Just because a product idea is good, doesn’t mean the product will succeed on the market. Even a truly fantastic idea is no guarantee of success. So, how can you accurately assess the market potential of an idea? When the following factors are in place, chances are your product is good enough to develop.
You have interested customers
When customers are clamoring to get a hold of your product before it has even been developed, that is key (and no, these potential customers cannot be friends or family members). The bottom line is that when evaluating an idea, you need to carefully gauge market interest. If the interest is there, your idea is all the more stronger.
Your idea is stronger than existing alternatives
Before you decide whether or not to develop a product from an idea, you need to take a careful look at the existing alternatives that are out there. If somebody has already solved a problem or filled a market need, there is no need for you to release a similar product unless it is remarkably different, better, or cheaper.
Your ROI (Return on Investment) analysis is promising
Turing a great idea into a great product is a significant investment. You will need to hire and train people to test, assemble, inspect, troubleshoot, and package the product. You will also need to pump money into advertising, which entails developing a marketing strategy, training salespeople, and soliciting feedback from customers. All of this requires money, most likely hundreds of thousands of dollars. You need to carefully evaluate how many units of the product you will need to sell in order to recuperate these development and marketing costs. Be conservative with this estimate (estimating ROI is no time to be overly ambitious). You will also need to carefully consider how long it will take to sell that number of units (again, be conservative). Typically, if a company won’t be able to recover these start-up costs within a year, the idea isn’t worth pursuing.
Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with extensive experience in the medtech industry. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.
