From Concept to Market: Mastering the Art of Inventing and Launching Successful Products for First-time Inventors

Today's episode is a masterclass on product innovation and business growth, especially for first-time inventors and entrepreneurs. Our guest, Tania James, transitioned from an 18-year career as a child and youth worker to entrepreneurship, by educating herself about business on the internet while nurturing her interests in problem-solving. Her invention, the Sure Grip Kitchen Towels™, cotton towels designed with silicone to keep them securely on kitchen appliance handles and prevent them from slipping to the floor; is already a favorite among customers and a brilliant success story.

Join us as Tania shares her experiences as a first-time inventor and founder, and insights from her early failures, decisions, and successes. Discover low-budget marketing tips that could dramatically transform your business and accelerate growth. Tune in now.

In today's episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we'll cover:

●      Cost-saving strategies for prototyping and manufacturing on a budget.

●      How to validate your idea with feedback, and pivot when needed.

●      Effective ways to market your product, even with limited resources.

●      And so much more!

Visit www.suregripkitchentowels.com to discover how the Sure Grip Kitchen Towels™ transform your kitchen experience, staying on your appliance pull and making it easier to open jars and handle glassware.

To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!

Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today!

Transcript

Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
If you are an early stage inventor and want to learn the first steps you should take, how to save money during the invention process and how to eventually market your product effectively to either gross sales on your own or to secure a license deal, then you're going to love today's interview.

Voiceover introduction [00:00:15]:
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know. Harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now here's the host of the Harvest Growth podcast, Jon LaClare.

Jon LaClare [00:00:35]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm excited to have Tania James on. She's the founder and the inventor of sure grip kitchen towels, suregripkitchentowels.com I encourage everyone to check it out. We're going to talk about her product, how she came up with the idea, but she's got an interesting background too and how she ended up in this kind of crazy world of product invention. And we'll talk about first that, that backstory. But Tania, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us today.

Tania James [00:00:59]:
Thank you so much for having me, John. I'm really excited to be here.

Jon LaClare [00:01:04]:
Likewise. And as I alluded to, you've got an interesting background. Everybody does, right? We all come from different areas before we launch or market new products. But if you could talk about your experience previous to what you're doing today and kind of how it's led you where you are.

Tania James [00:01:18]:
Yeah, well, I've always been a problem solver, but I was using my skills in different ways. So prior to this, I worked for the school board as a child youth worker, which is not someone that works with kids who are at risk. So I was always solving problems on a daily basis, working with my students. But here I am today. I pivoted to being a product developer and I now launched my very first product, Suregrip Kitchen Towels.

Jon LaClare [00:01:49]:
And what, I guess what drove you to do that pivot, you know, talk about your education experience a little bit after, I think, is it 18 years of working in that field? What made you just decide to change?

Tania James [00:02:02]:
Yeah, So I spent 18 years and I absolutely loved what I did. But during the pandemic I just, like I said, I've always been a problem solver and I had so many ideas stuck in my head and I started on the path of, okay, how do I, what do I do with these ideas? And I started Google searching and I came across an invention consulting type of company and they had tons of content and I was able to kind of delve into how do you take your ideas and make it into something that people can go out and buy. So I actually started out as someone who wanted to license my ideas. So I started making sell sheets and distributing those sell sheets to retailers, manufacturers in hopes of getting a licensing deal. And during that time, it was a really tough time for retailers. Big Box was canceling orders with some of their vendors. There were shipping delays, and it just wasn't moving at the speed that I wanted it to. I actually had a deal lined up that fell through because that particular Big Box canceled the order with that retailer.

Tania James [00:03:16]:
So my husband was just like, why don't you do this yourself? Like, take the chance, bring it to market yourself. You can do it. And here I am.

Jon LaClare [00:03:27]:
Juan, I think you, in my opinion, fell into the what I would say nowadays is the right way to do this. We've been in the product launch space for a long time. So actually our company is about 18 years old and doing this and I've launched hundreds of products. We're clients, right? And over the years it really has changed. Where 15, 18, 20 years ago, it used to be much easier to get a license deal. Companies were looking for products that were unproven, but there were great ideas. They'd take in, they'd make do the manufacturing, they'd take on the costs, et cetera. And more and more, even if a license deal is your ultimate goal, we've found in our experience, what you maybe have kind of encountered along the way is they want results, right? They want to see some kind of proof of concept.

Jon LaClare [00:04:09]:
And whether that's selling to a retailer like you started down that path, whether it's selling directly to consumers over a website or Amazon, but some sort of track record, some success along the way. So again, you've sort of ended up doing the. I would, what I would say is the right approach, even if you're ultimate goal is sort of a license deal. Can you talk a little bit for those that might be considering or thinking about taking an invention to one of these invention consultants that does a pitch, right? So maybe they've got some proof of concept like you do, right. And they're looking at the right time to now approach potential licensees. How was that process?

Tania James [00:04:47]:
It was fairly straightforward. It was validate your idea. That's definitely going to be step number one. Make sure you're not infringing on anyone's patent. Do Google searches, check Alibaba, Temu, Amazon. Because sometimes we think, oh my goodness, I've never seen this product, so it must not exist. But if you really delve in, chances are you're going to find something and something similar. And that's okay, as long as there's a point of difference.

Tania James [00:05:17]:
So, first step, do your homework. Make sure that you're not infringing on anyone's patent. Take a look, look at every platform you can get your eyes on just to make sure that your exact idea isn't already out there and you're claiming it for your own.

Jon LaClare [00:05:36]:
I think that's good to bring up and it's important to think about. There's the patent part of the process that, you know, can be relatively expensive. And even hiring a patent attorney to do a search to see if you're infringing on somebody else, a lot of the legwork you can avoid or, you know, get ahead of by doing your own, as you're mentioning, you know, start with by doing. And I think I. And you are probably not saying, you know, don't skip a patent attorney at the right time in the process, but before you get to that stage, don't pay them exorbitant fees to search and see what's out there first. Do your own homework. Right? And you may find, as you said, something that exists, you know, a little bit different. You know, you might be able to be different enough from a patent perspective.

Jon LaClare [00:06:14]:
And now that's the good time to, I would say, approach a patent attorney and have that discussion. But totally agree. I think it's do as much as you can on your own, and it could be pretty quick. You can do a lot of that research. It may take hours, but you could do it over the course of, you know, a couple or a few days or whatever, at a very early stage of the process. So what was next after you now have found, okay, now you're clear to proceed forward.

Tania James [00:06:36]:
Yeah, so once you've given yourself that green light, then I would start validating, like, is this something people want? Like, try some polls, survey monkey, Facebook groups, Hey, I have this idea. Is this something that you'd be interested in? What colors would you like? What sizes would you like? You really want to now get into the consumer side of it and ensure that it's something that will be selling off the shelves that consumers do have an appetite for. So go ahead and do that next. And once you've done that, then I would say, how do you want to bring it to market? Do you want a licensing deal? Do you want to manufacture on your own? Maybe now you can start making A prototype, seeing how it actually works. Because sometimes we have an idea in our head and then when we put it together, it doesn't quite fit the way we thought it would. So getting your hands dirty as much as you can. I'm a big believer of do as much as you can yourself before you start paying the experts because this is quite the costly journey and you're going to need your money.

Jon LaClare [00:07:49]:
Yeah. And I think you said you're going to need your money and I would say for marketing. Right. No matter how good the idea is and even if you're getting a license deal, as we talked about, you've got to get some kind of proof of concept that it's going to work well and it doesn't have to be crazy expensive. But we've had a lot of conversations over the years where people approach us, hey, I've got this idea, I've got a patent, it's vetted. What can I do? I've got no money left over for marketing. Right. So you've got to have something in the coffers at that point.

Jon LaClare [00:08:14]:
So if you can save some dollars up front and make sure you're going in the right direction and do what you can and then bring an experts when you need them. Right. So that might be a marketing person to come on or an agency to help out or certainly a patent attorney when the, when the time is right for that. Well, I think now's a good time to. Let's talk about the product itself. So I've got one holding up here. So it's. Sure.

Jon LaClare [00:08:33]:
Gripkitchen towels.com as I said before, it's a. Basically a kitchen towel on the inside. It's probably hard to see on video, but there are. I think it's silicone. Right. Silicone strips that go across the inside of a towel. You've got one there as well. And this is.

Jon LaClare [00:08:48]:
So it helps stay on a handle. And there's other benefits as well. So I'll talk, have you talk about the journey of, I guess how you came up with the idea and how you developed to what we see today.

Tania James [00:08:58]:
Well, I'm a mom of four, so I was pregnant with my second daughter. So this is a while back. I've had this idea for quite some time. And this particular day I was heavily pregnant and in the kitchen and picking up my kitchen towel off the floor for what felt like a hundred times was just annoying me that day. So I was like, why can't we fix this? Like, I'm not ready for one of those Knitted, buttoned devices that go on your kitchen towel, that's not sleek and cool. So I was just like, I think I had my oven mitt in my hand and I was like, well, this oven mitt has silicone on it. Why can't a kitchen towel? And I made my own little Frankenstein prototype. I cut up my, the silicone on the oven mitt, glued it to the kitchen towel and gave it a try and it worked.

Tania James [00:09:54]:
So when you hang it, that silicone is just right there in the center of the towel. So when you hang it over your appliance pull, it's going to stay there because it's going to create that friction, that non slip grip. But what I've noticed or what I really love about this right now is that I'm using this as a jar opener. So I'm taking that silicone grip that's in the center, I'm placing it over the lids and it's giving me that extra grip to open jars. And it's just, it's just fantastic.

Jon LaClare [00:10:26]:
And sometimes you've got to walk forward and start developing the idea before you realize all the benefits. As you said, the jar opener is something maybe, you know, you never would have thought of before creating the prototype, before going down that road. And you know, it's, that's another area I think that early prototypes can be done on your own to figure things out before hiring. So an engineer to come in that may have to come in and figure out what the different materials need to be in the widths and all that kind of stuff we can get to later. But you know, keep it easy, make sure it's going to work and it's a good idea, etc. And I've loved mine for that as well as opening jars. It makes it so easy. And of course hanging on our handle in our oven, we've made good use of that as well.

Jon LaClare [00:11:05]:
So so far what's worked best, what type of marketing channel has been best for your business?

Tania James [00:11:11]:
So far it's been in person. So I actually want to add something to that. The ideal customer that I originally thought who would like this kitchen towel was someone like myself, a busy millennial mom who just couldn't be bothered with picking up the kitchen towel. But I came to realize through in person sales, going to pop up shops, farmers markets, home and lifestyle shows. The people who really, really appreciate this products are my 55 + community. Like they just love it, they appreciate it, they're at a point in their life where they want to give great Gifts. They pride themselves on gift giving and a lot of them have redone their kitchens. They want to add nice things to their kitchens.

Tania James [00:12:00]:
The kids have left the home so they can afford and they pre to spend a little bit more on their kitchen items. So that's been interesting.

Jon LaClare [00:12:11]:
And you learned that audience through these in person events just by knowing who's buying and how is. I've got my opinions on live selling. I've shared them on the show before. I love it. It's a great way to learn to grow a business, Learn a lot about your product. But what would you say are some other things you've learned or ways you've benefited from doing these in person selling events?

Tania James [00:12:31]:
I've learned the kind of materials they're looking for, the kinds of patterns they're looking for. So initially I was like thinking, you know, bright florals. And many of my customers were like, well, I just did my kitchen. It's super modern, super chic, and I want something that reflects that. So I was like, okay, well, I'm not making this just for me. It's, it's for you. So I'm gonna incorporate things that are a little bit more modern and sleek into the lineup. And it's just been so valuable just to talk to the people who appreciate this and they're like, I didn't know there was a solution for this problem.

Tania James [00:13:08]:
Like, it's just, it's so refreshing to see that it never gets old. I absolutely love in person selling, and.

Jon LaClare [00:13:17]:
I think I've shared this story a couple of times on this show in the past, but it's something that we did in my oxiclean days many years ago that we kept doing even after the company grew to $250 million and more in revenue. Because it was ingrained from the early days. They started selling in home shows and fairs and things like that directly to consumers. And of course, you know, by the time we were much bigger company, it wasn't an important part of the revenue. Right. It was very small relative to that, but it was very important in terms of learning having that conversation directly with your customers. There's really no better way to do it. We, everyone does focus groups.

Jon LaClare [00:13:56]:
We do them too. Right. And surveys and things that are very helpful. But when you're ready to go to market and really want to confirm everything, it's so valuable to have those conversations now to people you're actually selling to. And you don't need to be the best salesperson in the world. You know, it's. These are Regular people, you're okay being a regular person, but having those conversations. As you mentioned, there's so many things you learned with your business and really I would encourage everyone to think about that once it's ready to start to go to market.

Jon LaClare [00:14:22]:
Have it as an early step. Could be a flea market, a home show. A lot of those are not that expensive. But it's an invaluable use of your time for a day or a couple of days at one these events to talk to your audience, to get in front of them. Well, Tania, is there anything I didn't ask that you think could be helpful for our audience?

Tania James [00:14:41]:
I think if I were to do this again, which I will, I do have other products in the pipeline. I'm definitely going to tap into social media a little bit more ahead of time and build that community and get them excited and get the buzz going about the new product. The new product launch coming soon. I think that's the only thing that I didn't do this time that going forward I will incorporate.

Jon LaClare [00:15:11]:
It really is an extension of that in person event. It's different, right? I still encourage in person even though, you know, no matter what your goals are as a business, but now taking that into the digital world, the next step is social media because it's similar, right? It's not as good in some ways, it's more scalable, so it's better in other ways. But I totally agree, it's a great thing to do very early. So you've pivoted there and gotten there eventually. But in the early days, that social media approach can get a lot of comments back, feedback, learnings, etc. To keep that learning game going as you, as you grow as a business, I want to encourage our audience. Please go check out sure grip kitchen towels.com you can check out Tania's product, learn more about what she's doing and see this really great invention and help her along the way. And I also want to say our audience did you know you can meet with a member of my team absolutely free for a 30 minute strategy consultation.

Jon LaClare [00:16:03]:
We've launched and grown hundreds of products since 2007 and learned some of our strategies while growing Oxiclean back in the Billy Mays days. We're here to help, so please go to harvestgrowth.com and set up a call if you'd like to discuss further.