Oren John has worked and consulted in product development for several years. Not one to gatekeep, he openly shares everything he’s learned so you can benefit and launch the next great product.
1) Inspo For Days
Have no idea where to start? Take a look at Thing Testing! This platform is ripe with new products from brands seeking reviews and feedback so they can iterate and improve. Oren likes to look at the pain points - not because he’s a sadist, but because he’s interested in finding solutions. Discovering what’s wrong with a product lets you create a new product that solves that specific pain point. It’s a great place to find ideas for your next great new product.
2) Tools For Product Research
Product research is so important! Oren suggests a mix of free and paid tools to investigate how your new idea could fit into the market:
Google Trends: A free tool where you can search for a term and see how it’s been trending over time. You can also take a look at the search trends geographically, which might be helpful or relevant based on your product idea.
Helium 10: A paid tool that tells you what’s been happening on Amazon: what people are selling, keywords being searched for, and if there's an opportunity on Amazon for your product idea.
Pinterest Trends: Similar to Google Trends, but specific to Pinterest. You get to discover the trends your audience is searching for, and on a granular month-to-month level.
AnswerThePublic: A paid tool that tells you what people are asking about by listening to autocomplete data from search engines like Google to figure out what people are adding to their search terms for a type of product. For example, a “protein powder keto” search might tip you off that people are looking for a keto-friendly protein powder you can corner the market on.
Ahrefs:A paid tool that shows you SEO opportunities of how hard it would be to rank for specific keywords, then gives you ideas for some keywords that would work in your niche. Once you’ve got some ideas for the category you’d like to work in, you can figure out what opportunities there are on different platforms like Amazon, TikTok, or otherwise. You might have the opportunity to build your brand on one specific platform that hasn’t been dominated yet.
3)How to Find the Right Factory For Your Project
You want a manufacturer for your product outside of the USA that’s not based in China? Check out Europages! You can search for a particular product (handbags, for example), and you can see the profiles for manufacturers of those items. With a robust database of manufacturers and information about which are the most viewed in your category, you can make an informed choice for who will make your sweet new product.
If you’re looking for a manufacturer in China, Alibaba.com has a variety of registered manufacturers available for any product you can dream up. You’re able to see a list of the top manufacturers, best-selling products, and get started with a sample run of a new product design before going into full production.
To keep manufacturing in the USA, you can also check out ThomasNet.com, which has a full database of US manufacturers you can contact for your project. Read this article that describes how to find a manufacturer in the USA.
4) Mistakes People Make when Launching a New Brand
Here’s a list of things you’ll want to avoid doing:
Going with the first quote: so many brands end up finding a manufacturer and going with the first quote that comes along instead of shopping around for different options. There will definitely be a range of price differences and also quality of service you’ll want to take into account before making your final choice for who gets the privilege of making your product. This decision can be made easier by using a platform like Pietra that has multiple vetted suppliers available to compare and evaluate, so you can feel confident you’re getting exactly what you’re looking for at the right price.
Not sweating the small stuff: Don’t forget about the tags, boxes, labels, business cards, and everything else that goes into building out a brand. Every little piece goes into customer experience, and all of it is important for the vibe of the company.
Cash money, honey: Most entrepreneurs just want to launch a product and see what happens (guilty!). But it’s important to manage expectations and understand your cash flow. How much you’re spending versus when money is coming in is important to manage both in the short term as well as expected future growth.
Searching, searching: What happens when someone searches for your brand name? Are you showing up on Google, Amazon, and social media? If the answer is ‘no’, figure out how to make that a ‘yes’ before launching your product.
She doesn’t even go here: You have to build an audience before launching a product. You should be building an audience in your target market whether by curating content or building your personal brand. That way, when you’re ready to launch that product, you’ve already got your target market ready to lap it up.
5) Materials to Avoid Using
When it comes to fashion brands, many have tried to switch production to feature trendy fabrics that sound environmentally friendly or of higher quality, but in fact they’re worse for the environment! There are a few materials you’ll want to avoid when starting a fashion brand and why:
Bamboo: the process of converting bamboo to rayon actually releases a ton of chemicals which means it’s not as ecofriendly of a material as you’d think, even though it sounds cool
“Wrinkle-Free” fabrics and clothing: while it might sound like a great value proposition for the product, the process to make fabric wrinkle-free includes the use of formaldehyde, which is a chemical nobody wants near their body. Come on, now.
New Polyester and Nylon: making these fabrics now just has a really bad impact on the environment. If you want to use these fabrics in your product, look for recycled Nylon and Polyester to mitigate that impact.
What should you use, then? Look to hemp or linen. With four times the strength of cotton, hemp fabric will hold up better in the wash. Hemp also resists bacterial growth and breathes well. Linen is also very strong and naturally moth-resistant. It’s breathable and highly absorbent because linen fibers are hollow. Since linen is made from flax plant fibres, it’s fully biodegradable when untreated.
6) How to Position Your Product as Luxury
It’s not enough these days to toss a luxury price tag on an item and expect people to pay up. You need to show the consumer why your product commands the price you set by telling your story. This might include a timelapse of your product’s creation so everyone can see just how much work goes into it, or a thorough description of your materials and values.
7) Short-form Video Strategy For Your Brand
Everyone has a short attention span these days, and platforms like TikTok have forced Instagram/Facebook to prioritize video content over static media. This means you just have to document everything. Packing up an order? Take a video. Hand-making a product? Take a video. Taking photos? More video. Fashion brand Broken Planet Market had a multi-photo post on Instagram that garnered over 53,000 likes. The behind-the-scenes video for this shoot had over 4 million views on TikTok. Understanding the where and how of short-form video for your brand is the key to success in 2023.
8) Packaging Design to Make Your Product Stand Out
With so much competition, great packaging can be the reason your product gets recognized on the shelf and picked up first. Here are a few packaging designs that Oren thinks are awesome:
Motor oil cans: the incongruity of a normal substance inside an oil can is just pleasing for some reason.
Home Compostable: the Mr. Bailey x adidas collab featured packaging that was made of mushrooms and able to be composted right at home, which is such a unique and attractive feature.
Encased in acrylic: Beautiful product design and display option for a product with a long shelf life.
One-of-a-kind Crates: Off-White’s Paperwork unboxing is an event: featuring lightweight, recyclable mono-material, the package itself is as much a part of the experience as the product. When you create an experience that people want to share online, the user-generated content from unboxing can take it to the next level.
Blister packs: there’s something inherently satisfying when all of the items fit just right, and Glossier accomplished this in their more recent packaging. Another important note is how they listened to customer feedback to change their packaging to something a little more sustainable than its formerly signature pink bubble wrap pouches.
Clear packaging: Oren says he’s a sucker for anything in clear packaging, and so are we. And by we, I mean everyone. Do you agree?
9) Using AI in Your Workflow to get Product Inspiration
AI seems to dominate every conversation these days, and Oren thinks there’s a place for it in product design, but mostly to get product inspiration. For example, the Patagonia x IKEA AI generated “collab” by Eric Groza featured some pretty cool-looking product designs that went viral. While you can come up with compelling designs using AI, what’s often missing is explaining to AI how materials can be used, what constraints exist, and whether or not a product can actually be created. We’re currently in a hype cycle of tossing together existing brands to see what pops up. The real change will come when we train AI by describing products in a way manufacturers can understand. The brief becomes the future. So do you think you can succeed at being a product designer, or can you be an AI product designer by mastering how to write a brief that AI will understand? Only time will tell…
Want to hear more from Oren John? Follow him on Twitter or TikTok! He’s always posting videos that will inspire you to create the next great product.
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