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Learn to Make a Product

Expert Consulting for Product Entrepreneurs

Funding Options For Product Entrepreneurs

Most e-commerce businesses are self-funded, meaning people take out loans, draw from their savings, or use a portion of their regular income to fund a project.

Bootstrapping has a less glamorous reputation than say, getting venture capital or joining a fancy accelerator program. But if you are someone who wants to maintain complete control over your business and lifestyle, it’s entirely possible to grow a successful e-comm business on your own.

Here are three platforms that will help finance your growth (without taking any equity in your business):

  • ClearCo offers funding (between $10K and $10M) to businesses with at least 6 months of revenue history. You can use the funds to buy inventory, run ads or anything else you want to do. Funding decisions are made quickly (about 24 hours).
  • Kick Further gives you funds to pay suppliers (including factories), with repayments due after the inventory is sold. This is a good alternative to crowd-funding.
  • If you use Shopify you can apply for Shopify Capital. Approval is based on your store’s average monthly sales, which do not need to be high. The funds are deposited into the account connected to your store, and repayments are simply deducted from your sales deposits.

Best of luck!
Liz

 
None of these companies have asked us to promote their products. While some pay an affiliate commission, all of these resources are suggestions we would share with clients regardless. We hope this list helps you grow your business!

4 Ways To Build A Movement (Not Just A Brand)

This article originally appeared on our Forbes blog

A well-developed brand engenders feelings of affinity, belonging, and trust. It communicates a specific set of values–think quality, health, convenience, and more–so that a customer is ultimately motivated to make a purchase, preferably more than once! Many companies are great at this type of brand-building, but few take it a step further to focus on building a movement.

In simple terms, this means building a business that is capable of changing societal norms, beliefs or behaviors, while simultaneously selling products. By aligning with a movement and not just a brand identity, companies have the opportunity to inspire both purchasing and positive social change.

Mamava, a start-up that sells “nursing pods” for offices and public spaces, is an excellent example of a company building a movement on top of a brand. Their product line consists of pre-fabricated, freestanding spaces that allow women to pump or breastfeed while at work or on the go. You might find one of their colorful pods in a corporate office, a concert stadium, on a school campus, or at a trade show.

Mamava Nursing Pod in airport

While the product line provides much-needed comfort and privacy for moms (whose only option is often a cramped restroom stall!), the Mamava brand aims to be more than a practical solution to the challenge of nursing in public. Instead, their bigger goal is to “transform the culture of breastfeeding” and change collective attitudes (and policies) around the act itself. Through the growth of their business, Mamava wants to normalize breastfeeding and make the world more accommodating to nursing moms.

Here are four ways Mamava is successfully building a movement around their products, with takeaways that can be applied to any business:

Use Movement-Building Language

Mamava’s mission statement to change the culture of breastfeeding clearly communicates their vision for social change. This is not the only place the brand uses “movement-building language” however. When speaking about their inspiration for starting the company, founders Christine Dodson and Sascha Mayer regularly cite the sentiment that “nursing should be a right, not a privilege.” When you sign up for Mamava’s newsletter you’re invited to “Become a Lactivist.” Such verbiage, when used consistently across platforms, reminds customers that they are aligning with something greater than the company itself.  

How 3D Printing Can Benefit Your Business

This article originally appeared on our Forbes blog

3D printing, which started as a niche service, is now predicted to one day revolutionize the world of production. So it’s no surprise that one of the most common questions I get as a manufacturing consultant is: “Can I use 3D printing to make my product?” For many categories, from shoes to sweaters to eyewear, the answer is yes!

To understand how brands can incorporate this technology into their business models, I interviewed Christian Hartung and Hristiyana Vucheva, cofounders of the Berlin-based 3D printing house VOJD Studios. VOJD specializes in high-end jewelry, accessories, and hardware, with luxury label clients such as Prabal Gurung, Alexander McQueen, and Carolina Herrera.

According to Hartung and Vucheva, there are several clear benefits of choosing 3D printing over traditional manufacturing.

Save Time and Avoid Expensive StartUp Costs

The typical process of developing a custom product, such as a watch band or sole of a shoe, requires that molds be made in order to cast or shape the desired design. Molds often cost thousands of dollars (with most projects requiring multiple molds!), making it an expensive undertaking for any business. And, since they need to be created prior to any product or market testing, they are sunk costs. Even if the product turns out to be a dud, there’s no way to recoup what you’ve already spent.

3D printing eliminates this step, as materials are printed directly onto a surface to create a product. When VOJD teamed up with Alexander McQueen to make a limited-edition umbrella handle, what would have normally cost upwards of $10,000 in mold fees was reduced to several hundred dollars in setup fees.

Easily Customize Your Offerings

Another exciting aspect of 3D printing is that brands can more easily customize their offerings, as well as offer limited-edition collections. 3D is ideal for creating one-off pieces and small batch runs because of the reduced upfront costs and minimal reliance on physical labor, factors that drive up order volumes at a traditional factory.

Thanks to 3D printing, VOJD client AKRIS was able to produce a special collection of architectural rings (printed in silver and polyamide) for their runway shows. Another client, Ferrari Concept, 3D printed a short run of colorful eyewear for Paris Fashion Week last year. In a conventional setting, both of these projects would have required substantially longer development and production times!

Some companies are using 3D to opt for a “made to measure” approach, creating custom garments or products using a customer’s sizing information. As the technology behind this approach becomes more readily available for both brands and factories, it could dramatically change the way we shop. Instead of having to fit into pre-determined sizes that may or may not work for a particular body type, the buyer is able to dictate exactly how they want a garment to fit. The approach also benefits stores, who can reduce waste by carrying less inventory and more speedily eliminate styles that don’t sell.

Experiment With New Materials

Another benefit of 3D manufacturing is that the costs and potential for low order volumes make it ideal for testing new materials. When Spanish luxury brand Loewe wanted a unique bracelet for a menswear campaign, VOJD was able to experiment with a newly developed ceramic compound. The result was a bold yet lightweight interlocking chain, printed as a single piece which required no assembly.

Even if 3D printing is not the long-term strategy for a specific product or collection, it’s flexibility allows companies to test new concepts prior to investing in large production runs.

More freedom to experiment results in more innovation, less waste (as testing on a specific material can be done prior to mass production), and ultimately greater customer satisfaction. This makes 3D a win-win for both buyers and suppliers!

What I Learned After Losing $20K In A Day

This article originally appeared on our Forbes blog

When you’re learning as you go, as many first-time entrepreneurs are, each lesson comes with a price tag. Whether it’s a lost client, a quality problem, or an unforeseen delay, it almost always involves a cost you didn’t intend to pay. While in the short-term this can be painful, the key is to mine these losses so that future experiences aren’t quite so “expensive”!

In 2010 my company–a two-year old reusable bag brand–was starting to gain traction, producing orders for some of the world’s top retailers. We had just partnered with a large non-profit to create bags for a new fundraising campaign, and because of the tight deadline, brought on a new factory to produce the goods.

Everything was moving along as planned until the client reviewed a sample created by the new factory. Though happy with the bag’s quality, they requested a color change to one of the printed graphics because it didn’t match their existing swag and collateral. Naturally, we communicated the adjustment to our production manager, assuming the simple switch would be made without a hitch! However, our request was met with the following reply: “Sorry, that isn’t possible. The full order has already been made and is ready to ship. Please advise.”

From there, things quickly went south. Even though the color change was minor, the client was unwilling to accept the product as is. And because we couldn’t produce a new batch of bags before their deadline, the only option was to cancel the order completely. To make matters worse, the factory wouldn’t accept any responsibility for the snafu, claiming that they had started production in order to meet our ship date, and that the sample sent was strictly “for reference,” and not a form of approval. While their practices were questionable–since approval by way of a pre-production sample is standard–we had other time-sensitive orders in-process that would have been jeopardized by a refusal to pay, and had to go along with their demands. So, in addition to refunding the client and losing a significant sale, we still had to foot the entire bill.

Here’s what I learned from losing a big chunk of money in a short amount of time.

Have A Process For Everything

A fiasco like this could easily have been avoided. How? By creating and following a simple process to officially greenlight production. I advise all brands I work with to communicate to their supplier–in writing and prior to submitting a purchase order–that all samples will have to be approved using a specific form, and that manufacturing will not begin until the form has been received by the factory. We then identify the key personnel involved in the review process and ensure that everyone understands their role.

A system like this is not difficult or expensive to implement, yet it’s normal for new entrepreneurs to feel that formality is an overkill if an organization is still small. In fact, the opposite is true for small, budding businesses. Such systems are not only helpful for staying organized in the present, but also function as the building blocks of what your entity can become. Establishing clear guidelines and procedures is a must-have if you want to scale and experience healthy growth.

Just like the human body ingests and digests nutrients in precise ways in order to grow, a business must have consistent systems in order to retain and leverage its resources (i.e. customers and money). On the other hand, disorder and disorganization cause resources to leak out, as I so painfully learned.

Know When To Say No

His loss could also have been avoided had we simply declined/refused the order. Tight timelines are never ideal, but for new entrepreneurs they can be especially detrimental. That’s because the learning curve is steeper, and inexperience makes it harder to anticipate exactly what could go wrong. Throw in a wild card like a new supply partner or a product you’re producing for the first time and it’s definitely risky business!

Further, if you try to beat the clock and end up failing (i.e missing a deadline or delivering a poor quality product), it’s likely you’ll lose the customer involved for good. But if you politely decline and continue to nurture the relationship, you still have the opportunity to secure repeat business down the road.

It’s always painful to turn down work, but discernment and patience are key to long-term success. Trust that there will be other opportunities!

Always Build In A Buffer

When you do say yes, be realistic. Building in a buffer might mean not “wowing” the client with a super-fast turnaround, but it performs the dual role of managing customer expectations and giving you a window of opportunity to correct course if things go awry.

In this particular scenario, a built-in buffer would have allowed us to re-make the bags and deliver the order as planned. Discarding a batch of inventory is still a waste of time, money, and resources; however, the result is certainly less painful, as the customer’s total payment is likely to cover the cost of a second run. In our case we would have broken even, a much preferred outcome!

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