After recently watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory reminded me of a classic case of forgotten competition, customers make it themselves. The beginning of the episode feature Sheldon folding his clothes with a shirt folder similar to the Flip Fold Shirt Folder available at Nu-Era.

I really like this product because I find folding laundry to be tedious and the end result is never as nice as when you go into the store. But before I spend $19.75 plus shipping to get a plastic one, I might just as easily embark on building my own. Without dimensions, trying this might be difficult but that is not the issue anymore.

While I find the music abnoxious, the plans are there to make your own.  This does not necessarily mean that customers will make their own gizmo that is your invention, but they make something that works to fulfill their need.  To know if this is the case, talk to customers about the problem and find out what their existing solution is.  If it is a homemade version, your job is to provide value beyond their homemade version.  Also remember that the customer may actually enjoy building their own solution, so the value of not having to build it is actually a negative.

Research is very difficult.  It can take days to sift through the internet just to make sure that there isn’t another product just like your idea online.  Once you are fairly sure that right now (something could always pop-up tomorrow) there is nothing like it, you widen the net.  Eventually you will find some similar products, but they are different, inadequate and off point.  Having competition is not bad, but they need to be carefully analyzed.  Is the competition a success?  Probably not (because you didn’t find them off the bat), so the important question is WHY?

I found something interesting on Inventorspot, a website that shows new products.  Behold SleepPhones in Fleece

As someone who did a project in the past involving the sleep assistance (audio visual and other) I thought this was interesting. Some of us do listen to music while falling asleep and some of us worry about being strangled by the wire of a set of headphones.

This inventor could have spent days searching for headphones in headbands and probably found several athletic applications. I wonder if the inventor widened the net? Widdening the net can be very hard, how can I take incremental steps backward from my invention towards the issue and find other competition?  A quick keyword brainstorm delivers: sleep audio (mind machines, sleeping cds) sleep speakers and ahh on my second thought I found something interesting / threatening at least worth looking into. This brainstorm was not technology focused (although you should do one of those too) instead it was problem, customer and market focused.

We found: Sleep Therapy Pillow

LESSONS:

1. I am not saying the headband will fail because of the pillow. I am saying that finding competition can be easier if you start taking the customers perspective. Both products solve the issue of being strangled while sleeping, so from a customers perspective they are direct competition.

2. Competition like the pillow whether direct or indirect need to be thoroughly analyzed.  How long has the pillow been on sale, how many have they sold, what is their growth like, where are they being sold?  Think of all of the competitive products that are inadequate (not saying pillow or headphones are) as market trials of a prototype, the only issue is that you are not privey to the specific data (although with a few phone calls you might get some of them).

3. Lean from your analysis.  If the pillows aren’t being sold there maybe several reasons.  One reason that you should not ignore is the problem isn’t very prevalent and severe.  It might be that the marketing effort was weak, so how would you do it better?  Was the price too high, how does your price point compare (pillow $50, headband $60)?

4. When I was inventing, I practically lived on the internet.  Searching for new competition, market data, technical breakthroughs can essentially eat up a year.  It is important to take steps back from the data (search results) and do the analysis.

This is a continuation of our previous post, “So I’ve Got A Great Idea, Now What? Part 1″ If you haven’t read it, please do as this post follows those previous steps. Don’t forget to USE YOUR NOTEBOOK.

If you have completed the last step you should have some similar patents. Read through the claims they are the most important part. Although the drawings help identify what the product is, the drawings are not defensible in a utility patent. As you move forward in the development, these patents will help a professional do a patent search, usually for around $500-$1000.

You know who the competition is, now find out everything about them.  Internet research can teach you about the company, their product offerings and what industries / applications they are focusing on.  You also need to know how their product works.  Buy the competitive products and evaluate them for your need.  Take them apart, examine how they were made, what technology to they use, a lot of questions can be answered by this process.  This can be expensive, especially if your product competes in the few hundred dollars price range.  If you wanted a cheap adventure, get a library card and start reading all the books.  Product development, even if you are bootstrapping requires investment. On one project I bought ten competitive products and spent $500 out of my own pocket. Hopefully when you get investment, like I did, those costs get reimbursed.  Plus “standing on the shoulders of giant’s” is a lot cheaper and easier than “reinventing the wheel”.

Now dive into the market. Uncover demand for your product. Having close (but not as good) competition helps, but you need to know the statistics. How many people need your product (total market), how large is the need for your product (market pain), how is your market growing? These three factors indicate the market potential, and directly correlate to the potential success of your invention.

Now that you know what the competition is, what the market wants and what patents are out there, you can start to define your product. Brainstorm the top 10 of 15 features that your product needs FROM THE CUSTOMER’S PERSPECTIVE.  Let it all pour out.  An example is on our PaperPro Part 2 post. Don’t over think the product goals initially, just put them all down on paper. Then go through and prioritize them. Then isolate the critical components, these are often the top 5. Use these as your T5+2, (we have a post about how to use the T5+2).

Sketch out a few concepts that incorporate your top critical product components. Don’t spent too much time on this because it will change dramatically, but get your ideas down on your notebook.  Now things are about to get very interesting.

You are drinking coffee or having lunch and a ‘spark of invention’ hits you.  A burst of energy starts to take over your mind as you try and wrap your mind around all of the different characteristics and ideas for your great idea.  Of course you would love to take the rest of the day off and try to figure some things out, but we all have existing commitments.  So what do you do?  How do you document your ‘spark of invention’?  What are the first steps of an idea?

1.  Write it down!  I suggest using anything at first, a pad of paper or a post-it note.  You don’t want to forget your great idea throughout the day.  By putting your idea to paper, you allow your brain to move on from what you have ‘figured’ out and onto other aspects of the idea.

So now it has been a little bit and you still love your idea.  You have been thinking about it day and night.  It is time to upgrade your ‘write it down’ status.  You can use any bound notebook, cheap or nice.  I prefer something in the middle, around $10.  If this is something you are going to pursue, the notebook will become a bible of sorts and I always thought that a nice one was worth it.  Date, number and sign each page.  Don’t skip pages.  Don’t hold back, its time to do a complete brain dump into your new invention notebook.  As you go through your initial invention analysis record everything in your notebook, all your findings, processes and idea enhancements.

2. Google it-  Unfortunately the possibility exists that someone else has had the exact revelation that you have.  Google is your tool for finding that out.  Search for a few different keyword sets that describe your invention and go through lots of search results to make sure it isn’t buried in someone’s website.

3. Competition – Hopefully from your extensive Google search, you have a good idea of who / what  your competition is.  Competition is good.  It proves the market existence, demonstrates demand levels, showcases acceptable price points and can be great evidence as to why your product provides value to the customer (at least more than the competition).

4.  Patent Search – An in depth patent search by a non-patent agent can take weeks.  I would start asap.  A lot of this time is analyzing the claims.  Several different strategies exist, including keyword search, classifications and references cited.  Be sure to search at several different locations.  Google patent is pretty good, and is getting better all the time.  Search patent applications, the Japan Patent Office
and use the guides at the USPTO. Once you find a few relevant patents I like to use patent to pdf to get pdf versions of the patent.

More steps to come… Don’t worry we will help you build your idea into a commercial product, but work on these steps for now!

Disclaimer- We are not IP attorney’s, patent agents or tech transfer experts.  This is an explaination of a process that we have used as independant and corporate inventors prior to forming flashpoint development.