As business becomes more globalized, outsourcing product development to China has become an increasingly popular option for overseas entrepreneurs. However, without the right knowledge and connection, outsourcing your product development to Chinese manufacturers can be quite risky and lead to a costly and untimely launch of your product. Before diving into this topic, you can take a quick quiz with the following questions:
- Are you planning to develop your product?
- Have you heard of product development?
- What do you know about product development?
- What appeals to you about developing your own product?
- Will you consider outsourcing your product development to China?
Product development may sound mysterious to a newcomer. Here are the 10 key points every entrepreneur should know before venturing out on this journey.
1. Why Do You Establish Your Product?
Watching other people succeed might make you want that taste of success as well. As an entrepreneur, you may have a great idea and want to put it into action, just like Steve Jobs… Or you just want to improve the quality of your product, make it more user-friendly, or simply add more variety.
In this way, establishing your product can turn your dream into reality.
You may have received a lot of information from friends or online communities, but not all voices are reliable. Before getting your journey of product development started, you really should do some research by yourself.
2. What Is Product Development?
Product development, also known as new product development (NPD), refers to the activity of delivering a new product to market or renewing an existing product.
It supports many different types of products, from physical consumer goods to services, from software to hardware, etc.
3. The Process Of Successful Product Development
Product development includes many aspects and the detailed process may vary from industry to industry, but the basics are mostly the same. There are 10 main stages of product development.
- Making Strategy
Do you want to create a brand-new product or polish the old best-sellers? Do you plan to produce a high-end product at a reasonable price? What is your target market for the new product? Is the new product limited to your current industry? Do you want to explore more possibilities of marketing with the new product?
By considering the factors above you can have a better understanding of product strategies. In fact, making a spot-on and detailed product strategy is the first and most crucial step for establishing your new product. It sets a direction for more clarity on your approach.
- Generating Concepts
Idea generation takes knowledge, creativity, and systematic thinking. There are three keys you should keep in mind, which are the need, the form, and the technology.
If you want to create a new product, you should consider what kind of product will meet the demand of your target markets, which is the “need.” If you think about improving an internal product, you may need to figure out which functions or features can attract more potential customers, which is the form. And both strategies require considering the current technology that brings your vision from an original idea to life.
- Screening Ideas
You have to consistently ask your team and yourself a question, is this a viable product concept? The answers may change as you have more product knowledge and market perspectives.
Only by screening all the ideas you acquire by brainstorming can you stay on your best judgement on the feasibility.
A possible screening sequence could be:
- 20 ideas: Pass/fail screening based on your aspiration and practicality
- 8 ideas: Checklist screening based on market suitability and technical possibility
- 3 ideas: Economic evaluation based on predicted market size, price, and production cost
- 1 final feasible idea
- Design
Design is an important part of innovation that is often overlooked. Generally, it encompasses product design and user interface design. Designers should account for every aspect such as materials, manufacturability, mechanisms, and user experience.
A well-designed product should carefully balance with all the aspects regarding functionality, which determines How it engages with your customers
There are three common types of design:
- Industrial Design
- UI & UX Design
- Packaging Design
- Prototyping
After visualizing, you can have your engineering team make a prototype to show how the final product may work, look, and feel. A prototype is a sample product made to validate your concept and design.
The goal of a prototype is not only to test the appearance and functionality of a product but also to gather feedback from both internal and external parties. Often a minor change of materials or color can significantly generate positive reception from customers.
- Product Testing
Before putting together a final product, you need to pay attention to the testing. At this stage, you should make sure that the prototype works as planned.
If anything goes wrong and needs revising, this is your last chance to do so. Therefore, you should look out for potential errors before mass production.
In addition, you can also check if the product quality can be improved for one last time on par with current technology and manufacturability.
- Mass Production
After validating your products, you can find a trustworthy supplier to get your product manufactured. You can work with your previous suppliers or find a new one with more capabilities to meet your needs. Bear in mind you should always check if a supplier reaches the international standards or if they have any related qualifications to make your product.
Meanwhile, you can also ask your team to do warm-up marketing like launching a coming-soon page.
If you are not sure about the market before your product rolls out response, try crowdfunding on your website to test the water.
- Quality Control
When it comes to product quality, people easily skip this stage. Quality is more than just making a good product. You cannot afford to lose the market already before a new product even gets to be launched.
Normally, there are three types of major quality inspection:
- Pre-Production Inspection (PPI):
- Factory Audit & Verification
- Social Audit
- Pre-Production Inspection
- During Production Inspection (DPI/DUPRO)
- First Article Inspection
- In-Production Quality Control
- Defect Sorting Service
- Pre-Shipment Inspection
- Container Loading Inspection (LS)
- Launching
A product launch is a plan to debut the new products to the market and make them available for purchase. The goal is to ensure your target customers are informed of the new product. Even the marketing team in your company should play a bigger role at this stage. As the business owner, you also need to keep an eye on the whole marketing plan. If you have a small size company and cannot afford to splash out on digital ads, you can try these tactics:
- Introduce the new product on your homepage
- More exposure on your social media platforms
- Send the product launch emails to your subscribers
- Create some blogs with a discount or early bird prices for your subscribers
- Collaborate with influencers to promote your product
- Deliver some samples to target customers for free
- Evaluation
The last step in this methodology is to evaluate the market feedback!
There are several segments on your evaluation list, the most common being:
- Customer Comments
- Sales
- Market Shares
- Profitability
- Current Problems
4. How To Complete The Product Development?
Product development cannot be completed alone. In any company, whether it is an early-stage startup or an established enterprise, product development needs help from every department.
As we mentioned above, even if you can do the marketing on your own, you still need to have designers visualize the product and engineers make the prototype. Of course, you also need to work with a manufacturer to work out your final product.
Each group plays an essential part in the process to define, design, build, test and deliver the product.
Work With China2West
If you want to explore more about product development, stay tuned for part 2.
If you are ready to have your new product developed in China, our team at China2West would love to help. Since 2005 we have been the best partner for businesses in this process. To learn more about how we can help, contact us today!
