Marketing seminar.

My wife and I went to a marketing seminar yesterday that was put on by a media group. We always seem to pick up something we didn't know or something to try. The guy that put on the presentation said that people like free. What a shock, I mean who doesn't. Anyway I tried an experiment. I went to our website and said that for a limited time, you could get a free A/C adapter with an order. What do you know, we got an order within an hour with someone clicking on the free adapter.

Now this didn't really cost us anything because we already included the adapter with the order. The website explained how the product comes with an A/C adapter. I figured that it was a good thing to have everything included, you know...make it easy for the customer. Apparently what they really want is to feel like they are getting something for free. I am going to run this little experiment for a couple of weeks and then change it up.

I'll keep posting the results. TTFN

To many inventions, not enough time or money.

My wife was using something the other day and she was positioning it on the center island so the light gave her a shadow line to follow. I said, hey, I could mount a laser on that, it would be handy. Then I thought of what we still had to do for the invention we're working on. So for now, another idea on the back burner. I still have another product that I had plans for an injection mold drawn up but that market is more specialized so it will come after this one get's off the ground.

Inventing is both curse and fulfilling all at the same time. It's great!! I have become a serial inventor, which apparently is not uncommon once you go through the process once. You just tend to look at things differently that most people.

So for all of you serial inventors out there, in the words of President Clinton "I feel your pain".

Product Reps.

While we're waiting to meet with another graphics designer, I made a phone call to a store that we were trying to get our product in. They had gone to our website and decided our product wasn't a fit for them. Bummer! The good news is while I was talking to them, I found out that they were Product reps. I was able to get a lot of information from them as far as how Reps work.

First you have to find a showroom that handles products like yours. Then talk to them about handling your product or line. The showroom charges between 10-15% commission typically. The reps work for the show rooms and get paid out of that 10-15%. There are a lot of stores that won't talk with a manufacturer directly, they only deal with reps. So if you want any chance of hitting a wider market, you will have to find a rep.

The other thing that he told me was that if I wholesale to the show room an item for $10.00 then the retail price would typically be $20.00. If I am selling on the internet with a website my price has to be no lower than $20.00 or I will have a difficult time selling to the stores. If you need to bump up your wholesale price to take care of the commission charged by the showrooms, you need to make sure that your price on the web is at least double your wholesale price.

My next venture when we go to the Seattle gift show in Feb. is going to go to a show room and do some investigating. One of the things I want to find out is, if we sign on with a showroom, how much inventory do we need to have available to ship? I mean if they can sell to 500 locations and each location wants 10 units to start with, then I should have 5000 units ready? Don't know but will find out. Stay tuned for the exciting developments!!!

Packaging Design continued

I got an estimate from someone who does package design graphics yesterday. Holy Crap!! I know it takes some time to get the graphics right but 42 hours is what the estimate said. Plus I have to supply some of the graphical elements.

After getting over the initial shock, I thought maybe this isn't out of line so, I'm contacting another graphic design person who does graphics for boxes. It is a specialized talent, because you have to design the graphics in so many different directions because boxes are printed flat and later folded, so you need the graphics to wrap around the corners etc.

Once I get a new quote I'll blog about it. Onward and upward!

More Trade marks or copyright

We have a dilemma that we are currently working through. We have 2 more words we want to trademark. We have 2 trademarks currently filed under 2 categories and need to protect 2 more. The question that I have sent to our trade mark attorney is this: We have a character in a story we wrote that we want to trademark. We haven't drawn the character yet. We will copyright the story and we are wondering if that will give us any protection of the character until we file a trademark with the character drawing.

Trade marks and copyrights can be very confusing. First of all for a trademark, you have to determine if you are filing for goods or services. Then you have to determine what classes you want to register them in. At this time, it cost $275 per trademark class. There are 22 classes. It's not uncommon to have your trademark registered in 2 or 3 classes. There are some very helpful videos at the USPTO that explain this. I haven't really found an answer on the copyright offices website. Maybe there will be an attorney that can weigh in for an answer for future followers. Once I get an answer from our attorney, I will post it.

What's required for success.

You have a great idea. Everyone tells you so. They all say it will be a big hit. All you have to do is get it to someone and they'll go crazy over it and make you rich.

That may happen. It won't happen overnight and it will take a lot of work. You'll get excited, frustrated, start doubting. But through it all, you'll keep trying. If you have done your homework and you know that there is a market for your product you'll keep trying. If you try long enough, you will make it. Don't give up. This is one of the most rewarding things that you will probably ever do it it's successful.

Packaging Design

Packaging is such a pain in the $%@, but necessary if you want your product successful. We met with someone who said that he did packaging and could help us from design to final product. Once we met, he said it would be better for us to get with someone who does the package graphics because they understand the process of how graphics design needs to be for boxes etc. We have met and will follow up with our progress.

Hopefully by following our progress, you can see the time in days, week's, months etc on getting things done. We live in a small center, so most everything we do has to be done away from the area we live. If you happen to live in a large center, you may be able to get everything done right where you live.

Packaging is expensive.

With our current project, we are in the process of looking at developing the packaging that will display our product. There are many decisions to be made. First of all what type of packaging will work best for you? I didn't know all of the terms for different packaging types when I started. If you wait until the last minute and start thinking about packaging last, it will delay your launch, so start thinking about it early on in the process.

Is your product suited for Clamshell , Blister pack sealing, box, box with a mylar window. The weight of your product may make the decision for you. You will need to hire a graphic artist that is familiar with packaging requirements, unless you have the skill and programs on your computer to make it yourself.

There's kind of a catch 22 for packaging. You should start early, but you need to wait before you make your run of printed material. You need to find out what kind of warnings need to be placed on the packaging. The warnings will vary depending on who the product is intended for. If it's intended for adults or children. If it's a toy, what age is it intended for. These will all play a factor in the warnings necessary.

If you are going to have your product on store shelves, you will need a bar code Be careful. There are many companies on the web that offer bar codes and cheap, but the bar codes they offer may not work for retailers. The link I have given on the link page is the Official place to go.

We have a meeting scheduled with a contract packager tomorrow. Once I talk with them, I will update the blog with our newest information.

Do you want to license your invention?

There's a difficult decision to be made once you have a viable product. Do you want to go after a licensing deal. There are advantages of getting a licencing deal but there are also down sides.

First the upside: You won't have to set up manufacturing. You won't have to do the marketing. Most companies, if they pick you up, will take care of everything that goes into getting a product on the shelves for the general publics consumption. You just sit back and collect your royalty check and live the good life........or do you?

the downside is that you will only get a very small percentage of what you would if you manufactured and sold it yourself. Usually in a licensing deal, you get a certain percentage of the profits. Usually between 3-5%. Sounds Ok right? Well maybe not. That 3-5% is based on the wholesale price after expenses.

Let's say you have a product that would retail for $20.00. 5% is $1.00. sell 1 million units make a million. Not really. Whole sale would typically be half of retail, so your at $10.00. After other expenses such as shipping etc., your maybe down to $8.00. At 5% that's $0.40. So now you have to hope that your product sells 2.5 million units to make a million. Then after you pay income taxes, your back down to $600K. Now on a large global scale, 2.5million units is entirely possible.

If you think you can handle all of the manufacturing, marketing, sales reps cost, insurance etc. and you want to make this your job then by all means go for it. You will have the potential to make much more money because you have taken on much more risk.

If you decide to license your product, I would recommend that you find an attorney that specializes in Licensing deals.

Finding suppliers.

One of the hardest things for someone working on a prototype is finding what you need.There is a website called alibaba.com that is like Ebay on steroids. Just about every manufacturer is on it. You can buy things in large quantity. Actually a lot of things that you see for sale on Ebay are bought from someone on alibaba wholesale and then sold to you and me. If you can't find what you need locally, this might be a good place for you to look. Once you have built a prototype, you should find out what it would cost to produce in quantity. The first step you should do after getting a working prototype is file the provisional patent application. Once that is filed, you can then try and find a manufacturer to get an estimate of what it will cost to produce.

If your not ready to file a provisional patent application, you can have the manufacturer sign a non disclosure agreement. This will offer some protection. You need to know what the manufacturing cost will be so you can determine a retail selling price.

Manufacturing is only one cost of your product. You also have packaging, shipping cost (which may include Customs Charges) if you are importing any part of your product. Insurance, advertising (if any).  In the next blog, I'll talk about how to determine your sell price.

The invention is the easy part!

I found out something interesting while going through the process of getting a product to market. The invention was the easy part. This might not be true for all inventions but for me it was. Thinking of the product, building a prototype, troubleshooting problems and fixing them, etc., has been easier than the rest. One word of advice I can give is, once you have your final version, start working on the packaging. If your product is meant for store shelves, go to a store that might carry it and see what their packaging looks like. You can find custom packaging suppliers on the internet.

Another thing to be aware of is product testing. Is your product meant for children or adults? The testing requirements are different. Are you going to get Product Liability insurance? You can go to CPSC for information and testing requirements of products.

Then there's the marketing. You can have the greatest invention since sliced bread, but if no one knows it exist, you won't sell it. The other end of the marketing spectrum is, you can have the biggest piece of %^&*(&, market it right and sell millions. But wait, there's more...... enough said.

Do you have the expertise to build a website? I didn't think that I did, but I'm stubborn and like a challenge. There are many hosting sites that have fairly easy web site templates to follow. You just want to make sure that they have a good support team. I used online chat a lot. It took me a couple of months but our web site was up and running. It is constantly being adjusted but now it's enjoyable.

Intellectual property (Patents, Trademarks, Copyright)

There are 2 basic types of patents that most of us are concerned with. They are Utility patent, and Design patent. You can also have a patent for a plant or new chemical. The design patent is the easiest (and cheapest) to get. It will offer you some protection of your idea, but is very easy to design around. You can file a design patent your self if you can do the drawings. There are 2 books that can help. One is called "Patent it yourself" and the other is "How to make patent drawings: a patent it yourself companion". Both of these books have a lot of information and can be hard to understand at times. One of the things that I found interesting is that as far as the USPTO is concerned, there are 2 types of drawings. One is for a design patent and the other is for a Utility patent. They have different requirements. We used an attorney to file our patents, both design and utility. My wife did the drawings and we scanned them and sent them to the attorney. We followed the instructions in the book about how to do design patent drawings and once the attorney had them, he had us eliminate some of the lines that the book told us to make. His reasoning was that the lines showed our product as transparent. By eliminating that transparency lines, we gave our product a wider range of protection. It could be made either transparent or opaque. We used the same drawings for the utility patent. You can have both a design and utility patent on the same product like we do, although it is not necessary.

Filing for a Provisional Patent Application is relatively cheap, and will give you up to 1 year of protection. It cost $110.00 to file a PPA if you are a small entity (which you probably are), and you file it yourself. Our attorney charged us $360 to file it for us using our drawings. Once you get the filing receipt, you may start using the term "Patent Pending". This gives you time to work out the details of what exactly you want to file. Once you file your Utility patent, it will probably take at least 6 months before the USPTO even looks at it. Don't be surprised when they reject it. This seems to be standard operation procedure. They will send you notification about why they are rejecting it. You then need to address whatever it is they don't like. Of course it cost more money but not too much. It's more of a pain than anything else. The whole patent process could take 2 years or more before you are finally issued a patent.

The Utility patent will give you the most protection of your idea. It takes more effort to come up with something that doesn't violate the patent that has been issued. With that being said, don't be surprised when someone copies your idea and makes a knock off. If it's a good idea, someone will copy it. For large companies, they may copy your idea, get it out in the market and not worry about whether or not they have infringed on your idea. Their attitude is that they will make their money and hold up any lawsuit for years. By the time the law suit is finally heard, either the inventor is broke and can't fight it, or they will settle for a small percentage of what they made on your idea. It sucks, but it's reality. It's probably more important to be first to market than get to hung up on getting a patent. There are many products that are successful that don't have a patent. What they do have is a good marketing budget and supply chains with established outlets.


Trademarks are words, phrases, or even fictional characters. "Kleenex" is one, "Ronald McDonald" is another. There are several categories to file trademarks in. You couldn't register "Kleenex" in the category that "Kleenex" is in but if you wanted to use that word in a different category you might be able to. If you have a word or phrase you want to trademark, you should use the TM next to it in what is called the superscript area, which is just to the right of the last letter and slightly higher than the last letter. Once you have registered your trademark with the USPTO and they have granted it, you can then start using the R with a circle around it. This tells the world that your trademark is registered and gives you certain legal rights if someone infringes on it.

Copyright is interesting in that as soon as the written word is published, it is copyrighted. That's not the same as a registered copyright. Copyrights are cheap to register, usually around $35. A copyright also last the longest. As soon as this blog is posted, it is copyrighted. If I wanted to file for copyright protection for legal reasons, meaning that no one could reproduce this without my consent, I could. If I don't file for copyright protection and someone copied it, I could probably get them to stop publishing it, but could not recover monetary damages if they had used it to profit from.

All of these have value to companies that might be interested in your invention. They want to make sure there is protection before they invest in the marketing or selling of your product.

After the idea phase

Now that you have had that potentially life changing idea (for both you and the world), what's the next step? For us, it is getting on the internet to see if there is already something like my idea. You might be suprised to find out someone else has had the same idea. This still might be OK. You might be able to improve on their idea. If something is similar to your idea check out if it is patented. Google patents is a good user friendly place to start. You can also go to www.uspto.gov/ which allows you to also search for trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks and copyrights can be just as valuable as a patent. It's all intellectual property that has value. If everything looks good, build a prototype. Don't worry to much about what the components cost to build your prototype at this point. You will almost ceartianly be able to make the actual product cheaper once production starts. Now you can file for a provisional patent application even if you don't have a prototype. In the next blog, I'll go into more detail about the differences in patents.

The truth is, it will take longer than you want and cost more than you think.

The truth about me is this, I am an optimist. I always underestimate how long something takes and how much it cost to do. I think that this is a great source of frustration for my wife. She is exactly opposite. Our brains just seem to work different. With that being said, we are always supportive of each other and since we have been married for a long time, we have come to understand how each of us works through problems, but we both believe there isn't a problem we can't overcome given time and resources. I truly believe you can't be an inventor if your a pessimist. The process will probably kill you, or at the very least put you in an asylum. You have to have patience. I always want to rush to the next step. This gets me into trouble sometimes and cost money. I just get overly excited. Sound familiar yet? My advice is this.... research, research, research. At least while your figuring your next move, you'll feel like your doing something to move the process forward. Last but not least, make sure you have some kind of record of your invention. One way is an inventors note book. Write down dates, sketches, who you talked to. Anything that has to do with the invention. Get someone to witness it. This will take the place of a provisional patent application until you get one filed.

I have this great idea, I'll make a million!!

How many times have you said I have a great idea? I can tell you from experience that just about everybody has great ideas at some time. You never know what will trigger a great idea. I can also tell you that inventing for just about everyone follows a certain path. If you talk to anyone who has invented a product that is on the market, you will learn that most likely it's not their first invention. I know for myself, the first million dollar idea I had made it about as far as a rough drawing that I then proceeded to place in an envelope and mail to myself for "protection" of my idea. ( totally useless by the way).  The next great idea I had made it a little farther. I actually researched the parts needed to build it. I soon decided that it was to expensive to market and didn't pursue it any farther. Of course now I know that I could have built a prototype, filed a provisional patent application and then approached someone to manufacture it. Once things start being manufactured on a large scale the cost come down considerably.

You get the picture. Each time I had a million dollar idea, I took it a little farther in the process, and each time I would decide that the market wasn't there for what ever reason. The market was either to small, the price would be to high etc. Eventually, you hit on an idea that the stars align for you. The market is huge, the product can be manufactured at a reasonable price and you can make a good return on your investment.

Where to start?

If you have stumbled upon this blog, then you are probably an inventor. You may not call yourself an inventor, but you have a curiosity and a desire or you wouldn't be reading this. I decided to create this blog in hopes of passing along my experience with the invention process. I wish that I had something like this to look at when I started. There is so much I didn't know. There is much that I still don't know. The process of inventing is always changing.

This blog is intended to provide information. My hopes are that as it matures, we will start getting followers to post ideas, comments, helpful tips, and resources. My post will primarily be about personal experience and the trials and tribulations of inventing. My wife and I are currently in the middle of getting a product to market so everything is fresh. I hope this helps someone to take the plunge and create. If I can say one thing about inventing, is that it can be a lot of fun!