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Your advice please

Bryan James

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I have very specific designs and ideas for a series of fitness machines, all of which I have never seen anywhere online or at any gym. I'm looking to get the designs patented, only I know next t o nothing about engineering, making the patent designs rather difficult to write (I understand every tiny specification and detail matters). Any thoughts on what I should do? Start learning engineering? Hire someone? etc.

Also after getting the designs patented I was thinking of selling or licensing them to larger fitness companies. Should I go this route or use the patented designs to start up my own fitness company and try to rival the larger names in the industry?

I'm open to your thoughts. Thank you.
 
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jesseissorude

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Your next step should be to test if your specific designs and ideas solve a problem for your targeted customer. I assume the customer would be a gym owner who buys equipment for a gym.
See if you can find someone like that and take them out to coffee or lunch and bounce your ideas off of them. Your current assumption is that your designs/ideas are good ones that a gym owner in charge of purchasing decisions would choose your product over Nautilus (or whatever other brand names exist in that space). Test that assumption, and see if you can get your target customer to poke holes in your idea.

After you know your typical customer is interested in the designs, find an engineer to help. This is probably like finding a tech partner for a software company. If you don't have startup capital to pay an employee, you're probably looking at giving away equity (avoid that if possible, see if the engineer would take delayed payment at a premium, or a share of the first X amount of sales).

Source: I'm an electrical engineer who gets asked questions about making products all the time. I won't touch a project unless the person with the "brilliant idea" has already tested their idea with real target customers.

BTW, I'd consider editing your title to something more descriptive. It might help you get better quality replies.
 

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