As an entrepreneur you are always searching for ways to give your business an edge in the marketplace. Being able to come up with new ideas for products or services that will appeal to potential customers is key if your venture is to grow and prosper. A single brilliant idea, when coupled with flawless design and manufacturing, can open new markets and keep your revenues on an upward trend for years to come.
With the popularity of online sales channels, many entrepreneurs look for pre-made items that they can source from overseas and sell quickly in their own national markets. While this plan does let you start selling right away, there is a major flaw with this approach. By choosing a pre-made product, you automatically open yourself up to a competitors who can simply buy the exact same item and beat you on price. For true long-term success, you need to create, design and manufacture a product of your own.
Creating Unique Products to Increase Profits and Market Advantage
If you own your own business it’s likely that you are pretty good with new ideas and coming up with innovations too. By harnessing your creative power and focusing on potential ways to improve the way things are done, you can always be looking for the next great concept. Think of it as a treasure hunt where the next product idea you sketch out could be your treasure box of gold.
Then, by working with a trusted partner, you can move your idea from concept to design and then on to full production. If you have developed an innovative new product made of metal you can work with a company that has a proven track record of producing high-quality castings that need only minimal levels of machining. Sand casting allow you to produce items with a variety of dimensions using metals such as bronze, brass and aluminum.
Pivoting to Respond to Market Demands
Sometimes events in the world turn things upside down and you have to quickly adapt to the changing times. When this happens you need to quickly respond and look at how the baseline skills, supplies and expertise of your business can be harnessed to produce items that are now in demand. You may find that your entire original business plan has to be scrapped or put on hold while you quickly reinvent your firm to serve needs that exist now.
For example, a Portland Oregon distillery and grill with a 260 seat restaurant recently found its entire business model upended when the Coronavirus pandemic hit. Their year old venture was forced to close and they faced ruin as expenses for rent and the like still kept adding up. Fortunately, inspiration hit and they came up with the idea of using their distilled spirits as the base for a new, private-label hand sanitizer. The business now generates almost the same revenue from their new sanitizer product as they used to make each day from their restaurant and spirits venture.
Using Innovative Technologies to Provide Critical Products
When change is sweeping the globe, your firm has to be agile and traditional product development cycles go out the window. There’s no time to create an idea and spend six months pitching banks and investors in order to get funding. Fortunately, innovative technologies can help you quickly move from product design to production and may even save lives along the way.
A company in Italy that usually creates earthquake sensors and other items discovered they could tap into their expertise in 3-D printing and make a huge difference in local citizen’s lives. Hospitals faced a critical shortage of valves for their ventilators and as a result patients were faced with the prospect of not receiving the care they needed. The company heard about the need and quickly created a model of the ventilator valve and used their 3-D printing machine and expertise to quickly produce and deliver new valves to the local hospitals.
Even in times of upheaval in the world, you can find new ideas that fill a surging demand in the marketplace. Entrepreneurs who create, design and manufacture their own products have a unique offering that can greatly enhance their revenue stream year after year.