New Product Development White Paper

We Manufacture Ideas that Sell

Titoma helps get your products to market faster and more cost effectively by leveraging Asian engineering and manufacturing resources.
8F, 159 Songde Road Taipei 11085 Taiwan Tel: +886 227272089 Email: [email protected]

DESIGN

ENGINEERING

ELECTRONICS

PROGRAMMING

MOLD MAKING

MANUFACTURING

Doing Market Research: Look Before You Leap

The market is the only parameter your company cannot modify. Research will provide guidance in planning and help you decide whether to go for it.
The market is the only parameter your company cannot modify. Before committing to developing your own product, it is advisable to do extensive research as this would provide guidance in planning and help you decide whether or not to take the plunge. Market research is needed to qualify an idea for business growth and is an insurance policy against wasting time, energy and financial resources on the wrong opportunity that may not be all that firmly anchored in reality. Its crucial to check for technical feasibility competition existing patents distribution potential and market size market demand among others With respect to market demand, get feedback from potential users or customers to assess if you want to go through all the hassle of creating your own product. In the process, you most likely have to wrestle between features and the cost of the product. Thats why we recommend that you define what your product will and wont do early on in the game. Know your customers While its true that nobody knows your product like you do, it would be foolish not to approach experts who are in a unique position to give you the most objective and brutally honest assessment. And while there are many successful products that defy conventional wisdom, youd benefit from testing your assumptions before you make any financial commitments and give the project a go. Interestingly, even Apple does market research despite stating the contrary. The best way is to conduct interviews with prospective users and industry consultants who can give you valuable insight particularly with regards to features as well as how much theyd be willing to pay for your product, then decide accordingly what you are willing to compromise on. The single biggest problem in new product development is not fully understanding the product, how it will be used, and who it will be sold to. You can have the best designers, best engineers, best manufacturer, best sales and marketing team, do everything by the book and still fall flat on your face if your target market is everybody, then chances are you will fail. The wider you aim, the less likely you are to hit your specific mark. In addition to interviews, you can also do research on similar products via forums and online retailers like Amazon where users are free to post comments.

How Much Will It Cost to Have a New Electronic Product Developed in Asia?
We've been in this business long enough to know that the success of a product doesn't depend fully on a single good idea. Product development is about fitting all the pieces of a puzzle in just right way.
The short answer? It depends. Some may require a full range of services, while others may have already had some of these done in their own country, like for instance the industrial design work. Regardless of what stage you're project is at, one thing is certain: you can expect significant savings having your device not only manufactured in China or Taiwan, but also developed here. Consider the graph below comparing design, development, and manufacturing costs in the US and Taiwan for a typical custom electronic device featuring an LCD screen. From this example, you can see that savings of over 50% are achievable. These costs already include the management of Titoma, to make sure that the various component suppliers, mold makers, hard and software engineers communicate with each other effectively, and above all: deliver according to YOUR expectations. Costs will of course heavily depend on the complexity and size of the product. For a simple small gadget, Titoma's budgets to do everything needed start at $40,000 of Non-Recurring Expenses (NRE), which include engineering, mold making (for the housing of the device), prototyping, and certifications. Larger products with a lot of programming run in excess of $100,000. And, if you haven't already heard, volume is king in China, and few factories in China are willing to take orders below 5,000 pieces. At Titoma we realize that especially on shorter run products the NRE investment weighs heaviest, so we also help our clients do lower quantity projects, as long as the first order is worth at least US$80,000.

70000 60000 50000 40000 30000 20000 10000 0

Taiwan

USA

But, despite the savings of having development and manufacturing done in Asia, the capital needed to develop a new product can still be significant considering it may involve most or all the following:

Industrial Design Electronics Engineering Mechanical Engineering Firmware Programming Software Programming Prototyping Tooling/Mold Making Certifications Production Packaging
And of course aside from development and manufacturing costs you also must take in consideration the cost of shipping the goods (generally about 5% of value), VAT tax in your home country, trade shows and marketing, etc. With all these costs, it's a wonder why anyone would want to develop their own product! But they do. The Silver Lining We've been in this business long enough to know that the success of a product doesn't depend fully on a single good idea. Product development is about fitting all the pieces of a puzzle in just right way. If one piece doesn't quite fit, the whole project fails. But once everything fits into place--and at just the right time, mind you, especially since the market window in electronics can close quickly--then the rewards are frequently considerable.

Time to Market: Accept the 80% Rule

Those closest to the product's development are the ones who can't see its flaws, but the funny thing is that no matter how much prototyping and testing you do you will not be nearly as creative as the people who buy your product.
Getting your new product to market FAST is important, especially so in electronics: 1. Competitors may come out with a similar product. 2. Stop the burn and start generating income sooner rather than later. 3. Get real market feedback. 4. The chipset around which your product is designed may be replaced by a better one. 5. Components may become EOL (End Of Life). On the other hand there are quite a few reasons why budding entrepreneurs and even seasoned product managers delay market introduction: 1. A potential client mentioned that he would like to see feature XYZ added. 2. New technology has become available which would make the product better. 3. "I was laying in bed last night and thought that it would be nice to ..." 4. "First impressions count, our first product should be perfect, let's improve it a bit further." A Firm Deadline The only way to prevent this kind of "scope creep" from happening is to set a strict deadline on when the product should be ready. The leading trade show in your field is probably your best bet. This also makes it clear that the date is real, and not just some artificial (unrealistic?) target date, and thus galvanizes everybody in the design to manufacturing chain to make it happen. Don't just take our word for it, extensive research into 80 NPD programs showed that having a firm deadline was a prerequisite to success. See Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch by Robert G. Cooper. Having such a firm date also makes it easier for everybody to accept that the new device cannot meet 100% of the wishes of 100% of all people, for most new products being "good enough" for 80% of the people is all that is needed in terms of functionality, the rest of a products success depends on the promotion, even the proverbial sliced bread went unnoticed for 15 years because it was not promoted right. Call it myopia but often those closest to the product's development are the ones who can't see its flaws, but the funny thing is that no matter how much prototyping and testing you do you will not be nearly as creative as the people who buy your product. On the first iPhone 4 users reported dropped signals when the phone was held in a very specific way, "the grip of death" where fingers blocked the antenna. 4

At the end of the day, it will be your customers who provide you with valuable feedback on which features really matter and provide the added value they are willing to pay for. Getting real market feedback as quick as possible is more important than trying to score a perfect 10 in the lab. During our development of the Qbe, one of the world's first tablet PCs, the client specified for the biggest screen, the longest battery life and the classiest magnesium housing. Unfortunately, market reaction showed that this feature-rich unit was too big, too heavy, and importantly too pricy for most people. So even companies as sophisticated as Apple do not get it right the very first time, but luckily these days the tech savvy consumers who opt to be the first on the block to have a new product tend to be fairly forgiving and in most cases, even expect some degree of problems to come with the privilege of being a pioneering user. With a generous return policy you should be able to keep these lead users happy, and if you prove to them that you are genuinely using their input in the next revision of the product you can make these fans so enthusiastic that they become your vir(tu)al sales force.

Getting real market feedback as quick as possible is more important than trying to score a perfect 10 in the lab.

How to Protect Your IP When Developing Products in China

In China, patents are of very little use because there is still a lack of effective enforcement--even after China joined the WTO.
IP Protection in China and Taiwan Protection of Intellectual Property (IP) in China is a big concern for many of our clients, and understandably so. Stories abound of products being copied, and even of factories using the molds that clients paid for to make and sell their product behind their back. That's why at Titoma we go to great lengths to protect the confidentiality of our clients' ideas and inventions. This is actually one of the main reasons people prefer to work with us rather than just handing their idea to an unknown factory somewhere in China. Patent Protection in China In China, patents are of very little use because there is still a lack of effective enforcement--even after China joined the WTO. If after years of litigation you win a lawsuit in China, it by no means guarantees that the offending factory will be closed down. And if you close down that one factory, they will very likely take their machines down the road and start up again in a new building. Low risk for new products On the other hand there is no need to get overly worried: the Chinese generally do not have the marketing ability and resources to promote a brand new, unproven product. For this reason a factory will only invest the time and money in making molds, etc, to copy your product after they have seen it sell at least say 100,000 units and when that many units have been sold, anybody could copy it, so in that sense developing in China does not add too much risk. When to patent in your target market (and when not) An important thing to realize is that most copying originates from the target market. Factory bosses in Ningbo or Wuxi don't keep abreast of what is selling well this month in Los Angeles or Paris, so in most cases it is actually a US or other importer who asks the China factory to rip off a product he saw in a store. So patenting your idea in your home country and other target markets will likely make more sense than only doing so in China. In fact, some of our senior engineers have registered and defended many patents themselves in their careers. But in general we only recommend patenting if you can make a very strong functional claim (what the product does) on the uniqueness of your idea, as patents on a design are often all too easy to circumvent. Patents can

scare off some potential copycats. On the other hand, registering a patent effectively publicizes lots of detailed information on exactly what your product does and how it does it. Another important issue is cost. Paying for exhaustive patent searches, registration and maintenance fees is one concern; a second concern is whether you have US$2 million to back up your claims in court against a large corporation.

Many good ideas are not easy or affordable to protect you have to exploit your head start by selling as much as you can before the competition catches up.

We have seen quite a few clients who have spent so much on patent protection that they had to really struggle to pay for all the other things needed to make an idea into a successful product: development, tooling, the first production batch and proper marketing. Flooding the market: Protection in numbers The traditional way to market an innovation is to start selling it at a high price, and slowly lower the price to reach more people. The big disadvantage of this strategy is that the high unit price actually provides a big incentive for people to copy it. Instead, we often advocate selling the new product at low prices right from the start, flooding the market as much as possible, and thus preempting the competition before they even have time to do their reverse engineering. Many good ideas are not easy or affordable to protect, so as soon as your product is out on the market it can be copied, which means that you have to exploit your head start by selling as much as you can before the competition catches up, sometimes only a few months later. This situation again suggests a mass marketing blitz featuring low prices right from the start. The good thing, of course, is that Titoma allows you to do so with our unique capability to design your product for low cost mass manufacturing in China. Keeping the project hush-hush during development is essential. So how does Titoma protect IP of its clients? Even though most of our mass production is done in China, we still prefer to keep development in Taiwan. Our usual strategy is to do pilot production in Taiwan, and only after the product is stable and available in the market do we move mass production to China. This is generally a very easy transfer because work methods are so similar, and many of our partner factories in China are actually Taiwanese managed and owned. Taiwan has made great progress in IP regulation and enforcement in recent years. More important, most Taiwanese firms have been around for 20 years, so they are a lot less likely to just pack up and start anew, unlike China which is still more like the Wild West. Taiwan also has good international law firms that will represent your interests, both in Taiwan and China. Own the full IP We always pay our manufacturers a realistic fee for tooling and development, this way there is no doubt as to who owns what. Many IP problems we have seen arose when development or tooling were offered free or far below cost, and the client's sales numbers did not meet rosy forecasts. Since the client was not able to sell, the manufacturer feels morally justified in making back his investment by doing the selling himself.

Remove the injection molds For sensitive projects, we take the plastic injection tools in and out of the molding shop for each run to prevent extra "night shifts". Divide and Conquer Another possibility for sensitive projects is to have one factory do the housings, another do the PCB's, and do final assembly with rigid incoming QC in our westernmanaged assembly plant. This way, none of the subcontractors gets to see the complete picture, so they likely won't even know exactly what their parts are used for. They don't see the packaging, instruction manual, or brand name. Some of the above tactics are easier to implement than others. It will depend on your product how much protection is needed, and there is of course a trade-off with added coordination costs. In conclusion So while at first sight it may look rather scary to take your highly confidential new product idea to Greater China for development, when enough precautions are taken, the advantage of selling the product at low prices and thus high volume right from the start outweighs (in most cases) the potential added risks of copying. The alternative--doing development and initial manufacturing in the West--will cost a lot more, result in a product that will sell slowly because of the high unit cost, and that same high unit cost will attract competition from Asia very quickly, likely even before you start making your high investment back.

Many IP problems we have seen arose when development or tooling were offered free or far below cost, and the client's sales numbers did not meet rosy forecasts.

The most cost-effective way to get your custom electronic device manufactured
80% of the cost of an electronic device is in the BOM (Bill Of Materials, i.e. all the electronic components). Chinese factories make the cheapest products in the world because they use the cheapest components, and those are the components made in Taiwan and China.
In these days of globalization and auction sites it would seem a smart idea to first ask ten design firms to bid on designing your device, and then take that design and ask ten factories to bid on manufacturing the electronics, and ten mold makers to bid on the molds for the housing. But alas, in reality this is not nearly as easy as it sounds. Be careful with splittist thinking Splitting up a project like this can be a recipe for disaster, especially if you are not experienced in managing transnational design projects. The risk of finger pointing is very high: the French designer will say the mold maker screwed up his wonderful concept, the Chinese mold maker will say that the 3D files he got were impossible to manufacture, so he had no option but to help the project along by quickly (i.e. without asking) implementing some "improvements," the list goes on... Don't frustrate too many people The preparation of a quotation takes considerable time, often involving the most senior people in a company. So the more firms you ask to quote, the more firms are going to feel frustrated not getting the project after having put in 2 weeks of study, and in particularly China there is always the chance that they decide to implement the design anyway, with or without you. Design for low production cost There are a lot of very clever engineers in the West, in Russia and in India, but unfortunately their electronic designs tend to be relatively expensive to make. 80% of the cost of an electronic device is in the BOM (Bill Of Materials, i.e. all the electronic components). Chinese factories make the cheapest products in the world because they use the cheapest components, and those are the components made in Taiwan and China. For example these days there are quite a few Chinese firms selling tablet PC's for as little as $80. They can get their price so low because they use a dirt cheap ICs made in China. To integrate a Rockchip IC in your electronic design you need a lot of interaction with their support engineers. Unfortunately they often only speak Chinese.

So effectively you can only compete in this market if you have your hardware manufactured and designed in Asia. Like Apple does. FYI: 91% of the world's notebooks are designed in Taiwan. The situation is unlikely to change as Asian IC vendors have little interest in hiring expensive English speaking engineers, because nearly all their high quantity orders come from local factories within China, or from the Asian purchasing offices of HP and Wall-Mart. A design firm from Bucharest, Bangalore or Paris will be very low on their priority list, meaning it can take very long for an email to get answered, if at all. Good Chinese engineers do not work for Chinese hourly rates All right, so to get affordable products you need circuit designers who speak Chinese. So get an independent design firm in China to make you a design, and then shop that around in China. If only you could find a one. The problem is that the whole world is coming to China to get their electronics manufactured. All big clients such as HP and Cisco require a lot of engineers to support their production orders. So while China does have a lot of people, there is a real scarcity of good engineers, and basically all those who have a decent amount of experience, speak some English, and--rarest of all--show some creativity, are working for the big factories. These factories paying higher and higher salaries, and more importantly also pay big end-of year bonuses tied to sales, so the engineers benefit from the success of the products they design. This means that in China there are very few good engineers interested in starting an independent electronic design firm, where they just get paid by the hour and do not share in the manufacturing profits. Left alone, Chinese factories out-cheap themselves Meanwhile the factories are 100% focused on keeping their production lines humming with the limited engineers they have to help their clients with new products. So a factory will never agree to do just the design, without a guaranteed production order. On the other hand, if you ask a Chinese factory to design and make you a low cost product they WILL come up with a very cheap design, but unfortunately they tend to get overzealous. In China you can for example buy Iphone rip-offs that cost only $50. Problem is that the glass shatters the first time your drop it

91% of the world's notebooks are designed in Taiwan.

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and the battery lasts only 18 minutes. And if your first sample doesn't have this "cheap disease," you can just wait for this to happen in the first or second production order. So in short, to be competitive in electronics you need to manufacture in Asia, and it's imperative that product development is done in Asia as well, and that there is a tight management to make sure expectations are consistently met. Titoma allows you to entrust your complete project to professional Western project managers and engineers, on-site in Taiwan and China. We make it our job to know what you want and the quality you expect, and deliver just that, faster and more economically than just about anyone else. You'll be in very good hands.

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New Product Development Checklist

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What is the unmet need in the market place? Does your product meet that need? Are there currently similar products in the market? How are they performing? How big is the market for your product? Who are the key competitors and their market share? Are there patents that would prevent you from developing your product? What kind of certifications will your product require? What is the product's unique selling proposition? Where do you plan to sell your product? Who will buy it? How much do you plan to sell the product? How much would your buy cost have to be? What is your estimated sales per year? What is your marketing plan? How much will you allocate for marketing budget? How will you fund development and production? When do you need to launch the product? What drives this date? What could potentially kill your product?

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