Creating a successful hardware start-up all begins with planning. You must prepare for your target market and get all the feedback – and funding – that you’ll need to launch your product and start your business off right. This is a critical start-up phase that evokes the old British army adage of the 7P’s – Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. There’s a lot that goes into proper preparations – but Berkeley Sourcing Group can help you each step of the way.
If you need additional help with your planning and preparations, check out our service offerings. Whatever you need, we can help.
Product Definition
Defining your product may seem simple, but writing up your specifications with the right amount of detail to enable design is a process that shouldn’t be skipped or glossed over. Your specifications may include a Functional Spec, a Materials Spec – which includes a bill of materials (BOM) and other product related documents. There is no golden rule to exactly what you need as each material, process, and product has its own idiosyncrasies. We can help you create an effective engineering package that balances investment of time and money with useful results.
Market and Marketing Strategy
Having a good and well thought out market and marketing strategy makes all the difference between successful products and companies and ones that fall flat or never get off the ground to begin with. Our hardware experts can help you define and understand your markets and marketing and help you develop your Market Requirements Documents too.
Prototyping
Prototyping in your preparations phase is a bit different than prototyping for manufacturing. This initial prototype is specifically for market validation and feedback, proof of concept and fund raising. Iteration time and focus are usually the key components and the technologies for these initial prototypes are different. We understand the different prototyping technologies available and can guide you along a path to aligning the results with your marketing strategy.
Fundraising
Once you’ve got your plans and your product in prototype, you’re ready to start raising money to bring your hardware start-up to life. We’ve helped bring over 60 products to market, and have seen and explored the many paths up the money mountain – from friends and family funding, to crowd-funding and angels and VC’s – we can help you in your strategy and planning to get the resources you need to launch.
Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA)
Plans in place – ? Prototype done – ? Funding secured ? – Now it’s time to align your manufacturing plan with your marketing plan. . Production is a huge investment of money and time so it’s critical to optimize your Design For Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) and complete your final preparation for manufacturing. There are key decisions to be made about tooling, minimum orders, quality requirements…that will greatly affect your cash flow and the long term success of your business. We can help you understand the options and guide you to avoid the many pitfalls that lie at each wrong turn.
Intellectual Property
At Berkeley Sourcing Group, we understand the concern about protecting your intellectual property rights when manufacturing in China. That’s why protecting your intellectual property is a key part of our business. There is always a way to protect your idea and various strategies can be employed, but there are trade-offs in terms of efficiency and price. We’ll work with you to develop the best strategy for your needs whether it is sourcing different components from different factories, keeping some of the core technology at home, signing binding agreements in Chinese, or other methods. In all cases, we’ll inform and educate you of the risks as well as get your approval before sending any information to 3rd parties.
