In my earlier emails, I shared how I rushed my product to market and made a lot of mistakes.
I didn’t test with real users.
I didn’t validate the idea.
I didn’t get help with manufacturability or outside feedback.
I was just trying to move fast.
And that cost me, in time,
money, and frustration.
Eventually, I realized I couldn’t do it alone.
I hired a product launch consultant.
He offered some helpful high-level advice that gave me direction.
But the biggest change came after I connected with someone who had spent decades working with consumer products.
He completely changed how I thought about packaging and retail presentation.
He understood what buyers notice, what makes a product stand out, and how in-store displays actually work.
We rebuilt everything around that.
And that’s when things finally started to take off.
The product got picked up by hundreds of stores in the U.S., Canada, and a few other countries.
It made it into hardware chains, department stores, home improvement
retailers, and around a hundred Walgreens stores.
Walmart showed real interest too, but things got stuck in internal back-and-forth over which department it should go in.
With momentum building, I slowly built out a small sales team.
Every new rep brought more insight into what actually moves a product off the shelf.
I also started attending trade shows, talking with people face-to-face, and learning from others who had done what I was trying to do.
It was a major shift from working alone in my “bat cave.”
Once I started getting outside perspective from people who had done it before, I stopped guessing and started making better decisions.
The product was already on the market, so it was too late to change how it worked.
But I finally saw how people were really using
it. That shaped how I thought about the next version.
This is something I always tell people:
Get your first version out there. Then use what you learn to make it better.
That’s what I did with the packaging, even though I went too big, too fast.
In hindsight, I should have started smaller.
I also started working more closely with the engineers at my manufacturer to improve the product’s design for manufacturability.
The first version was harder to build than it should have been. Production yield was lower, and costs were higher than they needed to be.
From that, I learned how to improve the design for manufacturing, simplify the build, cut cost, and improve consistency.
If I had done all of this earlier, I would have had more success, faster. Even with version
one.
Cheers,
John Teel
