that you can make decisions not just on your checkbook balance, but on smart things that are going to make sure that your timing happens and that you didn't overestimate or underestimate or make too many assumptions that are giving you a false result. So, product launchers, product launch timing is everything. So thanks again for listening, and please come back to our next office hours.

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