Thread: I have an idea about a physical product. Need advice.

Hi all, I'm a new member of this great forum. I've read the book as well and I think it's amazing!

So, I've got an idea about a product, but I'm not sure whether I should license it to some other company, or create/produce it myself and then sell it to retail companies(the latter will be hard to do since I have no money to invest at all).

The idea is something similar to Withings - Find out more - the Withings scale, however its totally a different product/concept. By comparing the two I want to imply that the data will be collected off the physical product and send to consumers smartphone. 3d parties can then use the data to do certain things(of course with the consumer needs to agree with it).

I am sorry for being vague with the description of my idea, but I don't feel comfortable sharing more information for obvious reasons.

My questions are the following:

• If I want to license the product/idea to those "3d parties" mentioned above, who do I contact? I.e. who is the person(their title) in the company responsible for these kind of things?
• I want to do some more research to find out whether the idea is good or not. What should I do to gather such data?
• If I go on the route of creating the product myself, what's the best way to get started? I already got a 3D drawing(done by a friend of mine who just finished architecture) of the product, should I contact manufacturers with the drawing and then ask them how much it would cost me one unit of the product? If yes, is there any guide/manufacturers list located in China I could search through?

I have many more questions, and I would really appreciate it if someone can help me with my questions above.

Thank you all! I'm looking forward to being an active member of this fantastic forum.

I would like to know some answers to these questions myself - as I have two patent ideas that I really would like to get off the ground.

For me - I think I rather also license them out instead of pursuing a production or making my own business out of them. One of them in particular, I couldn't pull off if I wanted to since it would involve airline manufacturing, lol.

So yeah - if someone can bring some input on this, I would appreciate it as well.
Thanks!