How do I decide which new product I should develop?
With small business products and services, and deciding which products to develop, I think you should like the product, and also hopefully, you should know something about the product. One of the mistakes I made early on is, there was a product that I liked, it really was interesting to me, they were butterflies, they were handmade in Germany, and I could get them for maybe a dollar or ninety cents each. I saw some jewelry store and they were selling them for twenty or thirty dollars, so I thought, ‘Wow, I can really do something with this'. However, I didn't know anything about jewelry, nothing, not a thing. So I bought some of these, and it failed, I didn't know what to do with it and didn't know the industry. So, I think that when choosing products to develop; you must want to develop the product; it's something that you like, and something that you know about. Now, beyond that, you can look at what's the potential for this product, does it have a limited potential, a very small market, or a larger market. Is it going to cost me a lot to do this? With some things you have to buy tooling and have tooling made, that's very expensive, so it's big investment. Therefore, you can investigate all of these different factors, and make some kind of a judgment. I mean, starting out with, I like it, I know something about it, what it is going to cost me in time, money and everything else, and finally what the potential is. You want to consider all of those things when choosing your small product to develop.
