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Ash Monga joins the show talking about how to custom design your own Amazon Products.
Ash is from Imex Sourcing Services and been in China for last 7 years helping people get product from China with finding factories, background checks and logistics working with e-commerce sellers
The product is called the ‘deck hook’ and allows you to carry any skateboard on any backpack.
Before the product you had to buy a skateboard backpack at $80 to $250
This product is priced at $35 and works with any skateboard and backpack so very versatile.
Basic Design – How to Design your own Amazon Products
- Robert Simpson is Ash’s partner and came up with the concept
- He drew it up on paper
- Ash went to a CAD designer and got it made up
- He went to a professor at his college to create his prototype
- From there it came to Ash and made it
CAD person needed
- Much easier to find someone on Upwork that knows how to design your own Amazon products from a CAD perspective
- If you want to work closely with the designer then it’s a bit harder
- You can find them pretty easily but they specialise in certain industries (like furniture)
Iterations
- Once we developed the prototype it was not a complex product
- First version of CAD design and then went to prototype
- Then relied on the prototype and went to the manufacturers
Prototyping
- It was made out of metal and the angles are quite specific
- Was some basic metalwork only needed on this
- Used fedlock a magnetic part to hold the straps together
- In-house prototyping for this product
Seeking a Factory
- Ash’s background is heavily in sourcing
- Got hold of the sample
- Went to factories that we’ve worked with before that we know would be good at new product development
- Hard to get factories on-board as it breaks their mass production model
- New products can face pressure from factories
- We had worked with them before so some trust already built
Costs
- Less than $5k for the whole thing to get to production prototype with CAD, Professor and Prototyping in factory
- A good sign for new Amazon Sellers to make new products
Best Approach for a New Person wanting to know How to Design your Own Amazon Products
- Know you market really well and what the pain points are – single most important factor
- You don’t need a sophisticated product but it does need to fix a pain point for a sizeable market
- Choice of materials can influence cost
- Think 3 steps forward on what the end product would look like and work backwards
- How can I simplify manufacturing and use more cost effective materials
- Good idea to get your supplier on early and explain you have a vision for a very similar product and are looking to add a couple of features
- What’s the lowest cost methods to create a new iteration of an existing product
Patents
- Were unsure about whether to go for one or not
- Low cost strategy for a provisional patent for upto 12 months
- You can after 12 months file for a full patent which is more expensive
- Provisional
- Lawyer spends a little time to document what your product is not in too much detail
- Full patent
- We went for it about 2 months before the provisional expired
- It was out biggest expense
- Was worth it to defend the product in the future in many marketplaces
- Unless you are really sure it’s probably not worth spending on it as if Apple and Samsung can’t them why do it
- The patent does carry weight with Amazon and protection though
Kickstarter
- Went to get funds on Kickstarter
- Outsourced the pre and campaign management to a company that specializes in crowdfunding
- They did a pre-campaign to establish if there is enough interest in the product in the market
- Ran FB ads to a landing page to test interest
- With enough pre-interest in the campaign then agreed to go ahead with a full campaign
- A lot of people do the Kickstarter to fund the first round of production
- Ash’s primary goal was to get market validation rather than funds
- Goal was to raise $20k (within the first 3 days) but they raised $60k in total!
Keywords
- You’ve developed a new product and you need to get it on Amazon
- New to Amazon so no keywords and no search volume to rank
- Ash is currently relying on PPC campaigns
- Next step is to setup Amazon accounts and targeting and keywords
- Would target keywords that relate to competing products like “backpack for skateboards”
- Neighbouring keywords would be targeted
- Do a deep dive into AMS with some product ads running for information analysis
Influencer Campaigns too
- Sent a number of product to YouTuber influencers and the videos started coming in that really helped the campaign
