Has anyone here successfully executed a gimmicky idea?

[v1vr]

Has anyone here had any success executing an idea that was gimmicky or trended temporarily? Think fidget spinners.

A friend recently bought a few bottle opener/cap guns for his house. They open glass bottles and allow you to shoot the cap afterwards. He then brought up the idea of creating a drink koozie that was capable of launching cans once the can was empty. It would be called "The Mortar". Interesting little idea, but very gimmicky and I can't really see it selling for a long time.

I have some mechanism ideas designed and thought about building a prototype. It would be cool just to have one for myself or my friend. If the prototype worked successfully, I would maybe look into designing it for manufacturability and start sourcing vendors that had the tooling capability to create this koozie design.

I'm not sure what a minimum order quantity for a product like this would be, but if you got a website like Barstool to promote it in a post, I'm sure you could land quite a few sales from the drinking crowd.

I wonder if it's worth going through all the trouble of design and sourcing a manufacturer. I'm curious how companies that create and sell these gimmicky ideas, like a bottle cap gun that you would find at the liquor store counter, go through the product design, manufacture, and sales cycle.

Does anyone have any insight into products like this or have experience designing and selling items that trend only temporarily?

 

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[Neko]

I’m not sure I follow you here.

Is this supposed to help you go fastlane somehow or do you just want a gadget for you that you could eventually sell ?

For the former you should look for problems and find a solution. Not the other way around!

For the later, well you can try but be prepared to have a stock of gadget that you can’t sell in your house.

For Manufacturing time and minimum orders, get in touch with a factory.
Better yet, create one or two prototypes and see how it goes. If there is demand you can scale up.

If there is local demand you can create a kickstarter and see if you can fund the product before producing it.


Question about the product:
What do you do once you shot the can in the street or nature? You just let it there? Not very respectful nor eco-friendly.
If you shoot it in the house, aren’t you at risk that liquid end up on the floor and make a mess? Caps are dry. Cans always have a bit of liquid left inside.

Written on my mobile.

 

[v1vr]

Is this supposed to help you go fastlane somehow or do you just want a gadget for you that you could eventually sell ?

Definitely not a fast lane idea. My friend thinks it will make money, but I told him you probably won't sell much after the initial crazes wears off. That's if the product ever gains traction.

This is more for myself and applying my engineering/design experience to create a cool koozie I can bring to BBQs. It just got me thinking about the business behind gimmicky products like this and I'm curious how it all works. I'm guessing there are a few players in the industry who design and produce novel ideas like this. There's probably some distributor in the states who imports all these novel contraptions and sells them to dollar stores, liquor stores, etc.

What do you do once you shot the can in the street or nature? You just let it there? Not very respectful nor eco-friendly.
If you shoot it in the house, aren’t you at risk that liquid end up on the floor and make a mess? Caps are dry. Cans always have a bit of liquid left inside.

This will be more of an outside product. I wouldn't be shooting it off inside my house and I also wouldn't be littering aluminum cans all over my yard or anywhere else for that matter.

"Mortar's" flaw is that it would spray rest of fluid all over the place.
Although if it would be outdoors activity then why not.

Yeah, this will be intended for outdoor use. I wouldn't be shooting empty aluminum cans indoors.

 

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[Kid]

An idea: Manual Can Squeezer - a line around the can that if you pull it it will squeeze the can.
Call it "The Grip".
And some muscles design.

"Mortar's" flaw is that it would spray rest of fluid all over the place.
Although if it would be outdoors activity then why not.

 

[Georgia Grown]

Definitely not a fast lane idea. My friend thinks it will make money, but I told him you probably won't sell much after the initial crazes wears off. That's if the product ever gains traction.

This is more for myself and applying my engineering/design experience to create a cool koozie I can bring to BBQs. It just got me thinking about the business behind gimmicky products like this and I'm curious how it all works. I'm guessing there are a few players in the industry who design and produce novel ideas like this. There's probably some distributor in the states who imports all these novel contraptions and sells them to dollar stores, liquor stores, etc.


This will be more of an outside product. I wouldn't be shooting it off inside my house and I also wouldn't be littering aluminum cans all over my yard or anywhere else for that matter.


Yeah, this will be intended for outdoor use. I wouldn't be shooting empty aluminum cans indoors.

I hope you design a good safety. It would suck to lose a nose.