Here is an interesting story by Jerry Osteryoung over at HELPING SMALL BUSINESS about making sure people want your product.
Marketing 101 demands that before you introduce a new product or start a business selling a new product, you need to make sure there is a solid demand for it. While this sounds so elementary, we continually work with entrepreneurs and inventors that have forgotten about this basic tenet of good marketing.
We recently assisted an inventor who had developed a new type of dog toy. The toy was fun for dogs, but very expensive to produce. They gave me one to try, and I can personally attest that my dogs (all three) loved the toy.
The item was the brainchild of an inventor who needed a product like this for his dogs. It came to fruition after the inventor invested more than $100,000 in initial development and production. His team called JMI because they wanted help with some partner issues. However, as it frequently turns out when people call us for help, the problem cited was not the critical issue at all.
To cover the toy’s production cost, they would have to charge a very high price, and because they assumed there would be a landslide of demand, they thought they could do that. We kindly told them that they first needed to find out if there was a real demand for the product.
We suggested that they try to sell their current inventory on the Web, as well as at various dog events before they invested too much more money.
Make sure that there is a viable demand for your new product or business. You can do this through the use of surveys, selling your product to a small market, or asking your existing customers what they think about a new product or service.
Photo by dogshelpline.com.