What is the best way to market foreign product?

What's the best way to bring a product or invention to market?

• There are sites like http://Quirky.com and others, but they take a significant percentage of any moneys made. 1) Do you think the service they offer is worth it? 2) What's the typical process for inventing something, getting it patented and eventually bring it to the market place?

• Answer:

  Paris, thank you for asking me to answer this question, happy to help…  Quirky is a fantastic business model in that users can define which products they like before much money is spent in development; however, its largest drawback for most inventions is that it requires inventors to disclose their idea to the public before that idea is protected, so it is used primarily for ideas that can’t be easily stolen.   In most cases, for those inventions that could be easily replicated or copied by a competing firm, Quirky’s model would not work.  This is where a company like ours comes in.  We confidentially, through a legally binding non-disclosure agreement, design and develop the invention before it is ever released to the public.  Once the product has been developed, the manufacturers are prepared for production, and we’re ready to start selling to buyers, we then legally protect the product’s intellectual property.   The most common and least expensive method is for us to file a Provisional Patent, which is a 12-month temporary patent that the US put into effect starting in 1995 to help inventors.   Once you have your product developed, your manufacturing arranged, and your IP protection in place, then it is time to start approaching buyers.  Simply put, they want to see a sample of your product (which will likely be a prototype at this stage) and the cost you want to sell it at, for different volumes.  We usually start approaching smaller retailers to get some orders placed so that we can build up a large enough purchase order to complete the first production run, and hence where the profit starts coming in!   We wrote a fairly comprehensive Inventors Manual that goes over this and other options in detail. Download it for free here: http://www.makoinvent.com/free-invention-kit/   Regards,   Kevin Mako Mako Invent http://www.makoinvent.com/