Regarding the current economic situation, Rahm Emanuel said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Whether or not this is good government policy is debatable; but nothing could be truer in the field of New Product Development.

At Davison, we are seeing more new product acquisitions and licensing right now than we have in over a year. That’s because many corporations are seeking to be more innovative so they have more to offer than their competitors during the economic downturn.

For anyone who’s ever gone to retail buyer meetings, you already know the first thing buyers ask is, “What’s new?” We’re thrilled that is the foremost question because our corporate clients are ready with answers. They are perceived as companies of innovation when they license new products from us.

The word “stimulus” is thrown around again and again from a government perspective, but it also has significance from a retail perspective. In other words, retailers want to provide consumers with some stimulus, such as the opportunity to see and purchase cutting-edge new products when walking down the aisles of their stores.

When we start seeing orders for 90,000 Party Travelers and thousands of Meatball Bakers (ideas of individual clients that we converted into licensed products) right out of the gate, that is a major stimulus going on!

Retailers and marketers are looking for innovative new products that will help them capture market share. In other words, “out with the old and in with the new.” Everyone seems to be up for change right now, and that’s a breath of fresh air when you’re in the new product business.

“What’s the difference between an invention company’s store and a real store?”

Hey folks, I wrote a blog a while ago about the one question all inventors should ask to tell whether or not they should trust a company or a person to work on their idea. The basis of the question is that there is only one way to really separate everyone. I stated that if you can go to the stores and buy the inventions they’ve developed, they’re for real.

Unfortunately, I have to revisit this issue because some groups with bad intentions have read my blog and realized that I was making it simple for people to identify whether a company or a person knows what they were doing prior to hiring them.

I was shocked when I discovered that one particular company had just launched its own “Internet store.” Let me make this clear, folks; when I talked about the importance of “being in the stores,” I was referring to products in retail stores, not just some gizmos for sale on a company’s website

What concerns me the most is that a company is making it look like they did all the development work on the gizmos they’re selling in their “store,” when, in fact, they didn’t do any of the development work. I started looking at some of the products on their website and recognized them as those of inventors who approached us to help them with their fully developed products. Some of these people spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on manufacturing, packaging and tooling to make products that just don’t sell because they were developed incorrectly from the beginning.  

These companies are purposely trying to confuse people by saying their products are in a retail store when, in reality, they are not. If you can’t walk into a store and buy the invention or link to a real store where they are selling the invention, then they simply don’t have the necessary experience to develop products.

So, don’t be tricked; they’re just trying to look like they’re in the stores by creating their own “store.” And if you actually see something you would like to buy there, good luck trying to check out!