Episode 9-SOFT LAUNCH OF PRODUCT (keeping it together)

So your product is ready to show to the public—are you beginning with a soft launch?

Jack walks you through his disastrous soft launch and how being mentally prepared can play a big part of any launch.

Contact: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:15):
So tell me if you've heard thisone before. I've tested this product and
it's great. I haven't placed ina great place at a great price,
but it's not selling. What iswrong with those customers? Jack? I
mean when I hear that, Ithink, are you sure you're selling it
to the right customer? Hi,everybody, welcome back to the thirty year

(00:39):
Overnight Sensation. I'm your host,Jack Courage, and this podcast is a
conversation, not a class. Ifyou're a novice inventor or want to be
an inventor, I'll take you throughthe trials of designing, manufacturing, selling,
and getting your product into the market. This podcast is not a front

(00:59):
for a development firm or some companytrying to generate money off of your ideas.
It's about the trials of inventing andit's not easy, but you can
do it yourself if I can doit, no formal training. You can
do it. You just have tobe smart about it. So let's catch
up on the story. I wasasked to develop a new product for a

(01:21):
huge company. Came up with atrue new idea, made prototypes, a
lot of them, and the testingthat goes along with them, and then
the legal with the product strategy,and lastly the production runs and make sure
it's working right. And I've gotit all ready to go from the manufacturer.

(01:41):
And that's like singing Partridge into peartreeevery time we start up geez okay.
Starting out this week with a spoiler. From this point until the end
of the first season, there islittle left about the actual inventing. Later
I have one little small tweak Ido overall to the head covering, but

(02:01):
the head covering product is completed.These last few episodes are about the last
part of my intro, which isgetting it into the market. Even if
if this product is only at thistime destined for B to B businesses,
it's still going to be in themarket. I only bring this up because
sometimes inventors are really lucky and theyhave licensed their products off and they're done

(02:27):
right here. And if you canget a license gig, it's great.
I love licensing off my ideas,but it just doesn't happen consistently, or
at least for me, it hasn't. And when you add investors to a
project that you're doing, you haveto stay actively involved until it's obvious to
everyone that you don't need to beinvolved anymore. Sometimes inventors overstay their welcomes,

(02:52):
but most like me are ready tomove on to the next project,
because after you invent it and yousee I that it's being manufactured, which
you know always cost a ton ofmoney, you're ready to move on.
I mean, at this point inthe state, in the stage of the
idea development, I was even startingto get bored for myself. And it's

(03:12):
my product. So where we areon the idea right now, it's time
for what we'd call in the businessa soft launch for the head covering and
to show the head covering to thebuying customers to review and see if there's
any last minute, unforeseen problems thatcould pop up before an actual launch,
and of course there were little,but this time in my career, I

(03:37):
was prepared for it mentally. HadI been younger, and I know I
say it like I'm ninety, butI'm sure that this project could have been
derailed a little bit by some ofthe things that happened after the product was
done. But I've done enough ofthese projects not to flinch at the first
sign of trouble and stay the course. But let's talk about my mental aspect

(04:00):
first. Of launching and showing yourproduct. Years ago, I was selling
my designs in fashion. I hadbeen very lucky on national acclaim. So
when a designer friend, someone thatI liked and respected and she's pretty famous
too, asked for my product tobe displayed in her boutique, I was
thrilled. At the time, myproducts were selling in some of the big

(04:23):
national stores and I headed in overtwo hundred botiques across the country, so
I was really lucky. But Iwas even more thrilled that my friend said,
Hey, I know you got abrand new product. Can you put
it in my boutique. This friendwas one of the most talented designers I
knew. She offered me premium placementfor the newest product I had, which

(04:45):
I was fortunate at the time tohave two famous celebrities at that exact same
time of the placement publicly using myproduct. Honestly, I couldn't have been
happier. Two local designers combined withnational tension. Man. I was just
thrilled. I thought was the greatestthing. Well, then the call came.
It was my friend and she's agreat person, but she dropped the

(05:10):
bomb. She had not sold asingle product of mine with the premium placement
in over three weeks, and shethought she let me down. I was
so embarrassed. There wasn't a rockbig enough for me to crawl under.
But my friend said one of thesmartest things, and probably one of the

(05:32):
easiest. She said, maybe it'sjust not for my customers. Neither one
of us had even considered it.But it hit me like a sledgehammer.
Even to this day, I'm alittle embarrassed because I let my friend down.
I wanted her to have the extrasales like we were having across the

(05:53):
country, and the local publicity wasjust fun to have. But then my
friend said something even smarter. Herboutique was on a swanky street filled with
other high end shops. She saidshe called her friend not three doors down
and across the street to see ifshe would sell my line, which was
pretty much the nicest thing. Iagreed, of course, but now I

(06:15):
was having second thoughts. Maybe mystyle had peaked because my friend was at
the tip top of glamor right then. I clearly remember this all happened on
a Thursday, when I stopped byto move everything from my friend's boutique to
the one down and across the street. So early Monday morning, I get

(06:36):
a call, and boy, Ican tell you I didn't want to answer
that phone call because I knew itwas my friend's friend that owned the swanky
boutique down the street, and itcould have only been two or three days
that she had the product up.She identified herself and blurted it out,
I sold out of everything. I'mlike, okay. I was a little

(07:00):
shocked by that too, because nowI had already started to question myself for
no reason other than my stuff didn'tselling my friend's boutique. And all she
wanted to know was could I possiblystop in that day and restock her store
because she's closed on Mondays and she'dlike to start up again on Tuesday and

(07:21):
try to sell out again that week, which she did. The reason I
brought this up was how devastating itwas that I let my friend down.
But the lesson was clear, Noteveryone is your customer, even if you
think they should be. And evenwhen you think you've had it, maybe
you've peaked. Something else might squeakthrough to put your back on the track,

(07:44):
and then you're kicking yourself, Well, why did not think that?
Well, you're thinking that because evenwhen your sales are really steamrolling ahead,
everybody knows just a little something'll popup along the way that can derail you
and then you're going in the wrongdirection. Okay, now back to present
day, So a lot of timehas passed since my first idea that cap,

(08:07):
the hair tie cap had got meinto the door to the big company.
That led to create the present idea, which is the all encompassing head
covering. My investors have been great, but we had had no sales,
and when the production run samples cameback, my knee jerk reaction was,
let's just get out and get somequick sales. Make everybody happy. That's

(08:31):
gonna sell, because this was goingto be a long process in the B
to B chain to get set upand then throughout the country. It was
kind of selfish because I just wantedto prove I was right. I could
get the sales, which I knewwould happen, but I wanted to prove
it. But I stopped everything becausethat wasn't our strategy. Our strategy was

(08:52):
to stay in too B to B, lay it out, have people look
at it ordered internal, and thengo from there. So I decided just
to sit tight, let it playout and see what happens. The soft
launch was set up as a zoomcall, mainly because we were still dealing
with the effects of the COVID outbreak. My product was shown internally to buyers

(09:15):
of a small region of that hugecompany, and they in turn would place
orders or commit to orders, givenus an idea of how the product would
sell internally. It was a smallregion, but it was just to give
us a little bit of a tasteof what's coming. The pitch format was
strict. Six minutes to pitch yourproduct, two minutes for the lead procurement

(09:37):
officer to endorse the product or explainwhy the company views it was a goodbye
for everybody internally, and then twoto five minutes for Q and A.
And there were five of us inthe pitch. I was number three.
And to add to good measure,the first guy's company did forty million dollars
in sales to this big company,and the second guy in the pitch was

(10:01):
an eight hundred million dollar company thatdid one hundred and twenty million dollars in
sales to this big, behemoth company. And then there was me, no
sales, so my pitch went offwithout a hitch, no major gaffs.
I didn't have any mispronunciations I coulddo on this dang thing. I was
ready for an endorsement, and thenit happened. My endorsement person tip top

(10:24):
in the company, mister big.He starts to talk and the signal goes
wonky. It starts getting all weird, then we lose the sound, and
then it goes to black crap.So a few minutes were wasted as the
team tried to bring him back on. Then an assistant asked if there were
any questions. For some reason,even though we could see the people trying

(10:48):
to ask questions, the system wasn'tletting them through. Then another assistant says,
oh, don't worry, he's notcompliant. You can't order anyway.
It's just an intro. Let's moveon to the next presenter. And I
was like, what where did thatcome from. I've got my vendor number,
great, no sales now on mysoft adding some two bit assists that

(11:13):
yells out that they can't order anyway. So I have no idea how many
were even interested, And he gotit wrong. I did have my vendor
number something he didn't know or eventhought of heven't been awarded a vendor number.
Was truly the golden ticket because thateight hundred million dollar company and I
were both seen as equals on thepurchasing system, and as I said in

(11:37):
episode eight, I did not nowhave to go through a third party to
sell my wares and give them moneywhich they would take a percentage of before
the other company took percentage of andwould lead me with a lot less.
My designs were on me, forthe big boys, nobody in between.
But due to this fiasco, twentyminutes later, after I had recovered from

(12:00):
a near nervous breakdown, I hadno sales or worse, and this was
worse. I had no idea howthe sales would be. That I had
to go and explain to my investorsthat they're going to have to trust me
a little longer. Let's just sayit did not go over very well,
and there was talk of possibly abandoningthe funding until I could get actual sales

(12:24):
that day, which nearly threw mein a rage because everything we had done
to get this far. But Iknow it sounds hard after you've heard me
talk. I kept it together.I didn't blow a gasket. I didn't
say anything that I regret about thebig company or my people or my investors

(12:46):
getting cold feet about funding this time. It looked bleak for a few days,
but I just had this belief thatafter everything I had gone through with
them and get it in there,that they would give me another change.
It's because it wasn't my fault,it was their apparatus. So a couple
of days later, I received anemail to go to a small vendor show

(13:09):
and showcase my product. That gaveme some breathing room, and at the
show, buyers would be able tocommit to sales right then and there.
So it turned out the glitch reallywasn't a big deal and all that would
be okay. But had I beenyounger, I know I probably would have
just blown it because I was furiousit happened and no one seemed to care,

(13:33):
and they're big company, wam whamwow. So I bring this all
back around to my friend in theboutique that didn't sell my stuff. I'm
still talking about hurts. I mean, the zoom call didn't work out,
but the coming vendor show obviously theythrew me in there because they knew they
had made a mistake, and itwould really give me a chance to show

(13:56):
people this probably up closed, havethem feel it. The best part is
that day they would commit. SoI know it doesn't really exactly sound like
it, but I didn't panic.I stayed the course, and I thought
it was gonna be okay. NowI just had to focus on putting something
together for an actual vendor show andmake sure I didn't fall apart in front

(14:22):
of any of the customers. Sountil next time, when you're thinking of
ideas, never settle. There's alwaysanother way. I'm your host, Jack
Courage the thirty year Overnight Sensation.Stay at it.