Custom Design Your Own Amazon Products Part 1

Richard Morgan
March 5, 2018

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Ivelin joins us to talk about how to design your own Amazon product. An engineer of industrial design, Ivelin has over 100 products on Amazon with 9 x Kickstarter products all designed himself.

Looking at points of differentiation for Sellers and moving up from private labelling someone else’s product to developing and designing your own products is what we’re talking about.

The Clever Kebab product allows you to make 16 Shish-kebabs all at once.

The problem being solved was

There was only one product on Amazon doing this so Ivelin went down the design your own Amazon product route
After checking for patents he saw the patent was expired in 1976
So looked to create a product that was more available nad accessible for Home use
The product out the e was designed for use in restaurants
Ivelin bought the product and analysed it then looked at how he can bring more value
Negative reviews gave a common complaint that the bite-size was very small after cooking
First mode was to make this a bit bigger
Then what else are people using when they use this product?
It was a knife
So Ivelin added a knife sharper to the product too

Brainstorming problems

Ivelin managed to identify six problem he could fix for his target consumers within this one product
Where as the original product solved one problem only
This enabled Ivelin to reach a wider audience and with more problems solved adding great value

Where do you start with Design

Tools used by Ivelin to design your own Amazon product
Read the negative reviews to start with for the information on what people are looking for
Survey as many people as possible for what they like and don’t like in the product
Collect as much info as possible to use in the copy for the product
No software used so far

Industrial Designer

Hire an industrial designer, from Europe this can be cheaper (Eastern Europe is cheaper)
Ivelin hired a guy from Serbia with 20yrs experience and with CAD design skills
He did a 3D model of the idea

How to get the design translated from your head

You have no idea as an Amazon seller and that is fine
Hire someone with the experience to ask you the questions that you don’t know to help you know how to design your own Amazon product
They will help with dimensions, wall thickness, materials, etc

First Prototype

Used CNC machining to cut through the materials
Got a real physical product you can touch and use
Used it in his kitchen and had a few barbeque parties to test the prototype
Had to re-do the prototype a few times to refine the design
Some things you can do with the CNC machine for the prototype can not translate into the end injection moulding
All this info is between you and the designer
You end up with a product that satisfies you and most importantly give it to as many people as possible to get the whole picture

Kickstarter

Next step was to test this product on Kickstarter
Find out if people are willing to spend their money for this product
Friends will all love your product but won’t necessarily buy it, so this step is needed to validate the market

Design Process cost

Costs about USD$500 will suffice to get your 3D design ready to do your first prototype
Prototype can be from $500-$1000
Product dependent and size are key to how you can make it as 3D print is cheaper but means smaller products
You can use styrofoam or wood or modelling paste to make a workable model of that product
Communication with your designer who works with the prototyping companies
They can help you with all of this

Creating Moulds

THis can be very expensive
Big chunk of metal where you drill through the material to make a cavity
More cavities means more expense
Bigger products ost more
Could be $5,000 to $50,000
Clever Kebab product was a three cavity mould and $25,000
This is why Ivelin went to Kickstarter
This enabled Ivelin to get the funds before he made the product

Crowd Funding

By going the crowdfunding route Ivelin was able to leap ahead
Had he gone through the cycle of buying 500 units MoQ, selling those out and then getting the next batch in to grow his profits to the $25,000 necessary
This could have taken years to get there and have his mould
By crowd-funding Ivelin got to his $25,000 much much quicker
He had the money for his first MoQ and Production up-front

Value for the Crowd-funder

People who invested got…
A very different audience
Crowd-funders are willing to give money up-front, even several months, before they receive the product
They get a discounted physical product as a reward for giving their money up-front
They want to be early adopters for these products

Factory

Usually you have a very high minimum order quantity as this is a new custom design product
They will require thousands of copies as running the machine needs a good size run to make it cost effective
Can increase costs especially for you to design your own Amazon product for the first time

Protecting the Mould

You own the mould and in your contract with the Factory you make that clear
Do you take the mould away once the production run is complete
Copying the mould is very expensive, even for a China Factory
Make them sign a non-disclosure and non-compete agreement
Do a design patent which protects what your product looks like, so any copy would need to be modified

Patenting

Three kinds of patent:
- Patent pending
- Utility Patent – functionality
- Design patent – what it looks like, the outside of the product
Patent-pending means you have filed for the utility patent and you have a year to file the whole patent application
It is about $65 to file for a Provisional Patent yourself
Then you have the right to put ‘patent-pending’ on your product
With a pen and paper you can sketch your product and describe your invention and functionality
Put this in the envelope with your application and post to file for protection
For one year this envelope will sit there and not be examined by anyone
During this one year you sell lots of product
You then hire a patent lawyer to draw up the full patent and extend protection for 20 years

Reduce these costs

How can you design your own amazon product with reduced costs
Can you create adjustments to existing products but get a patent on it, or how can we reduce these costs a little?
Moulds can be re-manufactured
Get an existing mould and re-do it a little bit to get a new design
This can be relatively inexpensive and lead to new product that solves another problem increasing its value

Starting smaller

Done 9 successful products but has hundreds of products
Take an existing product and just modify it a little bit or add into the same Mould add another cavity for an add-on to the existing product
Private label sellers want to make adjustments that are cheaper to help with cashflow and make it cost-effective to move to modifying existing moulds from re-badging existing products

Starting with Moulds

Being able to progress to using a mould and manufacturing your own product is the next step for many private label sellers
Start with a small product with a mould that has a single cavity for about $1,000
You get all the advantage of getting a unique product into the market
A one cavity mould is based on how many parts and each part needs a separate cavity
A spoon would be a single cavity with no parts or attachments
A garlic press will be two cavity as both sides of it fit together and you will need to pay for ‘assembly’ now to put it together
We are talking about injection moulding here which is usually used for plastics

Contact Ivelin

Custom design product to design your own Amazon product – rivercleaner.com/demirov
Software is helping Amazon sellers to optimise their listings on ToS and Style Guides with keyword research, tracking and drag and drop emails to make your life on Amazon easier
Algorithm for machine learning on reviews to read thousands of reviews and tell you in a few simple sentences on what you need to revise, modify and improve on the product