Texas Women Partner

Archive for the ‘Dallas’ Category

You have an idea and last month we discussed the pros and cons of whether to protect your idea with a patent. Patenting, in a sense, protects your product in case of success. Whether your idea is in your head, on a napkin or has a full prototype built, it is now time to arrive at your cost to determine if you can compete in your category. Before you spend money toward a patent, you should know the cost and what the retail value might be. If the spread between those two numbers is sufficient, you would then have a profitable product.

So, what kind of spread would be sufficient? You will never think to include all of the costs involved in this endeavor so always build in a cushion. As a general rule of thumb, think about:

• How will it be sold and how will it get to the consumer?
• Are there many levels of price commissions in between?
• Will you sell it yourself, will you have a salesperson; will you hire an outside rep; will you sell directly to retail; will you sell through the web, on TV, to small retailers or Big Box?

All of these avenues will need to be considered.

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The Idea

It was the summer of 2004 and the Texas heat was radiating into orbit reminding me it was weather for a great summer tan. For a moment, my mind journeyed back to my teenage years on the front porch step, a skinny sliver of concrete just long enough for my body where I sought the sun’s rays between 11 AM and noon for my weekly burn and peel. Slathered with iodine and baby oil, I turned like a lobster on a spit; my body never really got very brown.

Having finally grown up, I don’t seek to tan that way anymore but there were few options at the time and there was no such thing as a spray tanner. From there, I tried Coppertone in the early days and followed the progression of sunless tanners for years so I know I am a tanning guru.  Sunless tanning formulations have continued to improve and now more than ever, it’s the smart thing to do.  It was an annoyance not to be able to reach the back part of my body so I decided about 4 years ago to solve that problem. Out of my own personal need and the thought that other sunless tanners have the same problem, I had the IDEA!  I began to formulate plans for a plastic injected mold for a wand that would house a spray tanner aerosol to give just enough extension to reach the back side of the body when applying a sunless tan.  The SheerTan Wand and companion Sunless Tanning Aerosol began its existence.

Do you have a novel or technically sound idea you want to develop into an E-business website? From idea creation, there are many steps to final execution to consider and analyze.  In each of the following 12 months, I will discuss subjects you should consider when building your E-Business strategy.  To begin, I will focus on product creation E-Businesses.

• Does your product provide an unmet consumer need?
• Can you make it so the cost can have a number of mark-ups and still be competitive at retail?
• Does it appeal to a broad audience?
• If it is a niche market, do you have the expertise to have ‘a following community’?
• Ideas have no value – execution and proven product salability has value.
• Count on idea to execution costing more than 5 times your first estimate.

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