Hi Walter,
Echoing everyone else's messages - thank you for your book and the
effort that you make to answer everyone's questions. I will likely send you a PM to expand/add extra detail to these questions (and add a few more), but I would love to give back to the thread by contributing my questions and any successes/failures along the way.
Against your great advice, the product I am keen to source is custom designed and relatively bulky. The product type is classical - ours is just a different design which doesn't necessarily innovate in a significant way, but cosmetically will appeal to a niche market strongly. A similar product is already on the market and is in such high demand that customers pre-order it without a strict delivery date (i.e. which seems to be 2-3 months i.e. lead time and likely sea freight once the owner has enough to pay for their MOQ I'm assuming). The product (timber/MDF base) has to have a high quality finish (painted in one custom PMS colour throughout) and be accurate as it will be shipped flat packed and put together by the customer.
As it is a custom product, I'm currently at the stage where I am just researching whether or not it will be viable. Our competitor product has a high RRP, but the market is *easily* bearing it, we have improved the design, will offer much better service and on the surface the landed cost has the possibility of several multiples under RRP, meaning that we wouldn't have to rely on much sales volume to make it worthwhile. To start with, we would like to market test the one design with two different size options, and three colour options. We have the exact design specifications in CAD software.
Before I came across this thread, I reached out to several suppliers on Alibaba - most were very helpful and their quotes were competitive, however they seem like traders and I just didn't have the confidence they could produce the product to the quality I was after (lots of Yes's when I showed examples, but they lacked any evidence of a similar level of finish).
Since reading through the book in particular, I have changed my search terms and have started researching the sites listed in the book, which seem to have products much more in line with what we want. However these are my questions:
1. With my initial outreach emails, would you still ask for a product catalog and build some rapport, or would you open with our need for a custom product?
2. I understand the probability that the product may/will be copied (however as it's not truly innovative - just a different design, I'm hoping they are less likely to do that. For example like a toy car - there are millions of variations so the category is diluted enough and our "toy car" is basically just cosmetically different - but with our target market that difference is really important for purchasing). Therefore for suppliers to quote/make judgement on whether they can do it, I'm assuming I need to provide the design up front - in this case do you think that is OK - or is there any other work around?
3. I know there are probably pros/cons of each, but for a bespoke, high end product like ours, would you recommend a larger, more experienced manufacturer that has the record/expansive product list/product safety certifications or a smaller manufacturer? Although on first read a larger manufacturer may have the processes in place for high quality, I get nervous that we would get bumped for larger orders (i.e. for factories currently supplying department stores).
4. In relation to above, would there be anything stopping a larger manufacturer sharing our design to such department store for them to produce and sell at a scale much higher than ours?
5. If a manufacturer looks to meet the criteria you have mentioned on one of the sourcing sites listed in your book, but they also have an Alibaba page - is there any difference on what site you would make contact through?
Thank you so much in advance for any assistance you could provide regarding the above.
Sam