Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`m searching for ideas, some time ago in March/April I ran into a site that had a nice little product, he has it patented and was/is trying to introduce it to the market. I called him to learn from his experience and ask about a service he had used, at the time he told me that his product was pretty much just sitting on the shelves, he had done everything right, put it in something like 30 or 50 stores had a couple of websites promoting it in different manner on each but nothing, overall he would get the occasional sale here and there but it just wouldn`t take off. I listened intently but said little because after all I had call to learn from him not give my input, and frankly, didn`t have any constructive ideas/suggestions while chatting with him on the phone.

Over the weekend I ran into a group that were basically saying if there only were a product that would do this.... I was about to say "Hey! I know were you can find that!" thinking about this guy`s product, but said nothing because I realized that he is marketing his product to the wrong crowd. Imagine somebody manufacturing skin cream and marketing it to the person he thinks would benefit the most from it, the Marlboro man. But these cowboys are thinking “yeah very nice, but you know what... it doesn`t really go with the macho image I have of myself” and, so, his great little product just sits on the shelves because he`s marketing it to the wrong crowd. I come along and run into a bunch of 30something women saying "If there only was a product that would prevent my skin from getting this dry!"  :-)

Here is our dilemma, how do we go about getting a chunk of his business for telling him whom he should be marketing his product to? This is what I think would be ideal, our business gets 30% of the sales of the product if he gives us exclusive marketing rights. However that is unlikely, other options we have thought of we exchange marketing for a percentage of his company (this part I`m not so keen on because that may come with baggage in the form of debt or other unknowns). Another option would be to outright get a percent of ownership of the product, not the company. Buying his product out is not an option as we have our own financial commitments to our company, and this eventuality was just not budgeted for. The product will never be the next iPod, but we can certainly sell to a much larger market than the one he is marketing to, and these people are generally speaking younger, more open minded and considerably more affluent.

We don’t want to be deceptive and mislead the man, we do want to benefit from our input and efforts.
Any ideas on how to approach him?

Could you license the product, or its distribution? Think about how Microsoft piggybacked on IBM`s PC Junior. They too had a solution but no idea who was the market. They assumed it was high-tech hobbyists. Gates and Allen then set up the license for DOS, which IBM distributed with these useless machines.

But because of the license connection, Microsoft was able to point people to the PC Junior, knowing they would get a royalty on each machine that IBM sold. They then used their marketing ideas (MS`) to show the product in places IBM thought useless. Would something like that work?

ElidS,

This hand lotion you speak of sounded very familar to some posts I remembered from back earlier in the year. Curiosity got the better of me so I searched "posts" and ran across two - one is here. If you do a search of "posts" using hand lotion you`ll find the other one. Someone going by the moniker of "Think Tank" was trying to help this person launch a hand cream to the working man - the Home Depot/Lowes kind of guy. Anyway, the discussions abruptly ended ... until now. Just wondering if this is the same product. I believe the name of the product is "Larsons."

I have to agree with Craig - licensing the product would appear to be a good route to take, IMHO. He gave a good example. Another is Mossy Oak camo patterns. Mossy Oak camo patterns are designed and owned by a group out of MS, Hayes Outdoors. Just a small family owned business who have brought in some "smart" people over the years and have grown Mossy Oak to the #2 camo brand in the world. Russell Corporation (recently acquired by Warren Buffett`s Fruit of the Loom company) has had the license to Mossy Oak for years for Mossy Oak Apparrel. But Hayes also licenses the MO pattern to hundreds of other companies for use on other products. Russell has the rights to certain items but not even all clothing items.

Point here - licensing is a good way to get rights to market a product. And the agreements can be written in hundreds of ways. My advice ... get creative if you really think you can market this hand lotion product. Go for it!

R@

Edit note: The link to the previous post worked a couple of times when I checked it but sometimes not. Worse case, use the search filed at the top of this page to find the past post.

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Richard Arnold · Key Concept Writers · Business Communication: The "Key" To Success· Law of Attraction Blog · Life Ain`t Brain Surgery Blog

Hi Craig,

Although it would not work as is I think your idea is worth exploring, developing further. I’ll let it sit for a couple of days on the back of my mind, often times other ideas based on things like this just ‘pop-up’ out of nowhere.

Hi R@ :-) is that a reference to Ra the Egyptian Sun-God? ;-)

Think I mislead you with that lotion reference, this product is not a moisturizer I was simply trying to convey the idea that he had a good product but marketing it to the wrong crowd. Licensing would not work as this is a product not a brand, he would need to continue manufacturing it.

I’m looking for possible venues to approach a man with a good product that is failing in the market place because of his approach not because of the product in off itself. We want to do this without misleading him, and without giving the idea away, if we do he wouldn’t need us...  

Elí

Eli,

Nope - R@ is just a quick and easy initialization of my first and last name. Previous job - way, way, way back - required initialing a lot of work so that became my moniker. When handwritten, the ampersand encicles the cap R.

If the guy wants to continue manufacturing the product, why not go out under a new label, i.e.: private labeling?

R@

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Richard Arnold · Key Concept Writers · Business Communication: The "Key" To Success· Law of Attraction Blog · Life Ain`t Brain Surgery Blog

Offer to market it online take 50% of the profits for each sale generated by the website url.  Create a specific affiliate url and order page, and drive (targeted) traffic to this location.  Have him drop ship when the product is ordered.  Create a simple one page jv partnership agreement, and make sure he signs it. 50% of sales is better than nothing if it`s sitting on the shelf anyway.  You could also write some articles to your targeted market to promote the product or product reviews. kat

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