Episode 8 - PATENTS & STRATEGY (a new hope) part 2

Maybe you need a patent, maybe you don't, BUT YOU DO NEED A PRODUCT STRATEGY.

Jack walks you through a strategy he used on one of his products.

Contact: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:15):
So tell me if you've heard thisone before. Yeah, I wouldn't worry
about it. So what if theystole your product design? It's the greatest
sign of flattery, and they neversteal bad ideas well. When I hear
that line, I think, dang, they should have had a better strategy
because you can't play your staff inflattery. Oh wait, that guy was

(00:40):
talking to me. Crap. Hieverybody, Welcome back to the thirty year
Overnight Sensation. This is part twoof the patent Strategy episode. A New
hope m sounds familiar. I'm yourhost, Jack Courage, and this podcast
is a conversation station, not aclass. If you're a novice inventor or

(01:03):
want to be an inventor, I'lltake you through the trials of designing,
manufacturing, selling, and getting yourproduct out on the market. This podcast
is not a front for a productdevelopment firm or some company trying to generate
money off of your ideas. It'sabout the trials of inventing and it's not

(01:23):
easy, but you can do ityourself. If I can do it with
nor formal training, you can doit. You just have to be smart
about it. So Jack, whybring up strategy? So late in the
series, and why did you pairit with patents? Actually, Panza's strategies
were mentioned in the second episode,but there really wasn't a backstory to understand

(01:47):
it. Keep in mind, strategyis a lot like wishful thinking. It's
great until the day you use it, and then it's everything from that point
on is all about the adjunct.But it does help to have a product
strategy before you begin. Sadly,most people don't have one, and I'm
one of those people that started outof my first invention without one. I

(02:13):
didn't know any better, and Ipaid for that mistake. Oh boy did
I pay. Okay, So,a few years ago, I was at
a professional ball game and the concessionserver was a young woman that had very
large hair, so large that itdid not fit in the ball cap she
was given to wear since she wasserving food, but she had to wear

(02:35):
the hat for food safety. Now, if you looked at her hair,
it seemed impossible, but she waspretty smart. She folded the hat into
itself and bobby pinned it to herhead, covering most of her hair.
Still not sanitary as they recommend,but enough that the food manager let it
go. Overall, still a problem. She saved the day for her job,

(03:00):
but she really didn't solve the problem. Her hair was still exposed and
could still drop out in the foodas she worked. And you know what,
that image stuck with me. Justa few months later, in California,
the governor passed the Crown Act.The Crown Act said that a person
could not be fired on the jobbecause their hair was not an accepted norm.

(03:24):
So I remembered that girl at theballpark and thought this act would probably
be passed by all states eventually.But what about food service? With the
Crown Act, you can't let anyonego because they've got big hair or a
weave with beads or really large dreads. But they still need their hair covered

(03:46):
for safety and sanitary reasons if they'regonna work around food. So with that,
I had some ideas start forming,but that was not a strategy.
A strategy is how you deploy thatidea. So how would I get the
biggest bang for the buck if Ihad a good, true idea. Normal

(04:09):
everyday logic says, create something,sell it to the mainstream, and after
it became popular, it would bepicked up by the food industry. Eventually,
most products start out in retail,then they are accepted later by business
to business or B to B companies, or they won't have to pay a
full retail price rather wholesale prices.A good example is that a chef might

(04:32):
develop a certain type of pan that'sreally good for brownies. That pan becomes
so recognized or ubiquitous in the retailmarket that everyone knows about it, so
that later B to B businesses startto use it for like you know,
catering purposes or food service purposes,but they don't pay that amount of money.

(04:55):
It's a much lower price. Butmy brain said, what if I
did it backwards, no one wouldsee it coming. The big behemoth food
service companies that are like multi billionwith the B dollar a year corporations only
have limited vendors that sell to themfor the locations that they service and the

(05:16):
employees that operate those locations that theyservice. So think about your local arena,
your sports arena. Chances are oneof these large behemoth corporations handles the
food and the staff inside that arena, not the team that's plays at the
arena, or the retail sales oreven the event. They just handle the

(05:39):
food and the staff in that arena, and they have a ton of them.
That's what makes them billion dollars ayear companies. So these big bohemoth,
huge companies, getting to be avendor was nearly impossible until in my
case, you had had to haveover a million dollars in sales before they

(06:02):
would even consider you to be avendor, or you became some special status
vendor that you only read about.Nobody ever meets him. I didn't meet
them. So to sell to thebig bohemoth billion dollar guys, there really
was only one way to get in. You had to sell your product to
a vendor that was already accepted bythe big behemoth company. And in the

(06:25):
division I was thinking of selling,which was the uniform division, it had
less than a dozen competitors, buteach competitor that had a vendor license and
a vendor number was already a multimulti million dollar company. Okay, you
with me so far? I knowthat was a lot of big bohemoth and
blah blah blah. So the ideawas very simple. Develop a hat or

(06:49):
cap that could control large hair likebuns, weaves with beads and dreadlocks.
That was the idea that I wantedto sell the vendors. So the strategy
was sell to vendor of that soldto one of these big behemoth food service
companies. By the way, justfor a fact, when I say behemoth,

(07:10):
I say it as a differentiator becausethe top three big food service companies
represent over forty billion dollars a yearin sale. So my strategy continued with
as I'm selling to the vendor.At the exact same time, the Crown
Act would slowly be growing also,and as of today it's already in twenty

(07:31):
five states. The sales from thebehemoth company would sustain my company, and
as the product grew in acceptance,it slowly would become more common. I'd
eventually sell to McDonald's, Burger King, subway type restaurants before I could really
challenge the big retail manufacturers of thedo rags and the bonnets in the retail

(07:56):
area. See as a strategy wentby the time to retail, big bonnet
and doreg manufacturers viewed my product asa threat. I would be anchored at
one of the big Bohemia food servicecompanies via a vendor. Then it would
be harder for them to steal orinfringe on my idea or at least that's

(08:18):
the idea, and at the bareminimum, because I'm selling to such a
big company, it would at leastslow them down on stealing the idea.
This idea is based on the simpleidea that the more people you do business
with that are large and have alot of money, the less chance another
big company wants to take the chanceon infringing on you. Once again,

(08:43):
this is not always the case,but I would call it, at least,
like I said, a speed bump. Plus you'd have the patent if
you filed for one also, whichwould be another deterrent as another backup.
But all this depends on how crazythe competitor is is for the new market
dollars that you may have created.I hate to belabor the point, but

(09:05):
think of it this way. Ifyou had an item that was partnered with
the NFL, who wants to takea chance I'm pissing off the NFL just
to infringe on my product? Theanswer is no one big would try it.
And since all my potential competitors ofthe bohemath food service companies were huge,
no one was really going to tryto piss off their huge multi billion

(09:30):
dollars a year food service company thatmight hurt their own sales if they got
into a back and forth on whogets this. That's why most people just
let it go. So as mystrategy continued, the idea was, as
it got accepted in catering and eventsas a foothold, then I'd moved to
restaurants, and then I'd finished upfinally capturing the retail market. I'm sorry

(09:54):
I had to bring it up twice, but I know it was a lot.
And then at that point, ifI'm targeting the retail area, then
I would go after the targets andthe Walmarts of the world, and maybe,
just maybe the project would be strongenough to take on the few but
very large competitors a woman's do ragsand bonnets in that retail industry. And

(10:20):
as I say that, at leastthat was the strategy, build build,
build, Then you're big enough youcan take the body blows if someone's trying
to infringe on you, or moveinto your territory. Thirty years of ideas
told me this is the one toswing for the fences on. I would
be playing with the big boys,so I couldn't take many chances. So

(10:43):
I had to patent and trademark andcopyright and international patent, everything that I
could I could get for the protectionfor what I could afford, just on
the chance that I was right andit was going to be costly. But
I had a clear chance, atleast I thought I had a clear chance
to make multimillions of dollars. Andwith that, that's how you get investors

(11:07):
and other people that want to workwith you. Okay, Jack, I'll
bite. Why would you actually thinkthat? For one very simple reason,
and this is crucial, I haddone a lot of research, and no
one. I said it. There, I say it again. No one
in the food service arena was cateringto the people that had thick hair,

(11:31):
buns, weeze with beads, anddreadlocks. And yet that group of people
made up a large part of themarket that was employed by these companies.
Shamefully, even as the Crown Actwas rolled out, people with big hair
were expected to make do with whatwould already been used for at least half
a century, even though the styleshave continued to change, and those vendors

(11:58):
to the largest hemoth food service companiesin the world were the ones that crapped
all over me when I spoke tothem about them in episode one. It's
not that they didn't see a need, they just didn't want to interrupt the
status quo, but all the whileclaiming they were diverse, echable, and
inclusive. And to this very day, after many letters and voicemails, even

(12:24):
now, I have yet to hearfrom one of those vendors di officers that
loudly proclaim how they want nothing moreto help the employees of their products.
But it's just not so. It'sa bunch of bs lip service and they
really don't care. Come on,Jack, how can you say such a
thing? I bet they care.No, I don't think they really do.

(12:48):
I think they really look down onthe employees that use their products,
the very same employees doing the reallytough work while they bask in their office
with their mid morning lattes and ourlunches. Seriously, Jack, it's just
one small product, and that isjust my point. It is small,

(13:09):
but it tells you everything about theselarge vendors. See, even after all
this time, it still boils myblood and I've won, but looking back,
even just thinking about it pisses meoff. And that, my friends,
is the verbal sound of another chipon my shoulder. That's what it

(13:30):
sounds like. You see. Isent my product into each vendor and explained
who it would help and why,and that they didn't have anything truly like
that. And I was consistently told, and we don't see the need.
They can just get by with whatwe're selling. That's good enough. Which,

(13:52):
by the way, all of thesecompetitors products there wasn't really anything new.
It wasn't by a stretch of anybody'simagine nation were they selling anything that
hadn't been new in like a decade. And that still blows me away.
What jerks the crazy thing is thatmy hair tie hat. The first idea
before the present head covering product wasa ball cap that had a large hole

(14:16):
cut out of it in the backso that large hair could easily fit through,
and then was tightened by an enclosingmesh with a built in hair tie.
That is the pride that got theattention of one d EI manager at
the biggest Bohema food service company thatrecognized what the ball cap was trying to

(14:39):
do. But, as I statedin episode one, invited me to the
small university to fix an even biggerproblem, something that would encompass all hair,
not just control it out of theback of the cap like mind it.
So strangely, even though I wenton to develop a second product,

(15:01):
the present head covering that we've beentalking about last few episodes, the original
strategy oddly still fit and that Ican't even think of the time that's ever
happened to me before and would staythe same. So when I made the
head covering, I went to mylawyers and I said, keep the protection
on the ball cap as is,but now focus all the future protection on

(15:24):
the head coverings, since the headcovering could be worn under any ball cap
and therefore it had the potential tobe more of a popular product. And
this is even before I had thefinal design. And as luck would have
it, that big Bohema billion dollarsfood service company saw my product, the

(15:48):
new head covering, and made mea vendor. I wouldn't have to depend
on any other vendor to sell them. But now I knew all my competitors,
for all the big top three bigBohemith food surface companies, and yeah,
that's right, the ones that crappedon me. Have I used that
term enough today because they did,and I'm still pissed about it. But

(16:11):
I knew their weaknesses. So Jack, I get it. You're angry,
so I have to listen to allof the stuff you just laid on me.
How does that help me? Why'dyou bring in Pandora's Box? Well,
like I said, you have tobe smart. Look at your idea.

(16:32):
What kind of product will be?What is the product strategy? Even
if you just invent it, whatwould be the product strategy to get it
in the market? How will youprotect it? What type of protection do
you need a patent? Are yougonna license it? There's multiple ways to
go about it, But what areyou going to do? So let's tie
this all back to Pandora's Box andwhy I too say Hope can be a

(16:57):
dangerous thing. You've been through hellto get your product out, You've met
every evil, You're protecting it thebest you can, and you have a
strategy. You're at the end.So now you have hope. Hope you
got the right combo protection from yourlawyers. Hope your strategy is better than

(17:18):
your competitors. Hope you dialed upthe right message to the buyers. Hope
there's enough profit to not only breakeven but prosper. And finally, most
dangerously hope that your competitors are sosmug and indifferent that you catch all of
them off guard until it's too latefor them. Any one of those hopes,

(17:40):
my friend, could turn on youand crash your product. And you've
done everything you can do just toget there. And that is why hope
is a dangerous thing, because youstill can lose. Yeah, I know,
once again, kind of grim,but it's really not because I know
only one way, and that's forward. So until I get beat, that's

(18:03):
the way I'm moving on and I'mnot stopping. So until next time,
when you're thinking of ideas, getfired up like I've been a little bit
today, and never settle. Andwhen you're struggling there was a lot of
struggling today, I mean really struggling. Just stay the course. Keep in

(18:23):
mind that's when most people give upand quit, and there's always another way.
I'm your host, Jack Courage thethirty year Overnight Sensation. Stay at it.