I can see that running a much larger wc business than mine, running a successfull e-supply business, and being a sort of product development, manufacturing sourcing agent come inventor etc is a lot of different hats. I can see there isn't much time.
But I wasn't joking. Three different carbon sections shoved inside each other what's so hard? You already know the best sizes?
With them Emporium people etc all trying to do the same thing surely the best strategy is to use your knowledge to steal a march and get one out first.
We have had our new telescopic pole in development for about 10 months now and by the time it hits the shelves, it will have taken a year from conception to sales. If we just 'lifted' standard items off of the shelf, then all we would be selling is what someone else currently sells. Good products take time to think through, prototypes have to be made and then put into active service (6 months is a minimum trial time for a decent pole). Once this has been done you assess the product, make any improvements (which there always are) and then have more prototypes manufactured to see if these improvements actually work. Once you have finalised these details then you have to have the specific tooling manufactured for every bit of the pole. This takes months and many thousands of pounds.
Then you have to be prepared to commit your firm to a year's production run of the items, trying to anticipate demand for your 'new' product. This usually will mean a commitment of in excess of £100,000 in addition to your tooling costs and your prototype manufacturing costs.
At the end of this you will hopefully have a 'world class' product that people will want to use. When it comes to margins on poles not even the mighty Ionics makes anything like the 4 times mark-up you quote. The margins on some of our poles is less than £10.
As to 'stealing a march' on other firms like Emporium, etc, we are rather more concerned with our ideas being protected so that others cannot 'steal' them. We currently have a legal team working on one infringement of our Protected Design rights. This is why, after we have developed a new product ,we take the time and money to protect the design with the Patent Office which is what we've done with all of our recent new products.
It would be great if new product introduction were simple, but then if it was, everyone would be doing it and then if everyone was doing it, no one would make money from it so no one would end up bothering and there would be no progress. My motives for developing a better pole are purely selfish. I work as a window cleaner and want my work to be as easy as possible, therefore I have set out to try and develop the best window cleaning pole in the world! If it works well for me I know that it will work well for other window cleaners.
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