entrepreneur

The Product Group March 2014

The Product Group March 2014
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Last night I attended the March 2014 The Product Group Meetup run by Jeremy Horn. It was a packed house. They need another space to host this event. The theme of this month’s meetup was “Do you like your product person?”. There was the presentation of The Best Product Person of 2013 and then a lively discussion of the Featured Product, VenueBook.

The format of the event is organized well. Jeremy compares it to being home for Thanksgiving dinner. I can attest to that fact. Everyone just jumps in and the conversation goes around the room. Sometimes Jeremy pushes the discussion along so more people can participate. The discussions are always very active, informative and fun.

The format of the event is as follows:

First is the question of the evening. Everyone gets to introduce ourselves and say a simple answer to the question. This time it was “Do you like your product person?”, yes or no. My answer was a resounding yes!

The next part of the evening was announcing The Best Product Person of 2013. The winner was Adrian Jank. Congrats Adrian for winning this year.

The final part of the night was the discussion of the VenueBook product. VenueBook is an online SaaS System that venues and party planners use to effectively plan events and make reservations for the spaces. There is definitely more to it because VenueBook replaces the accounting systems and payment systems for the venues and planners. It is a great idea that time has come. From the looks of it, it makes planning an event very easy. Their database of venues is huge and of great quality. I have attended events at a lot of the venues listed. The discussion ranged from how they got into this business, what makes them unique in the market  to issues they would like the group to help them with. I will not get into details as I don’t want to reveal anything that could be released at a later time. Much to say is that they have some great people working with them on their team. I wish them the best of luck with their business.

The Great Packaging Presentation and The Crushed Product Fail

Pablo Curutchet Massive Cardboard Box Man
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On Monday December 9th Allen and I attended the 14th NY Hardware Startup Meetup at NYC Alley. Disclaimer: MakeSimply is a sponsor of the NY Hardware Startup Meetup. It was a well attended event. There was not an empty seat in the house, It was standing room only. One of the presentations that stood out, for me, was one given by Ryan Vinyard from Lime Lab/Highway1. His presentation reminded me of an article I read awhile ago that described a first time hardware entrepreneur that had a packaging fail. It also reminded me of a presentation Allen and I gave at MakeIT NYC.

“Stacking one pallet on top of another crushed them”

He had a great Kickstarter. He met his goal and then some. The entrepreneur did not take into account the logistics, package labeling and kit packaging. These things are often forgotten. It is sad actually. You designed a great product. You worked very hard to find a factory. You shopped around the BOM. The product is coming off the assembly line. It passes quality control. You designed the packaging, but you left out the design of the kit packaging.  This is where experts with import/export experience come in handy. They know what labels to use to place on the boxes so they are stacked properly. They know what packaging works best depending on method of transport of the product from point A to point B. They there is the amount of product per package that has to be calculated. Calculations are done on how many product will fit in the carton, how much will fit on a pallet and then how much will be in a container. Then there are these costs to consider:

  1. Container freight cost
  2. Packaging Cost
  3. Documentation handling cost
  4. Harbor Maintenance fee
  5. Fuel Surcharge
  6. Duty Cost

After you have calculated all of this, then you know how much your product costs to build and get to your customer. I would not recommend including shipping unless you have a deal with a shipper or fulfillment.  If you don’t have an agreement you will be paying a lot more money for the shipping, taxes and tariffs if you are shipping internationally. Until next time.