ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
OK, odd topic for a retirement forum, but it is related. Retirement frees up more time for a bunch of different hobbies, and I fiddle around with various widgets and concepts for those hobbies. Well, one widget in particular seemed to have some real potential, and the more I thought about it as a product, and built some prototypes, the better my ideas became. I think I have a marketable product.
But I would need to get some parts machined/molded. At first, I thought this hobby market might be too small to even make that feasible, but now I realize this could have a far broader customer base. For a comparison, think about a product geared towards people who build race cars, but then it turns out that people who watch car races might want the product also - that kind of market expansion.
I met a guy who has the business background with the kind of machining/molding I might need, and he is also trying to break into this hobbyist market. When this idea was just geared toward the hobby market, I had figured that if he is interested in producing/selling/distributing the product, I'd be happy with just seeing the product used by other hobbyists, and I'd get some free samples to use.
But now that I see there may be a much bigger market, I'm thinking I should hold out for a piece of the action. But I don't want any direct ties to the business, I'd rather be treated as a 'consultant' or something - I don't want to worry about liability (anyone can hurt themselves with anything these days) or have to audit books to do profit sharing or something. Would it make sense to talk about a share of sales, like a licensing fee? Sales are easy to measure, profit gets all tied up in legitimate expenses and so on. I just want to keep it simple. I'm also guessing that even if this was very successful, we are not talking huge amounts of $ anyhow, so I don't want to sink money into it upfront. I suppose I should go for patents and everything before even talking to someone, but even that seems like overkill just to talk and see if this guy is interested. I plan on talking with him this week, thinking of just playing it by ear. Even on the off-chance the guy just wholesale rips my idea off and runs with it w/o me, I really would not have lost anything, as I know I just wouldn't pursue this totally on my own anyhow. Trying to keep it simple and low-key, I don't want it to turn into a 'job' - just an extension of the hobby, and if a few $ come in, that's great. But it would be 'fun' to see the product actually be produced.
Suggestions?
-ERD50
But I would need to get some parts machined/molded. At first, I thought this hobby market might be too small to even make that feasible, but now I realize this could have a far broader customer base. For a comparison, think about a product geared towards people who build race cars, but then it turns out that people who watch car races might want the product also - that kind of market expansion.
I met a guy who has the business background with the kind of machining/molding I might need, and he is also trying to break into this hobbyist market. When this idea was just geared toward the hobby market, I had figured that if he is interested in producing/selling/distributing the product, I'd be happy with just seeing the product used by other hobbyists, and I'd get some free samples to use.
But now that I see there may be a much bigger market, I'm thinking I should hold out for a piece of the action. But I don't want any direct ties to the business, I'd rather be treated as a 'consultant' or something - I don't want to worry about liability (anyone can hurt themselves with anything these days) or have to audit books to do profit sharing or something. Would it make sense to talk about a share of sales, like a licensing fee? Sales are easy to measure, profit gets all tied up in legitimate expenses and so on. I just want to keep it simple. I'm also guessing that even if this was very successful, we are not talking huge amounts of $ anyhow, so I don't want to sink money into it upfront. I suppose I should go for patents and everything before even talking to someone, but even that seems like overkill just to talk and see if this guy is interested. I plan on talking with him this week, thinking of just playing it by ear. Even on the off-chance the guy just wholesale rips my idea off and runs with it w/o me, I really would not have lost anything, as I know I just wouldn't pursue this totally on my own anyhow. Trying to keep it simple and low-key, I don't want it to turn into a 'job' - just an extension of the hobby, and if a few $ come in, that's great. But it would be 'fun' to see the product actually be produced.
Suggestions?
-ERD50