The Top 4 Tips To Bring Your Product To Market From This Trio Of Entrepreneurs
Creatives and inventors pay attention! You have an idea, but what’s stopping you from bringing it to market? It’s exciting to think that you may have discovered a product that can help solve a problem for people, but now what?
Each with their specialty, this trio of women brought their dream, skincare for your lady parts, to market in just under a year. But it took a lot of work and determination to do so, and they want to share their tips with you.
Together they co-founded URJA Intimates by Dr. Sherry.
Dr. Sherry Ross Ob/Gyn, author and health expert—has been a passionate advocate for women’s health for over 25 years. Her first book, She-ology: The Definitive Guide to Women’s Intimate Health. Period, was named one of the six Most Life-Changing Wellness Books of 2017 by Prevention.com and Women’s Health Magazine. Her second book, She-ology, The She-quel Let’s Continue the Conversation, launched in February 2020. Dr. Sherry continues the conversation with Co-Host Sarah Hyland on Ellen DeGeneres’ Digital Network with Lady Parts, a recently launched series in the Fall of 2020.
Molly Argue pursued her passion for content creation and branding, working with a handful of female-founded start-ups in the lifestyle and beauty spaces. She was instrumental in bringing several different products + digital apps to market. The Universe aligned when Molly decided to pivot from her high-stress daily grind in Los Angeles, move back to Arizona, and focus on self-wellness. In 2018, Molly began working on URJA and is now a Co-Founder.
Liz Bishop has focused on beauty and skincare - as an entrepreneur, brand builder and mentor – her most defining endeavors! From Indie Product Award Winner to FORBES Leadership “Entrepreneur Spotlight” to Founder of three indie brands, including URJA, her pioneering vision elevates and innovates the skincare category.
If you are thinking of creating a product and bringing it to market, this trio wants to share their experience with you and explain why it is essential to know your finances.
These co-founders of URJA Intimates by Dr. Sherry share their top finance tips:
1. Identify a need in the market
For your product to succeed, the first step is to ensure that there is a need in the market. The key is that this product needs to solve a problem for the consumer to pay for it. Do your market research to ensure you don’t put all this effort into creating a product that nobody is interested in buying.
2. Be prepared to self-finance
Bringing a product to market is a hefty investment with significant costs attached to it. Costs include: testing the product, manufacturing the products, ensuring the safety of the product, packaging costs, and all the backend requirements to run a business successfully. Be aware of the costs and carefully plan because running out of funds midway through the project and having to postpone it or shut it down entirely would be a waste of effort.
If you are looking for business funding, the U.S. Small Business Administration provides a list of resources to help you.
3. Be prepared to put in sweat equity
To save as much money as possible, it is recommended to put as much of your work into it as possible. This trio put a lot of their work into the product, thereby reducing the costs required to pay other professionals. For cash-strapped start-up businesses, this is the best strategy to put forward to save money in the beginning. Save the money where you can so you can apply those savings to other business areas that would benefit from the cash infusion.
4. Identified growth in the market
Consider if there is room to grow your market share and product line. The trio not only identified a market need, but they also identified an opportunity for growth within that market. They know they will have a viable product that will offer ways to expand the product line and help more women with their feminine health and sexual wellness.
The bottom line is that an idea is only the beginning. You need to invest a lot of time and money into getting this ready to go to market. Getting an idea to market is exciting and time-consuming, but you need to be sure you are committed to launching a product, or the efforts will be fruitless.