What Makes a Great Product?
by Darren Ashby

The slinky, Lego's, the PC, silly putty, weed eaters, Velcro, cell phones, and the microwave, the list of killer products is endless. So how do you go about designing a great product? What makes a product successful? (Believe me, the list of great ideas that never went anywhere is much larger.) I thought I might jot down some pointers on how great products come into existence.

The Idea
Usually the core of a great product addresses a need or desire. The more people that share the same need or desire, the more success potential an idea has. Here is a real live example. My car windows are always frosty during the winter here in Logan, Utah. I don't have the patience to start my car early and wait for the defroster to clean the window, so I scrape. Scraping is not much fun, and last year I had a great idea for an invention. Why not put a heater in the windshield washer fluid so I could have a quickly defrosted window without having to scrape? I am sure there are other people like me who would want this product.

Let's evaluate this for a second: first you need to own a car. That limits the market to Canada, the U.S., and Europe. It has to get cold enough to frost your windows where you live. There goes half the US. You can't afford to park your car in a garage, and that eliminates a bunch of people. Now I figure that Canadians like to scrape, knocking off another large part of the market. So will this idea make me a million? Probably not, if I worked hard enough at it, it might generate a decent income for a short while though. Compare that to the market of the weed eater (string trimmer to be more correct). When George C. Ballas stuck some twine in an old tin can and spun it on his electric drill, he was addressing a need that many a man felt. Not only did it chop those pesky weeds, it involved a motor as well. Here is a picture.

His market was anyone that had ever wished for an easier way to trim those hard to reach places in his lawn. To top it off, it also stroked the male ego. I think it had a larger success potential than my defroster idea, don't you? Notice that I said potential. There is a lot more needed to make a product a success.

Design
The product needs to work well. This means the design needs to do what the customer expects from it. If everyone sends the product back it won't be a success for long. There is one all too evident exception to this rule—Microsoft software. Sometimes people will deal with Glaring Product Faults (also known as GPFs) if that is the only game in town. And you can't send it back because you clicked "I accept"on the 40 page EULA that no one reads, which prohibited you from even taking Bill's name in vain, let alone returning a product.

Ever since the 1950's, industrial designers have convinced the consumer that you can have a functional product that looks good as well. There are successful ugly products out there, but if they looked good they would be even more successful. Have you ever said, "That's a sweet little package," in reference to something other than the opposite sex?

Timing
Ahhhh timing... It is as important in launching a product as it is in telling a joke. I don't think the weed eater would have sold before America moved into the suburbs and the lawn wars began. The slinky wouldn't have made it very far if it came after the Nintendo. The company where I work had an idea that is changing our market place today. It has been featured on some 30 different news channels. It's a raging success, but this is the third time we have tried to sell it. The first two times were utter failures. It needed the Internet as a global community to be a success, the idea is over 7 years old, and the Internet community just wasn't there the first time. Timing is important.

Funding
It takes a million to make a million, right? This is usually the case, unless you listen to late night TV, and if you believe that stuff I have in a book on how to get a perfect stranger to give you 50 bucks. I will send it to you for only 49.95 (plus shipping and handling).

I think that funding is one of the things that stop more great products from coming into being than most other reasons combined. You have to take some type of financial risk. One way is the OPM method: use Other Peoples Money. Unfortunately it takes a smooth talker to get other people to part with their money. So you may have to run up your credit card, or go deep into your savings. There are many ways to get the money, but it will cost money to get your idea to market.

Marketing
You have to sell your product. No one will buy a product that isn't sold. That takes marketing. 'Nuff said.

Conclusion
So will you be the next Bill Gates? Just think of a product that everyone wants, even if it doesn't work well. Get a couple of rich relatives to put in a good word and pitch in a few bucks, and who knows, if your timing is right it just might happen. If not, I still have that book for sale :).

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