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I have designed several products that involve electronics. I do all the design, electronics, and building myself except for a few things. There is a market for these products although competition is high. I believe I have distinguished my products by adding useful(to me at least) features that other products do not have. In this market the goal is not to push a cheap product but to "hook" the consumers.

My goal was to start small by selling a few of these products on ebay and/or create a simple website. Hopefully some capital could be generated which will further the venture.

The issues I'm having are time constraints and money that are severely hampering getting these products out. There are a few things I simply cannot do with very limited capital, at least in a commercial way.

Assuming I have no ability for financial support I believe the only way is to continue doing this very slowly and once I do get some capital I can invest it back into creating a more efficient process.

I can definitely have the products "mass produced" quite efficiently but obviously at a large cost(which I simply do not have). I was thinking that if it were possible to get a large sell of these products before they are made it would be much easier to come up with the funds(I guess I'm a bit apprehensive due to the already established competition and especially considering the economy).

While I'm probably being somewhat vague I'll be interested to hear any constructive advice.

Is it difficult to get a product on the inventory of these larger online retailers? I figured if I could get my products listed I would have instant access to a very large market. I could put an initial investment to produce a small number of the products to ship them out to these companies since I imagine they require this. Then if the product sells I could reinvest that to produce more products and repeat the cycle.

Anyways, I'm an engineer and not a business person. I have limited knowledge of business but do feel once I get my foot in the door the possibilities are endless.

Any help would be appreciated.

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2 Answers

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One of the fundamental problems of product marketing is awareness. How are people going to be made aware of the product, and be compelled to choose yours over a competing product? Bootstrapping electronic products is a challenge because it takes economies of scale to really get the cost down into the realm where it is competitive on a price scale to other products that might already be in the market.

If you believe your product is unique in a category, you can use Kickstarter to do an initial product run. Take a look at technology products that have been successful and see how they have structured the incentives. Done in a clever way, you can use the incentives to help figure out what product mix or features have the largest appeal, and you get to gauge interest in your product through the pledges. If you don't raise the money through the site, then you have an early indicator that you need to adjust your value proposition or approach to the market.

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Kickstarter is a great suggestion! – Scott Oct 10 '11 at 19:07
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You have got to to look at the lean start up methodology. This will answer a lot of your questions. http://theleanstartup.com/

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