At Factorydesign it’s our job to take ideas and turn them into real products so we love to hear from entrepreneurs who have come up with the next big thing. If you’re been kept awake at night trying to work out how to get your product to market then please get in touch as we’d love to help! To keep you going in the mean time we’ve written this guide, which aims to outline some of the steps that you should take, what the process involves from our side and some helpful resources that should get you on your way.

The first thing to do is make sure that it is a genuinely new and unseen idea, and the best place for this is Google so get online and get searching. However, don’t be too disheartened if you find something similar or even the same. You can check it out and maybe your version will be better so it could still be worth pursuing.

Do a quick patent search to make sure that it’s not protected. Once again, good old Google is here to help: http://www.google.co.uk/patents. You can also use the UK Intellectual Property Office website.

OK, so it looks like it’s still an original idea, which is good, but is it commercial? In order to work this out (and convince us too) here are some further points you should get clear as a way of putting  a good brief together:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. How much would they pay for it?
3. Does it have a unique selling point that will make it stand out in the crowd?
4. Is there some new piece of technology that would need to be developed to make it work, or is it something you have seen elsewhere that can be reapplied in a new way? Developing new technology can be time consuming and expensive, but often you can cobble something together that would prove the concept (we do this all the time!). This can be very informative and a good way to check whether you’re thinking along the right lines. We can help with this too of course!

Don’t try and design the actual product at this stage – that’s for us to do after all! Seriously though, it’s easy to get bogged down trying to figure out little details, such as what the colour might be, when the points above are more important, especially whether there’s some people to buy it and whether they can afford to pay for it!

Eventually you will need some money to really move it forward, especially if you want the services of (great) designers like us! There are several stages to the product design process and the costs vary considerably depending on the complexity of the project. Due to commercial considerations we’re not going to put our prices here, however here is a rough outline to give you an idea:

Stage One – concept design.
This is where we come up with ideas in response to your brief, and is likely to cost a few thousand pounds. It might sound expensive, but actually, this is where the real ideas happen and that’s worth a LOT!  Please don’t ask us to ‘do a couple of sketches’ for free ’cause it makes us cross…
Stage Two – concept development.
This is where we start to refine the original bunch of ideas into one or two that are the most successful candidates. Often this will involve some 3D CAD (a virtual model) so that we can get an idea of the actual size and prove any other innovation we might have added (see, told you Stage one was worth a LOT). If there is a mechanism or some electronics to get working we’d do that here too. It’s hard to give a price bracket for this as it depends so much on the complexity of the concepts, however you’re going to need another few thousand at least.
Stage Three – Technical Detailing.
Following stage two you should have one route that is the overall winner, and this now needs the final technical detail adding that will mean it can be manufactured, assembled, shipped, sold, used, loved, worn out, disassembled, recycled and so on…. At this point you will also need to find someone who can take the files we give them and make the actual parts into reality, and we are happy to say that we have  a nice pool of trusted and capable people who can do just that. Phew eh? Yup, you guessed it…. a few more thousand.
Stage Four – manufacture.
OK, so things are starting to get really exciting, you’ve seen prototypes and working models, we’ve found someone who can manufacture, assemble and ship, and the quotes are on the table. These are likely to be more like a few tens of thousand… so the piggy bank is really going to suffer. However, the package of data and design that you now have is likely to mean that securing funding will be easier, particularly if points 1 and 2 from above still hold true ( if we’ve done our job properly they certainly should). Before manufacture we would recommend making a ‘presentation model’ of the product, which look and feel like the real thing, and may even have some basic functionality. You can then use this to sell the product into shops, and it will also be a great help when hustling around for money as people much prefer to have something in their hands rather than just looking at a photo.
Stage Five – sell sell sell!
Well done you made it, time to sit back and watch the cash roll in…. Or maybe you should get us to have a look at your next idea.

We hope you have found this informative, and not too terrifying, and that it’s inspired you to take the bull by the horns and make your idea a reality. If you get this far and it’s still a good idea then we’d love to talk to you about taking it forward. Unfortunately, we cant work for free, however if we believe in it too then there are ways to make it work so give us a call on +44(0)20 8748 7007 or email shout@factorydesign.co.uk

The British Design Innovation (BDI) service has information and advice for people looking to try and take an idea forward. You can call them on +44 (0) 1273 621378 or submit a question here. The ‘Innovation Filter’ is a service specifically designed to help you decide whether your idea is a goer.