[ChinaSourcer]

I run operations for an East Coast based consumer products company. The company is small, but we ship many many units per year. We source parts from China in the millions annually. This includes custom and off the shelf components.

Typically we buy electronics, custom PCB, and custom plastic assemblies. That is the bread and butter, with other components as needed.

Ask away for the next 20 minutes. It is 2:40am here, and I will probably go to bed around 3:00am. I will be able to answer as many other questions as are asked, but probably not until Tuesday evening.

Throwaway account because I would prefer to keep my identities separate, mainly because our customers don't want it known that they don't design and manufacture their own products.

Oh yeah, I wouldn't do it the way the author suggested. Maybe I was lucky when I started out and had ways to get contacts in China, but I would definitely try that before just heading over with a half-drawn model.

[cookingrobot]

I have a nagging idea for a product - basically a better mousetrap. Actually it's a better light-switch which sounds just as trite. It's not a world changing idea, but it seems like one of those inevitable products that's enable by mashing up existing technology. What would you recommend someone do with specific consumer product idea like this? Prototype and show around to brand name manufacturers? 3d model and sales pitch to distributer? Provisional patent? Have you had any temptation to make one of your product ideas into reality?

[ChinaSourcer]

It is as important to have a path to market as it is to have a good product. Actually, it is better to have a path to market. No good products will be on the shelf because someone with the path to market owns the shelf space.

The market you are trying to enter will be next to impossible to penetrate without contacts. A big distributor of light switches won't buy from you because 1) they don't want to pay anyone but themselves, 2) will only do business with big companies, 3) and so on. The same goes for the light switch manufacturers.

The only way they will buy from you is if you can show them a completed product that looks exactly like it will on the shelf, in the exact packaging that they will sell it at. Even with all that, chances are less than slim.

Friends often ask me ways to get into home automation, which is a similar field to what you want to do. My suggestions is always this: Get in with a local builder. Supply your switches to him to put into his new homes. Develop relationships with growing amounts of builders, hit the shows, etc. Once you start affecting the market with your sales, then the big companies will talk to you. Until then, status quo is serving them pretty well.

Regarding provisional patents, I am not an attorney, so you will need to talk with someone knowledgeable in the legal field for that one. Be conscious of first sale doctrine and other things that will invalidate later patent claims.

What my company does is make our products into reality. We see a market, target it with a new product, and then shop it to the large manufacturers and distributors. They put their name on it and everyone gets money.

The reason why we don't do it ourselves is that we make more money working with them. The people we sell to own shelf space and end caps at Walmart, Target, etc. We aren't getting in those stores without our partners. Other partners have distribution arrangements to specialty store markets. Others are large purchasers of TV ads. We work with all these people to get our products to market.

There isn't secret sauce in our products. We make new stuff, cheaper and faster than others, and that is why our products get on the shelf. But without our distribution partner relationships gained from many years in the industry, we would have no path to market and would not make that many sales.

[wisty]

Patent in China, as China only cares about Chinese IP registrations. Same with trademarks. At least, that's what China Law Blog says.

[ChinaSourcer]

We are starting to see China enforce US IP rights. We sued one knockoff company and won. China officials went into the offender's factory, took all the knockoff goods into the street, destroyed them right there, and then left. Every other factory saw what happened. We didn't ask for this. They did it on their own.

That being said, we are starting to file for China patents now that they are actually enforcing rights. Before it wouldn't have mattered, so we didn't waste time and money.

Oh wow. Just remembered a story. Last year we sent a plastic part out for quote in China. The price to make it came back less than the spot prices on the resin needed to make the part. Of course that means they were going to knockoff the product and sell it elsewhere, and they didn't even attempt to hide it.