Personal Fitness Professional - March 2009 - (Page 33) How the Equalizer Got Started A good friend welded up some of my early Equalizer prototypes. The prototypes were crude and not very pretty but were fine for what I needed. I got on them right away, doing bodyweight dips, vertical rows and much more, soon realizing that I could come up with all kinds of exercises and applications. After testing my little “Frankenstein bars” for a week, I met with a businessman who would soon become my partner. He liked the idea, but the clincher was that his wife liked it. Being in the fitness industry as an aerobics instructor, she saw that it would have some widespread appeal and use. It was important that my business partner had lots of business/marketing experience as well as extensive experience in bringing products to market. It was a good fit and made for a great team. The Equalizer’s simple design and bright yellow color you see today comes from four months of testing to make sure we had the proper size, stability and appeal. We tested the first Equalizers to make sure they would stand up to anything, including a Strong Man competitor, aptly named “Tiny,” who weighed almost 400 pounds! For our first production run, we had 200 sets made by a local manufacturer. They were constructed from one piece, which required very large boxes to ship — a royal pain. This first run, though, was so well-received that we had to move quickly on the next step, sourcing a manufacturer offshore, resulting in a drop in our costs by 40%. We were also very fortunate in that a very successful client of mine offered us free warehousing for as long as we wanted. In the end, this second generation of Equalizers came knocked down to fit in a much smaller, pizza-shaped box, and we beefed up our offering with a free DVD and workout poster. shows, website development and more — and that is before you even start selling! In some cases, entrepreneurs will put their house and life savings on the line while doing less of their day job. Do you believe in your product enough for that? If you are passionate about your product, you may find that the startup money isn’t hard to come by. One way to raise capital is to get your product in front of a venture capitalist. This route will allow for adequate funding and experience, but it can also strip away a large percentage of your company. Another way to fund your product is to obtain seed capital raised through friends, family and acquaintances. This often works well on the first phase of financing as you typically do not have to give up the ship. Getting Your Product to Market Once you have the patent and funding, your product will do you no good if you don’t get it to the masses. With the Equalizer, we formed strategic alliances that helped us get into two of the largest fitness distributors in the US. We also outsourced distribution to a fulfillment house that provides warehousing, shipping and handling. Launching Your Product 1. Generate an idea for your product. 2. Create samples to show business people and corporate companies. 3. Test prototypes and, at the same time, write patents and secure funding. 4. Set up your product with a manufacturer and a fulfillment house. 5. Assign warehouse space for your products. 6. Perform marketing, including artwork, pictures and a website. 7. Develop relationships with top fitness distributors. 8. Market at trade shows. 9. Work on future products! You will also need a great website and presence to show your product. We are lucky to have both a web designer and photographer in the family and have also had much help from friends who worked trade shows with us. Other keys to getting your product out there is getting press and doing as many demos as possible. The key is to consistently put it out there — if it is a great product, people will get as enthusiastic as you! Your Product’s First Step: a Patent Before you proceed with your idea, you need to consider whether to pursue a patent or not. Make sure you do not show anyone your idea! If you do decide to apply, this may violate your patent. There are pros and cons to getting a patent, but if your idea takes off, you will wish you did. It will cost you about $1,500 to have a patent search done by an attorney. Make sure to comb the web yourself first. Patents are available to view online so you can see if there is another product out there similar to your idea. To start the patent process, you must develop your claims. Claims are the design features that make your product unique (what are the key uses, technologies, materials, etc.). You will need to paint a “wide brush stroke” around these claims. For example, if your claim is for an exercise ball that is 50’ in diameter, you may want to cover a diameter from 20’ to 80’. You do not want to go too wide with your claims, though, or you will lose their inherent uniqueness. This is where expert help comes in. Seek the help of a good patent attorney rather than a marketing company that looks for inventors. Also, you will need to provide drawings to show your idea, which will also need to be done in a specific manner. This is a lot of work, but it’s necessary if you believe you have something special. Expect to spend thousands of dollars, but it will be well worth the investment if you later wish to license the product rights and or sell the company. The Cost of Getting Started It takes an enormous amount of resources — both time and money — to launch a product, so much so that many trainers and entrepreneurs often put their idea on the backburner when they find out. On the cheap end (with a tremendous amount of help from family and friends), it will most likely take six figures to get a product off the ground! You have patent work to do, a product to manufacture, warehouse and distribution costs, travel expenses, marketing costs, trade Getting Excited If you are going to take this new product journey, just make sure you enjoy roller coasters because that’s what you will be on. We have had some highs and some lows, such as when our first container load of product was stolen. Fortunately, the police caught up with it four days later! The important thing is to enjoy both the peaks and valleys and stay focused on where you need to go, no matter what happens. Launching a product is a lot like getting into shape. It requires knowledge and time, but in the end, nothing really works until you do! Marc Lebert (www.lebertfitness.com) is a Certified Personal Trainer (inhome training and corporate fitness), Certified NLP Practitioner and developer of The Lebert Equalizer and The Lebert Buddy System. He is also the owner of Fuel Fitness, Trainer-Course Conductor for Can-Fit-Pro accredited courses as well as a published writer and speaker. ● March2009 · www.fit-pro.coM 33 http://www.lebertfitness.com http://www.fit-pro.coM
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.