What's up guys and gals,
I decided to create a progress thread for our new product in the fitness niche. It's a physical product with only 2 SKUs to begin with (2 colors same product).
Per the suggestion of @MythOfSisyphus I will detail the entire process here so hopefully others can learn from my mistakes and successes in the process.
So let's rewind to the beginning:
Friend and I were day drinking on one fateful day in early 2019. I'm unsure of the exact date, but we basically came up with this product out the blue.
We were at the gym before, and realized something out of place... I'm not going to go into the product itself for obvious reasons but the way we came up with it was:
We saw a problem that day.
We realized we had seen this problem before.
We realized MANY people had run into this same problem and still do, still are.
We realized no good solutions currently exist.
We realized creating a good solution would not be easy, thus increasing barrier to entry.
My friend whipped up some designs since he does graphic design.
Over the next few days, the idea blossomed, and we decided on a design.
We hit up suppliers on Alibaba and Aliexpress, also some from tactics mentioned in @Walter Hay 's book (THANKS WALTER!)
We got a TERRIBLE response back from Chinese factories. They were unresponsive, unaware, and unwilling to work with us.
I've worked with China several times in the past, and it has always left a bad taste in my mouth for whatever reason. And I didn't just hit up 3 factories, I'm talking at least 40-50 back and forths with factories, suppliers, middle men, whoever. Some were more helpful than others, but the general consensus is that they did NOT want to help us develop our product. They just wanted to keep stamping out AliExpress products that had proven results that people were drop shipping.
So we said F*ck it and went looking for sourcing companies. Our thoughts now were to try to find suppliers in Mexico or South America instead. I have been there countless times, and enjoy the culture and way of doing business MUCH more than China (which I have also been to). That, combined with the vastly shorter shipping times seemed like a wonderful opportunity.
We hit up suppliers on our own there, but it was hard to get ahold of the right people. So we hired sourcing agency #1. They did some work for us, and they ran into the same problems as we did: no one wanted to help us.
We hired sourcing agency #2. Same thing.
By this time, months had gone by, and we were no closer to getting this product to market than before, when we were day drinking on the deck...
(Keep in mind, my friend and I both run 1-3 other businesses and this is NOT our main project by any stretch. So we could have potentially been putting in alot more work than we really were on this. That being said, the ball bouncing between parties was always kept in their court as much as possible, so we were moving pretty quickly all things considered).
We hired sourcing agency #3. They SWORE up and down they could do it, and had connections etc.
This company also had a product development department, which they upsold us to. We worked with a guy who REALLY did not understand our product (he wasn't physically fit, he was kind of a pussy, and we both got negative vibes from him). So we ditched that guy. Thankfully the sourcing agency had poached a guy from Under Armor USA, and he was the PERFECT fit for our product development.
We ended up paying them $3.6k on top of the $2k sourcing agency fees to get the product developed.
The product now looks VERY good. It's top notch. The materials we decided on are high quality.
Our goal with this product is to make it POP on Instagram. So we decided on colorways that would make it stand out.
The sourcing agency is now in discussion with 1 Mexican supplier, and 5 Chinese suppliers for us.
China is apparently on vacay at this moment, so we are waiting to hear back, but we have ordered 3 samples, 1 from 3 different factories, for around $1.5k total (was surprised at this, cheap!)
The mold fees are around $1.5-2k for each factory. Again, not too bad!
The MOQs are around 1000 from each one. Our move is to pay the mold fee, then renegotiate a 500 UNIT MOQ from the factory that has the best sample.
That's where we're at right now. Waiting on samples to arrive.
My buddy is in Aus and I am in California. So we have to have samples shipped to both areas in order to get feedback from both of us.
Some things to note:
I am WELL aware that partnerships in business rarely work out.
This guy has been my long time friend, and also runs his own profitable business offline in AUS. I run 2 profitable businesses in the USA. So this is strictly a side project for both of us.
Neither of us need the money, neither of us are opposed to spending money on this. Both of us are level headed enough and contracts have been signed to where I don't think many issues will occur. We've had open communication and he has seen some of my partnerships go south in the past few years. We are VERY aware of the possibility. But to both of us, it's just a fun side project to work on. Will keep everyone posted on that.
The last time I really worked heavily with China was in 2014/2015/2016 era. I understand the world has changed alot since then, BUT, I was ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDED by the unwillingness to work with us on developing a new product. Maybe I was just barking up the wrong trees over and over?? But I feel like AliExpress and the drop shipping craze has absolutely changed the game, changed how China thinks and acts. Obviously I'm generalizing but wow man, after months and months of no help, I was jaw dropped.
My goal here is to get massive orders from China and have a Mexico factory that can pump out quick orders for us as well, thus minimizing risk and maximizing control having 2 factories able to pump out product.
Future:
Product 1 is killing it, we make accessories/upsells/downsells. Product 2 is born, then product 3 etc, a brand is built, ... Profit???
Stay tuned for new developments in this thread.
David
I decided to create a progress thread for our new product in the fitness niche. It's a physical product with only 2 SKUs to begin with (2 colors same product).
Per the suggestion of @MythOfSisyphus I will detail the entire process here so hopefully others can learn from my mistakes and successes in the process.
So let's rewind to the beginning:
Friend and I were day drinking on one fateful day in early 2019. I'm unsure of the exact date, but we basically came up with this product out the blue.
We were at the gym before, and realized something out of place... I'm not going to go into the product itself for obvious reasons but the way we came up with it was:
We saw a problem that day.
We realized we had seen this problem before.
We realized MANY people had run into this same problem and still do, still are.
We realized no good solutions currently exist.
We realized creating a good solution would not be easy, thus increasing barrier to entry.
My friend whipped up some designs since he does graphic design.
Over the next few days, the idea blossomed, and we decided on a design.
We hit up suppliers on Alibaba and Aliexpress, also some from tactics mentioned in @Walter Hay 's book (THANKS WALTER!)
We got a TERRIBLE response back from Chinese factories. They were unresponsive, unaware, and unwilling to work with us.
I've worked with China several times in the past, and it has always left a bad taste in my mouth for whatever reason. And I didn't just hit up 3 factories, I'm talking at least 40-50 back and forths with factories, suppliers, middle men, whoever. Some were more helpful than others, but the general consensus is that they did NOT want to help us develop our product. They just wanted to keep stamping out AliExpress products that had proven results that people were drop shipping.
So we said F*ck it and went looking for sourcing companies. Our thoughts now were to try to find suppliers in Mexico or South America instead. I have been there countless times, and enjoy the culture and way of doing business MUCH more than China (which I have also been to). That, combined with the vastly shorter shipping times seemed like a wonderful opportunity.
We hit up suppliers on our own there, but it was hard to get ahold of the right people. So we hired sourcing agency #1. They did some work for us, and they ran into the same problems as we did: no one wanted to help us.
We hired sourcing agency #2. Same thing.
By this time, months had gone by, and we were no closer to getting this product to market than before, when we were day drinking on the deck...
(Keep in mind, my friend and I both run 1-3 other businesses and this is NOT our main project by any stretch. So we could have potentially been putting in alot more work than we really were on this. That being said, the ball bouncing between parties was always kept in their court as much as possible, so we were moving pretty quickly all things considered).
We hired sourcing agency #3. They SWORE up and down they could do it, and had connections etc.
This company also had a product development department, which they upsold us to. We worked with a guy who REALLY did not understand our product (he wasn't physically fit, he was kind of a pussy, and we both got negative vibes from him). So we ditched that guy. Thankfully the sourcing agency had poached a guy from Under Armor USA, and he was the PERFECT fit for our product development.
We ended up paying them $3.6k on top of the $2k sourcing agency fees to get the product developed.
The product now looks VERY good. It's top notch. The materials we decided on are high quality.
Our goal with this product is to make it POP on Instagram. So we decided on colorways that would make it stand out.
The sourcing agency is now in discussion with 1 Mexican supplier, and 5 Chinese suppliers for us.
China is apparently on vacay at this moment, so we are waiting to hear back, but we have ordered 3 samples, 1 from 3 different factories, for around $1.5k total (was surprised at this, cheap!)
The mold fees are around $1.5-2k for each factory. Again, not too bad!
The MOQs are around 1000 from each one. Our move is to pay the mold fee, then renegotiate a 500 UNIT MOQ from the factory that has the best sample.
That's where we're at right now. Waiting on samples to arrive.
My buddy is in Aus and I am in California. So we have to have samples shipped to both areas in order to get feedback from both of us.
Some things to note:
I am WELL aware that partnerships in business rarely work out.
This guy has been my long time friend, and also runs his own profitable business offline in AUS. I run 2 profitable businesses in the USA. So this is strictly a side project for both of us.
Neither of us need the money, neither of us are opposed to spending money on this. Both of us are level headed enough and contracts have been signed to where I don't think many issues will occur. We've had open communication and he has seen some of my partnerships go south in the past few years. We are VERY aware of the possibility. But to both of us, it's just a fun side project to work on. Will keep everyone posted on that.
The last time I really worked heavily with China was in 2014/2015/2016 era. I understand the world has changed alot since then, BUT, I was ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDED by the unwillingness to work with us on developing a new product. Maybe I was just barking up the wrong trees over and over?? But I feel like AliExpress and the drop shipping craze has absolutely changed the game, changed how China thinks and acts. Obviously I'm generalizing but wow man, after months and months of no help, I was jaw dropped.
My goal here is to get massive orders from China and have a Mexico factory that can pump out quick orders for us as well, thus minimizing risk and maximizing control having 2 factories able to pump out product.
Future:
Product 1 is killing it, we make accessories/upsells/downsells. Product 2 is born, then product 3 etc, a brand is built, ... Profit???
Stay tuned for new developments in this thread.
David
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