Custom Design Your Own Amazon Products Part 4

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Chris Davy joins us from Miami to talk about how to design your own amazon products. Chris is based in China and works closely with the factory…

How to Start the Process

Chris totally design it himself
Looked on Amazon and saw products selling well but were rubbish
Chris thought he could do better
Wanted this to fit ‘perfectly’ for the headphones he was designing the bag for
He was measuring and translating those measurements into the design
The tolerances and thickness/thinness of the materials was important from the supplier
Chris got a huge amount of information from the supplier that helped him out

Was hard and didn’t use 3D printing back then
So he created the drawing and went back and forth with the supplier before ordering the tool (mould)
Luckily it turned out great
The mould was one part of the development
The zips, colours, inner tabs, the fob for the zip – there was a lot of development just on the bag

Reading through the reviews on Amazon there were a lot of complaints about the zip
Chris specified he wanted YKK zips on the product as they are really high quality
Added an extra 5 days to the production for these great zips and only 20c more expensive
Factory asked if they wanted the genuine of copy YKK zips

Wanted 5 colours so used PANTONE colours to select the colours and maintain colour references
Created a powerpoint document with all the drawings, colour references, zip references, the tab on the zip was moulded from rubber in three colours and company logo
The label inside was designed and embroidered
A cardboard wrap around the products and then it went into a bag

But all the elements above show how complex that can be to design your own Amazon products
Managed all this complexity through two development meeting AT THE FACTORY
Doing these meetings they saved 3 – 6 months design time
Sketched out on the whiteboard in-front of the factory staff and went to lunch
Came back from lunch and they had made a prototype handle for his product
He tweaked it a little bit and 30 mins later they had a new prototype
Saved weeks of time over doing this away from the factory

Matching colours can cause some issues when you design your own Amazon products
Gave them the Pantone colours
Their suppliers gave ‘nearest’ colours to the Pantones but not quite right
Made a compromise as it was a huge 1,000 meters of material to GUARANTEE colours as an order that would have made 10,000 bags – too big
Went around the suppliers and got the closest they could from ‘off-the-shelf’ materials in colours

Did some work on the final bill of materials but didn’t do this until later in the process
Chris made some changes in-flight that increased some costs in design

Chris had a run-in with a factory around his mould that he’d paid for with a supplier
They told him they didn’t want to make his product anymore
He asked for his tool back from the factory and they wouldn’t give it back to him
Was a $200 tooling so he didn’t think too much about it
This was a product they were already making
The new factory tried to make a new mould off the product but wasn’t quite right
Chris tried to get it back from the original factory but no joy
He went to the Megashow and saw his old supplier there – he walked up to the Boss there and asked for his mould back
The stand had several new customers there so the Boss took Chris to one side
Chris THEN noticed that they had HIS product that they said they couldn’t/wouldn’t make actually there on their stand
They had signed a non-disclosure agreement with him for this product too so a major faux-pax
So Chris started getting annoyed and complained about his IP
Had an argument in the middle of the exhibition asking for his tool back
Said he goes to lots of exhibitions and he said he’d come around all their exhibitions and complain to new customers about this
They gave his tool back the next morning!

Have a contract to define who owns the tool
In China make sure it is in Chinese – English and chinese to be lawful
Factories will say they will roll in the tool cost into the product cost which will mean you’ll find that they say the tool is not paid for when you try to get it back
Do not incorporate the tool cost into the unit cost – keep it separate
The tool belongs to you and engrave into the tool that it belongs to your company name

Chris did the inspections himself as he’s in China
He tested the samples they made and photographed any things he didn’t like and wanted to change
Also photographed the key points that were important and critical such as dimensions
Sent thee in an inspection document that detailed what material samples had been approved
Factory gave them a sample of the materials as colour was important to Chris
They cut the sample in half, signed and dated it and sent it back to the Factory in a black envelope to protect the sample from UV light damage altering the colour (need to keep your references)
They keep one lot in their factory and we keep one in our office
When we go to inspect it – Chris takes his samples and checks the references against their product run samples
This Inspection document is a growing document as the production runs continue

Chris tries to develop the simplest product that he can think of
Something that uses only one tool ideally
He spoke to a guy who had a product that was made from 4 moulds
Each mould is a risk and Chris could see that it could be made in one mould reducing the risk
Brainstorm on a piece of paper everything you can think of about that product to cover everything
There will be things you forget so get it all out of your head and onto a page
Using paper is perfect – excel, powerpoint just didn’t work as well
Chris created a Mood Board for his product too – with the zip, colour, tabs, all off pics on Amazon to show how he wanted it to look