Launching your products can be a thrilling and exciting moment. However, it needs thorough preparation and research before you find the kind of products that your customers need and want. Bringing your products to the market is not an easy feat especially when you expect for positive response. There are challenges you will face from the beginning of your plan to launch your products. However, those should not deter you from making the best plan because preparation is absolutely necessary and crucial for the success of your launching. As for the obstacles, there are also ways to overcome them all.
Common obstacles when launching products
Here are several most common obstacles when it comes to launching new products of your business:
The development of product is the first obstacle you need to overcome. This requires complex steps as you will have to involve fields of engineering especially when your products involve complex technology. Developing new product is not originally for entrepreneurs. It is so rare to find entrepreneur who can also develop their own physical products. They often create special team for product development consist of people specialized in the required fields. However, building this kind of team means you have to spend more money to hire experts and professionals. The solution is to hire qualified, experienced freelancer.
The next obstacle comes when you have to prototype the product. You have to make manufactured version of your original product. You can split the make of prototype into its functionality and appearance if necessary. Then, you can analyze each of them. After making sure everything goes as plan, you can merge the two type of prototypes into one. This is what the closest to your original product. It is important to make prototype as similar as possible to the final product so you can see if there is any error or something unfit.
Next is manufacturing. If your product is a type of high-tech hardware, this is the most challenging process. You need to estimate thoroughly the time and cost for mass manufacturing because prototype is still far from the final product ready to the market. Lots of entrepreneurs failed at this stage because of lack of estimation. You should be detailed in calculating everything including the risk and the expense. Instead of setting up your own factory, it is highly advised to hire a contract manufacturer. Thus, you can only focus on producing product without worrying over setting up the manufacturing yourself.
Next, you are ready to launch the product but you have to know the feedback of your customers. It is highly suggested for entrepreneurs to launch pre-sell products first to truly know what the customers want before producing the final products. And the nest challenge is the cash flow. You have to get paid by your customers who buy your products. However, you also have obligation to pay your manufacturers at the same time, thus, managing cash flow can be so much more challenging than you think. It is important to make financial plan beforehand so you know how to manage your cash flow.
