Has anyone sold a design?
Has anyone sold a design?
(OP)
I have an idea that works well in my CAD model and could be very helpful to others. I recognize working on paper means nothing if it doesnt work after being fabricated.
I can have prototypes built but the cost will start to add up during the testing stage and having numerious prototypes fabricated to work out the unforseen bugs. Another option is to prepare a presentation and attempt to sell the design/concept to a company.
Has anyone taken an idea from a design in their head to something on a shelf at a store? Has anyone sold an idea? What are some pitfalls in the process? What are some ways to communicate with the appropriate department at a larger company. I doubt you can just call the main 800 number and say you have an idea.
Thanks
I can have prototypes built but the cost will start to add up during the testing stage and having numerious prototypes fabricated to work out the unforseen bugs. Another option is to prepare a presentation and attempt to sell the design/concept to a company.
Has anyone taken an idea from a design in their head to something on a shelf at a store? Has anyone sold an idea? What are some pitfalls in the process? What are some ways to communicate with the appropriate department at a larger company. I doubt you can just call the main 800 number and say you have an idea.
Thanks





RE: Has anyone sold a design?
I just emailed my Brother In Law who works for an energy company one of my bright ideas, they weren't interested/already had something similar. Or at least, that's what he told me
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Unless you have some significant financial resources at your disposal, your only realistic option is to secure your idea with one or more patents, and then sell or license rights to that intellectual property. Bringing even a simple product to market will require you to spend huge amounts of cash, and that cash will be tied up for a long period of time.
You can get 12 months of protection with a provisional US patent filing that costs a couple hundred bucks and can easily be filed on your own. However, you'll likely want to have a patent attorney prepare the filing of any formal patents, and each one will run you something like 5 to 10 thousand dollars in attorney costs and filing fees here in the US. If you want foreign patent protection, it can easily cost you several times that amount.
Once you have some IP protection in place, you'll want to draft a non-disclosure agreement for any interested parties to sign before discussing your idea with them.
Many large companies have formal idea submission processes in place. Here's one for Ford .
Good luck. Hope that helped.
Terry
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
TTFN
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RE: Has anyone sold a design?
You can raise VC money, but everyone I've talked to says you are best off going in with a working prototype.
The way I see it, you either develop the prototype with your own cash, or get some angel investors (family, friends, etc.)
Chris Loughnane - Product Design
http://www.pdnotebook.com
http://www.twitter.com/DesignNotebook
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Most venture capitalists are going to want a share that gives them a decent return on their capital (don't even think in terms of passbook savings accounts). Five or ten percent is not the number. They will also want some control, especially if you don't have a track record of running successful businesses.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
VCs give money to entrepreneurs.
Chris Loughnane - Product Design
http://www.pdnotebook.com
http://www.twitter.com/DesignNotebook
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Second: If by some miracle it's not already patented, talk to a lawyer about filing a provisional and have him prepare an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) for you. Have anyone you talk to about the invention sign an NDA.
Third: If you see a company advertise invention commercialization on TV, it's probably a fraud. Those companies don't care if your ideas are good, they want to sell you worthless patent searches and marketing studies.
Forth: Good ideas are worth a whole lot less than most people think. You need to put together a business plan/value proposition to show that your idea is worth developing. You'll need to be brutally honest with this assessment.
Fifth: Approach companies/investors with your proposition and be happy if you end up with enough money to cover your legal costs.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Patents are very expensive, take years and less than 1% of them are profitable. Then, once you get one, you have to defend it.
Tom
Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.
www.carbideprocessors.com
Good engineering starts with a Grainger Catalog.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
You might find this useful and interesting.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
So when you see really creative and useful gadget at a store, would it be safe to say that for the most part they came from a company that was already established or from that one in a million individual who took the financial risk and it wound up paying off?
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Many cool items you see in stores are ideas that were patented and someone tried to sell but did not become popular until after the patent expired. Markets adopt new ideas slowly and in some cases begrudging.
A star for tomwalz. I only have one patent out of two applications, neither of these products have been winners so far. The products I've developed that were not patented have been more profitable and easier to market as they are incremental improvements.
Ed Danzer
www.danzcoinc.com
www.dehyds.com
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
You might want to view old episodes of the show "Pitchmen," which gives you an excellent view of what the small inventor goes through. In the show, they had a couple of instances where certain companies would take on ideas, assuming they passed the giggle test first, and then would develop it further, do testing, do market evaluations, etc., before going with a direct marketing approach. Clearly, however, less than 1 in 10 inventors make it to that stage.
If you attempt to do it yourself, you will most likely lose gobs of money. Even with patent protection, there would be strong likelihood that someone will copy your product and flood the market. A large marketing company can get the product out quicker, and to more markets than you can yourself.
TTFN
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RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
www.tinaja.com/glib/casagpat.pdf
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Patents are like real-estate. A very special few are lakefront lots with mountain views and most of the others are situated next to superfund sites, but without the deed you've got nothing to lease.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Best way to get money for your idea if it could apply to cabinet making.
tom
Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.
www.carbideprocessors.com
Good engineering starts with a Grainger Catalog.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Eliminate the pitchmen and the sticky goes away.
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Partner and I designed a game. We prototyped everything including injection mold tooling for components, all the parts, printing, instruction manual, packaging, prototyped in store point of purchase displays, complete costed BOM with vendors, drawing package, etc. Video taped kids playing the game. A complete package.
Took it to Big Toy Co. They agreed to purchase, we did some negotiating, scheduled second meeting with other representatives. In between meetings they received new directive that all new product introduction must be endorsed by, with, and include certain TV show animated characters.
Meeting over, no deal.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
This history of being ripped off actually solidified some business for me recently- a prospective client and I were both ripped off by the same major international company. Now we're blood brothers! Some companies realize that to develop new technology you need scientists, engineers, laboratories etc. AND lawyers, whereas to rip off somebody else who has already developed a technology, all you need are lawyers!
Patents are expensive and hard to defend (meaning both time and money for lawyers and others).
The most effective use for patents I'm seeing at present is using them as a means to legitimize utter hokum- bogus stuff that is used to scam investors out of their money. No need to "defend" a patent on something that doesn't work, so no cost there. No need to spend a lot of money writing it either, since you don't care to defend it. But dumb people see patents as proof of concept, rather than merely a document that gives the owner the legal right to exclusively manufacture the thing that doesn't work for the next 20 years. And as P.T. Barnum said, "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the general public"!
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
We are developing what we think is a great technology now. The biggest problem we have run into is that when we approach a large company where we think it is a natural fit the concern is "technology taint". What if they are working on something even remotely similar? Again, think "taco bell dog". They will not sign NDAs. They will only discuss public (patented) information. The technology does not have value to them if it is not already protected and public.
As for investors, Chris has it right on. VC won't be interested until there is an established business with real clients and cash flow. Nobody invests in ideas. If you have a great idea I would suggest reading "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki and then doing a search for local start-up support groups. In west Michigan an example would be Innovation Works through the Right Place program.
http://www.rightplace.org/Innovation-Works.aspx
Good Luck.
Harold
SW2010 SP1.0 OPW2010 SP1.0 Win XP Pro 2002 SP3
Dell 690, Xeon 5160 @3.00GHz, 3.25GB RAM
nVidia Quadro FX4600
www.lumenflow.com
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
Well worth a look and they won't disclose it to anyone without your permission.
I think the cost is around £200.....
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
I would imagine it would not be a big seller with consumers at a hardware store at first but would be more valuable to insurance companies who would not have to pay for as much for losses since less damage would occur.
I would imagine making a pitch to an insurance company would be out of the question as they are huge and I am just an individual. Getting it on the shelf at a hardware store may not drum up enough interest to make the idea profitable after paying for pattent and attorney fees.
RE: Has anyone sold a design?
We build and sell machine coolant filter units. The original goal was safer shops. The attorney convinced us than there was way too much liability in that approach. Fortunately, by that time, we had enough data to sell them as a time and money saving device. It is still like trying to convince people to go to the dentist.
Tom
Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.
www.carbideprocessors.com
Good engineering starts with a Grainger Catalog.