advice please,,, i have an idea for a product,,,

[dillydallydolly]

what the heck do i do now???!!

Not sure if this is the right place to post to be honest but gotta start somewhere

thanks in adavance

firstly, you do market research to see whether there is a market for your product.

You do it independently because your friends will say "oh yes that sounds like a great idea" but you perhaps only have ten friends and once they've all bought one (or possibly once you've given them one because they'll expect one for free, they're your friends, after all ) you still have to sell your product to the rest of the market it is intended for.

Once you've done your research you can start looking at designs and a prototype etc, but the key here is to see whether there is a market first because the rest costs money...

so - what's this idea?

oh and you also make sure there isn't already one out there.

Watch Dragon Den repeats, may give you some idea of things to do... such as Patent protection, finding a manufacturer, finding a distributor.

Try to watch High Street Dreams - think one episode is still on iPlayer. They help small companies get a product to the point of being presented to a store buyer.

As wannaBe says... do lots of research. Look at where the product fits in the market, who would buy it, how much would they pay, now long do they expect it to last, these days you also need to think about what happens at the end of it's life... can it be broken down into components easily for recycling?

Profitability - it needs to cost probably no more than about 40% of the retail price. Lots of things get added between the cost of producing the product to getting it in the hands of the customer. Not sure if my 40% may even be a bit high... maybe aim for 30%-35%.