Episode 0036 | Crowdfunding Prototypes & Mass-Production

In this episode, we’re going to familiarize you with the world of prototyping and mass-production, specifically as it relates to crowdfunding. Whom should you contact? How can you best keep your ideas from being stolen? How can you best ensure quality? We’re going to overview all of these topics and more in this episode with our very special guest, Gaston Liang, who is an expert in sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, and logistics. So, let’s get started…

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⭐ During this episode, we detail these takeaways:

 1. Crowdfunding campaigners should develop their concepts into working prototypes before starting to raise funds to mass-produce them.

 2. Creators should ideally patent their ideas, both in their own country and in their manufacturer’s country, before approaching a manufacturer—and should hire manufacturers through an NNN agreement to minimize their risk of their ideas being stolen.

 3. Creators should consider manufacturing in Asia due to lower costs, may use tools like Alibaba or Jungle Scout or in-person visits to explore manufacturing options for their type of product, should avoid profiteering middlemen like sourcing agents, and should consider both communication and trust when choosing among viable options, plus the ability to accommodate unpredictable order sizes during mass-production phase.

 4. Some manufacturers (like The LGG Corp) can help creators through all phases of production by providing cost-effective professional services like vetting concepts for viability, sketching them, rendering them, engineering and/or designing them into beautiful working prototypes, creating molds to mass-produce finished products, designing manuals and/or packaging to accompany these products, mass-producing and then assembling all of these items properly, warehousing them, shipping them worldwide, and handling legal requirements throughout this process—and it’s advantageous to hire a single agent for all of these tasks who can become intimately familiar with the product.

 5. An average product may require several thousand dollars over 3-4 weeks to be transformed from concept to prototype, which creators may then market-test and perhaps iteratively refine—and it’s ideal to make all errors during prototype phase while it’s cheapest to correct them.

 6. Creators should ideally produce at least 3-5 final prototypes for various purposes, which may include durability testing, product certifications, media production, user feedback, reporter reviews, and packaging design.

 7. Crowdfunding campaigners should avoid being overcharged for molds for mass-production, and should expect to pay 30%-50% upfront for mass-production.

 8. Creators can encourage high-quality mass-production through both effective project management and hired third-party inspections.

 9. Although manufacturers may ship finished products temporarily to creators to store and then mail to consumers, creators may hire professional fulfillment agencies like ShipMonk to perform these tasks, instead, but it’s generally both cheapest and fastest for creators to hire a manufacturer (like The LGG Corp) that performs these tasks.

✍️ Click here for this episode’s complete show notes!

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