April 1, 2006.
When is your line complete? When do you stop tinkering and start selling? These are questions I have to deal with on a daily basis. I may see a hot new designer with a great bedding design..is it a fad or is it a trend?
Any good entrepreneur has to sense when it is time to develop new products and when it is time to, well um, get off the pot. In the beginning, when sales were slow, development was all I did. I would research, develop, research, show people, ask opinions - not a lot going on. However, now I find that I get an urge to do some new product development and I first must find the time and now do the research and back it up with solid numbers as to WHY we need dinosaurs or robots or horses.
I have developed a few clinkers (which sucks), some were done with other companies (even worse) and it is always so painful when something does not do well. The owner of a large company I design products with recently told me, 'Don't fall in love with it'. She was so correct, because I have blinders on or rose colored glasses after painting a sample(or I am totally out of it). Everything I do I TOTALLY (yes I did just watch Valley Girl on TV) fall in love with. I now must take a step (or seven) back to really evaluate if this idea is a good one.
If all else fails I will make the prototype for one of my kids so I can see it all the time. Or I can just try to convince everyone else that MY idea is good....
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