Do you feel like you have worked so hard to move your invention along, and now you are just stuck? Do you just need some guidance as to where to go from here?

This newsletter series will help you to understand the normal progression of the invention process, while helping you figure out where you are and what you need to do in order to move forward.
The steps are going to be broken down into four phases:

Phase One: Research

Phase Two: Development & Realization

Phase Three: Presentation Material

Phase Four: Pitching to Companies

Each week our newsletter will cover another phase in this process, explaining each step and what should be completed before you move on to the next step. Last week’s newsletter covered development and realization of your product. This week will explain creating professional material and generating interest in your patent.
Time and/or money spent on each step will also be explained, so you know what to expect. In some cases, you may be able to do things on your own, but you should expect it to take more time because you are saving money. When paying for services, you are paying other people to do them for you, so your time spent should be significantly decreased.

Phase Two: Steps 8-9

Step Eight: Creation of Professional Presentation

Time: 40-60 Hours

Money: $1,600-$10,500
It doesn’t matter how great your product is, a professional presentation of the product is necessary. The following documents are not recommendations; they are a must if you are looking to license or sell your product. Preparing the documents in advance will keep you from losing credibility through either explaining that you don’t have material to send or by saying “oh sure” and throwing something together at the last minute. The materials need to be well written, factually based, and organized in a logical manner.
The following documents should express your products value, your professionalism, and your credibility.

• Pitch Letter
  • • How you came up with the invention.
    • How successful you think it will be.
    • What your friend Joe thinks about your product.
    • Anything regarding money. (How much you have spent so far, how much you think it is worth, how much you are asking for it.)
    • A full explanation of the product and its history.
    • Your reason for contacting the company.
    • Your product’s name and purpose.
    • Your contact information.
    • Credibility factors

  A pitch letter is intended to help you make contact with someone. It should be short and to the point. This is simply an introduction to you and your product. You are trying to find out if the company has any interest, and essentially lure them in to ask for more information about your product.
  Exclude information such as:
  Include information such as:

• Briefing Document
  • • Remind the person of when they heard from you, or when they asked for more information.
    • Explain your objective. What are you looking to do with your patent? Leave out specific numbers at this point.
    • Include only pertinent details.
    • Briefly explain your product’s history. Where is your product currently? Are you already in production? Are you currently selling? How are you selling it? How many units have you sold in the past year?
    • Your contact information should be included.

  A briefing document is exactly what it sounds like… a brief explanation of your product. It should be no longer than a page, and should be sent to someone asking for more information about your product after receiving the pitch letter, or hearing about your product.

• Pitchbook
  • • Product Profile
      • Include product description, benefits, features, and design.
    • Target Audience
      • From your market research, explain the ideal person who would purchase your product.
    • Competition
      • This will be a direct write-up from your market research.
    • Manufacturing Quotes & Drawings
      • After working with an engineer, you should know how much it will cost to manufacture your product, and also have manufacturing ready drawings to show interested parties.
    • Contact Information
      • Phone number, Mailing Address, Email, Website

  The majority of this information will be found in your market research. In the Pitchbook, you will take information that you learned through market research and explain how it affects the potential success of your product.

• PPT
  A PowerPoint presentation will be extremely valuable to have on hand. Most business people prefer to start conversations via email, and you want to have material in a digital format that is ready to be sent. The presentation should be a maximum of 15 slides. Use bullet point sentences to express the information in your Pitchbook.
• Press Release
  A press release is written with the intention of getting an editor at a publication to write a story based on your press release. In order to get your story published, it needs to be professional, and in the exact way that the publication wants to receive it. If published, the final story is a great way to show potential investors, buyer, and licensors that the public is interested in your product.
  Contact the publication and find out how they prefer to receive your press release.
• Website
  Having a website for people to use as a reference is not a requirement, but it should be a goal. Through having a website, if someone looses your material or doesn’t have it available, they are always able to access information about your product.

Step Nine: Create Business Proposal
Time: 20-40 Hours

Money: $1,000-$2,500
A business proposal is essential to securing a sales or licensing agreement. It is unwise and unrealistic to expect a company or individual to come up with an offer when you are contacting them. For example, would you try to put your house on the market with no asking price and simply ask potential buyers to make you an offer? Most likely, you would not. Doing so would only prolong the process and would turn many potential buyers away. People like to validate a price, they do not care to come up with one. It is easier to qualify a price than to establish one.
Take the time to create a proper business proposal. The proposal should include each of the following elements:

1. Licensing Stipulations (Exclusivity, Non-Exclusivity, Term, Renewal)
2. Royalty % and basis you are proposing
3. Down Payment Request

Your business proposal should be based on your market research and justifiable given the products profit margins, potential sales, and any comparable deals.
Next week’s newsletter will cover contacting companies and signing a deal.
For more information about phase three, please feel free to email me at: Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com

Recommended Service Providers and Resources for Phase Three:

• Product Development Co - Professional Presentation Material
• IdeaBuyer.com - Patent Promotion to Companies

Recommended Service Providers and Resources for Phase Two:

• VallMar Studios LLC – Engineering, Prototypes, CAD
• Legal Zoom – Provisional Patents, Trademarks & Copyrights
• Patent Help Now Articles: “Choosing a Patent Attorney”

Recommended Service Providers and Resources for Phase One:

• Product Development Co – Market Research & Product Design
• Patent Help Now Articles – “Searching for Issued Patents”

Lindsey Yeauger is the Product Marketing Director for Idea Buyer LLC, a new product development company that owns and operates IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace for Intellectual Property. The site gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email her at Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com.

Do you feel like you have worked so hard to move your invention along, and now you are just stuck? Do you just need some guidance as to where to go from here?

This newsletter series will help you to understand the normal progression of the invention process, while helping you figure out where you are and what you need to do in order to move forward.

The steps are going to be broken down into four phases:

Phase One: Research

Phase Two: Development & Realization

Phase Three: Presentation Material

Phase Four: Pitching to Companies

Each week our newsletter will cover another phase in this process, explaining each step and what should be completed before you move on to the next step. Last week’s newsletter covered necessary research. This week will discuss the steps to make your product real.

Time and/or money spent on each step will also be explained, so you know what to expect. In some cases, you may be able to do things on your own, but you should expect it to take more time because you are saving money. When paying for services, you are paying other people to do them for you, so your time spent should be significantly decreased.

Phase Two: Steps 4-7

Step Four: Engineered Drawings

Time: 60-150 Hours

Money: $3,000-$12,500

Unless you have the qualifications necessary to create these yourself, I would strongly recommend hiring a professional to help you. With high-quality engineered drawings, your patent will be crystal clear, reducing the chances of someone being able to profit from your idea.

Along with strengthening your patent, an engineer, familiar with developing new products, could help you to make your idea better than what you originally though it could be. By adding a switch here or coming up with a way to make it not need a switch at all, your product could be more successful because you had help from an engineer when developing your product.

Not only do they have experience with new products moving to market and knowing how to make a product market-ready, but experienced engineers know the manufacturing process and can help you to create a product that will be profitable. They have the ability to let you know which materials would be good to use because they cost less, or which design is best because it requires less complex machinery to make it.

The drawings that you receive from an engineer should be manufacturing ready. They are also able to tell you how much it is going to cost to manufacture your product based on the drawings. It is important to make sure that you see examples of their previous work. For around $5,500 you should receive manufacturing ready drawings with detailed images of the product and all of its components.

*Depending on the complexity of your product, your price for drawings will go up, and the opposite may be true for more simplistic products.

Step Five: Determine Manufacturing Costs

Time: 20-50 Hours

Money: $1,000-$5,500

Whether you choose to contact several manufacturers for this information or you have an engineer run the numbers, it is extremely important to know how much it going to cost to make your product real. For those of you who will work with an engineer, make sure to work with someone who will provide you with manufacturing costs based on the drawings.

In order to do this step yourself it will require that you have already worked with an engineer to some capacity and can explain to a manufacturer a detailed description of your materials, machinery necessary, and product components. You will start by contacting small manufacturers that are willing to do custom projects. Provide engineered drawings in order to receive a quick and accurate quote. When they do quote you, ask for the lowest quantity they would produce at a time for you. Also, find out how the costs change as the quantity increases.

Another very important question to ask is what their terms are. You should look for a manufacturer who is willing to provide you with 60-90 day payment terms upon receipt of your product. This will become very important if you decide to sell your product on your own as many retailers pay on 90 day terms. Not having terms lined up with your manufacturer to match your receivables could cause a cash crunch.

* If you feel uncomfortable contacting manufacturers and describing every last detail of your product, then you should work with an engineer. Most new product development engineers will willingly sign an NDA, and your idea will be protected. It is okay to ask manufacturers to sign an NDA, but be prepared that most of them will not.

*Depending on the complexity of your product, your costs for services will go up, and the opposite may be true for more simplistic products.

Step Six: Build Prototype

Time: 10-200 Hours

Money: $500-$15,000

It is crucial that you have a way for people to visually understand how your product works and what it is. This can be accomplished in several ways:

• You can create a working prototype yourself.

  Should you decide to do this, it needs to be done well. The prototype should look and work exactly like the product will, once it is manufactured. Use the same materials. Equip the product with the same components that it will have after production.

  It is important that your prototype is an EXACT replica of the product. During a meeting with a potential buyer, you don’t want to be explaining how the product will be different later.

• An engineer can provide you with 3-D prototype drawings.

  This is a great route to go if you are looking for a professional presentation, but are unable to spend the possible thousands it may cost for a prototype. It is especially a good idea if your product is complex. If you already have engineered drawings, 3-D prototyping is the next step.

• Have a professional build a prototype.

  It is certainly the best way to approach a visual demonstration of your product. The biggest benefit is that it shows an audience that your product CAN be produced, and WILL work. Typically people are more apt to prefer a professionally produced, production-quality prototype that they can hold and utilize.

*For example, think about telling a child about a really neat new toy, and everything that it can do. They may agree, but they will most likely forget about it immediately after the conversation. If you tell the child about the toy while he is playing with it, the chances of him remembering the product will increase significantly.

Step Seven: File for Protection

Time: 20-40 Hours

Money: $400- $12,000

This step is a commitment. If you have gotten this far and still believe after all of your research and development that your idea will be successful and profitable, and then it is time to patent it. The reason that this step is a commitment is because you have already spent a lot of time and money to get this far and it will take more time and more money to get the product to market.

If you do not feel able to make this commitment, or you are questioning some of the reasons to move forward, then wait.

In order to file a patent, you should seek help from a patent attorney who will help you to include everything necessary to make your patent strong. An alternative to filing a full patent is a provisional patent. With a provisional, it is important to work with the patent attorney on the dates. Once you have “patent pending” status you are committing to filing a full patent in 12 months or risk losing your patent rights.

Either route you choose to go, when you file for your patent, you need to have the drive, ambition and resources to run with it.

Once you have completed phases one and two, you will have much better insight if this invention is going to be not only successful, but profitable.

For more information about phase two, please feel free to email me at: Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com

Recommended Service Providers and Resources for Phase Two:

• VallMar Studios LLC – Engineering, Prototypes, CAD
• Legal Zoom – Provisional Patents, Trademarks & Copyrights
• Patent Help Now Articles: “Choosing a Patent Attorney”

Recommended Service Providers and Resources for Phase One:

• Product Development Co – Market Research & Product Design
• Patent Help Now Articles – “Searching for Issued Patents”

Lindsey Yeauger is the Product Marketing Director for Idea Buyer LLC, a new product development company that owns and operates IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace for Intellectual Property. The site gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email her at Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com.

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Need prototyping? 3-D Engineering? Manufacturing Quotes? - Visit http://www.ProductDevelopmentCo.com - The #1 Product Development Company in the Mid West!

Have a question? ASK US!! http://www.ideabuyer.com/askus.php

Do you feel like you have worked so hard to move your invention along, and now you are just stuck? Do you just need some guidance as to where to go from here?

This newsletter series will help you to understand the normal progression of the invention process, while helping you figure out where you are and what you need to do in order to move forward.

The steps are going to be broken down into four phases:

Phase One: Research

Phase Two: Development & Realization

Phase Three: Presentation Material

Phase Four: Pitching to Companies

Each week our newsletter will cover another phase in this process, explaining each step and what should be completed before you move on to the next step. Time and/or money spent on each step will also be explained, so you know what to expect. In some cases, you may be able to do things on your own, but you should expect it to take more time because you are saving money. When paying for services, you are paying other people to do them for you, so your time spent should be significantly decreased.
Phase One

Step One: “Aha!”

You have a great invention. You THINK it will be wildly successful. Before you do anything else, you must conduct research in order to substantiate your feelings with fact.

Step Two: Conduct Research

Time: 30-100 Hours

Money: $750-$6,500

This phase should come almost immediately after the “Aha” moment. While research can seem like a time consuming task, you need to be conducting a very vast amount of research that may seem broad to your product idea. If you feel that you already know everything that you need to know, I ensure you, you do not. Consider it like studying for a midterm, isn’t it always better to be over-prepared and do well, then be under-prepared, fail and wish that you would have done more in the beginning?

* Patent Search-

Start with conducting a patent search. It may seem like no one else has thought of this idea because it’s not on the market, but there may be a patent for the same idea and for several reasons, it never made it to market. Starting with a patent search is going to save you time, money and hassle later.

When searching for a patent, do not specify your idea. Use broad terms related to your idea that will bring you to anything closely related.

* Industry/ Market Research-

Once you have determined whether or not your idea is truly original, determine the best industry for your product to go into. The best way to decide on your industry is to compare it to similar products. Begin with researching the industry in broad terms, getting to be more specific. Your research should leave you with a good understanding of your industry, its major companies, and past, present and anticipated changes.

Example:

“AHA! I have got it! This will change the world! Heated windshield wipers! No one will ever have to worry about their windshield wipers being frozen to their car during the winter again!”

My research will begin with the automotive industry, and then become more specific to automotive accessories.

List of Industry/ Market Research:

+ What is the environment surrounding your product like? How will these things affect your product?

• Economy

• Government

• Technology

+ What is the market defined as? How small/large is it compared to othermarkets?
+ Which companies are controlling the market?
+ What has happened to this industry in the past? Present? Future?

* Competitor Research-

Competition for your product can be direct or indirect. Existing products that consumers are using as a solution to the problem that your product solves will be direct competition. Make sure to be knowledgeable of extensive details for each of your products competitors. Including, ownership, target audience, price points, manufacturers, distributors, and contact information of company executives.

It is also necessary to be well-informed of indirect competition. These products will not necessarily have the same target audience, or may not even solve the same problem. However, a consumer may choose to purchase this product instead of yours.

For example, you have invented a travel toothbrush capable of compacting to an inch tall. Direct competition would be other travel toothbrushes, and indirect competition would be basic toothbrushes. While your toothbrush is convenient, some consumers may choose to just stick with buying a basic toothbrush and toting it around.

* Consumer Research-

There are many things that will affect the way in which a consumer decides whether or not to purchase a product. However, you should be able to anticipate what obstacles your product will face. Know the demographics of the “typical” consumer in your market, along with buying motivations and expectations.

* Product Research-

In order to understand if your product will make money, more research is necessary. A guesstimate of manufacturing costs can be made by figuring out the materials needed to make your product and roughly how much they cost (you should get a detailed estimate of manufacturing costs later).

Based on direct and indirect competition currently on the market, you should be able to determine roughly what your product would sell for. After some math, it should be evident whether or not the product would make a profit.

*If your product uses complicated materials and manufacturing techniques, it will be especially important that you contact an engineer for drawings and cost estimates.

Know which methods your product would be sold best through, a detailed description of who would buy it, and information on manufacturers and retailers that would be a good fit for your product.

Step Three: Evaluate Research

Time: 10-20 Hours

Money: $150-$400

It is extremely important to evaluate your research before you speed on. Many inventors become overly excited about their idea, and run to patent their idea without considering the results of the research. The reason that research is so important is because it will tell you whether or not you should move forward with your idea.

Reasons you should NOT move forward:

o The idea is already patented by someone else.
o The industry is not profitable and is not anticipated to become profitable.
o The sole company involved in your industry, is already selling a product like idea.
o Your product will cost more to make then people are willing to spend to buy it.
o The problem your idea is a solution for, is not a problem most people care about.

Reasons you SHOULD move forward:

o There are few patents related to your idea.
o The industry has grown rapidly and is expected to continue to grow.
o The leading companies in your industry are actively researching and developing new products.
o Manufacturing costs are estimated to be 10% or less of what similar products are selling for.
o Many people have the problem your idea solves. Or, if only some people have the problem, it is a large obstacle that they would greatly spend money on.

Once you have completed step one, you will know if this is the right invention to take to Phase Two.

Next week’s newsletter will cover development and realization of your idea.

For more information or questions about phase one, please feel free to email me at: Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com

Recommended Service Providers and Resources for Phase One:

- Product Development Co – Market Research & Product Design

- Patent Help Now Articles - “Searching for Issued Patents”

Lindsey Yeauger is the Product Marketing Director for Idea Buyer LLC, a new product development company that owns and operates IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace for Intellectual Property. The site gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email her at Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com.

The following video features a new process for creating stem cell contact lenses that have cured 3 cases of blindness so far in less than a month. This is an inspirational innovation in the medical field that focuses on solving a very large and very serious problem.

If you have a new medical invention that you are looking to commercialize, please contact us via email at Contact@IdeaBuyer.com.