In today’s business world, new companies seem to sprout up all the time—and fade into obscurity just as quickly. While there isn’t a set roadmap that leads to success, it’s certainly helpful for companies to spend an appropriate amount of time conceptualizing their products.

You’ve probably heard the saying “work smarter, not harder,” and that’s exactly what successful companies do; they avoid poor production practices and use informed decision-making for better results. Success is never a guarantee, but if you learn to work smarter, your company can avoid common problems that inhibit product development.

Choosing the Wrong Manufacturer

It’s easy to be enticed by low-cost production solutions (usually found overseas), but you need to invest in a quality manufacturer. If you entrust your product to a company that can’t handle high-production volumes, or can’t fully understand the design or specs of your product, find someone else to work with.

When you find a reliable manufacturer, provide them with every detail possible (metrics, tolerances, etc.) so you can both be on the same page during the development stage. Also, be sure to provide manufacturers with functional tests to ensure the correct operation of your product.

Continuously Adding Features

At some point during the development process, you or a member of your team might have ideas about features to add to the product. Though that seems like a perfectly normal practice, you must learn to avoid it and exercise the proper resistant. By continuing to add more features, you might change the intended use of the product or make it too complex for many consumers to understand.

Launching a simpler product is many times a smarter play. Don’t alienate potential customers with your overloaded product; launch something simple that solves a particular problem, then learn how you can improve the product with customer feedback. You should be careful about adding excessive features to your products as it comes paired with additional complexity and expense.

Poor Balancing Between Pre- and Post-launch Learnings

You should be learning more about your product before it hits the market, but the product launch also has a lot to teach you. Once your product gets into the hands of consumers, the experience will give you greater insight on what works, and what can be improved upon.

For example, maybe after the product’s launch, you realized that a certain packaging material would have suited your needs better, or perhaps the package design isn’t attracting as many people as it could be. Details such as these can help you develop an outstanding product; conduct rigorous user research to discover how to improve your existing product, and how to improve your future products.

Let Us Help You

Sierra Coating Technologies LLC can assist you with the coating or lamination portion of your product development needs. We incorporate a proven development process and share our expert ideas with you, helping you develop your intellectual property. If you require a coated or laminated product manufactured to defined quality specifications in a repeatable and economically viable process, contact us today to get started.

Creating, producing, and marketing an innovative and groundbreaking product is not an easy proposition. The pitfalls and risks are many and the costs can be great in terms of both time and money. Of course, succeeding means having a corner of the marketplace all to yourself, this can lead to profits and a boost to the cache of your company.  The key to the entire process is having a partner rich in both experience and skill. At Sierra Coating, when it comes to custom coated and laminated specialty substrates, we are the new product development specialists. To discover what makes Sierra Coating a leader, let us take a closer look at our process of bringing a new product into being.

• Raw Materials

Whether you are dealing with a nonwoven, plastic, paper, or paperboard product, Sierra Coating will source, test, and choose the perfect raw materials and chemicals to fit your projects needs. Many times, because we have such a vast experience and selection of materials, we can point our clients in a previously hidden direction

• Cost-Effectiveness

Running lab tests on materials are just a part of picking the right one. We also run extensive economic studies and price out materials to match your budget.

• Trials

After arriving at the optimal materials, we take our clients through the often-difficult trial process. This entails picking a day and laying out a highly detailed trial plan, including all possible manufacturing techniques, quality control demands and complex design of experiments. On trial day we make up to 10+ versions of your product that you can run through your own specific testing and focus groups.

• Tightening Up

After you complete your testing and trials, Sierra Coating is there to make all necessary changes or upgrades quickly and cost-effectively. This also includes setting up all necessary converting, printing and packaging.

• Bring It Home

After all the exhaustive test, trials and quality audits, Sierra Coating is there to manufacture your new product, help with inventory launch, and help get  the completed supply chain working.

For us, the bottom line is that we never let you stray from the path to success. We take all the guesswork, and hopefully the doubt, out of the process. If you are looking to create and launch a new and innovative product, then you need Sierra Coating on your side!