10 Traps That Stall Hardware Products Before Launch
You’ve spent months, maybe even years, working on your product. You’ve poured in time, money and way more effort than most people will ever realize.
But right when you’re about to launch, everything seems to come to a standstill. You feel stuck, not sure how to push through.
And honestly, this happens to almost everyone.
So in this video, I’m going to walk you through ten traps that slow down a lot of hardware products right before launch and how to keep yours moving forward.
Okay, so let’s get into it.
Trap #1: Late-Stage Redesigns
You finalize what you think is the last version of your design, and suddenly something pops up.
Maybe the enclosure doesn’t fit perfectly. Or you want to add one more connector. Or you realize a feature would be really nice to sneak in.
Or maybe your board fails an emissions test. Or a critical component goes out of stock. Or you spot a layout issue that worked fine at the prototype stage but will cause problems in production.
So now you’re making last-minute changes, and every little fix triggers another revision. Suddenly you’ve lost months.
This is one of the biggest ways hardware products get delayed. Small changes feel harmless, but each one can ripple through the entire design.
A tiny part move affects layout. A new feature affects firmware. A connector change affects the enclosure. It all compounds.
The best way to avoid this trap is to lock down your design earlier than you think.
Decide what is essential for the first version and what can wait for version two.
Late-stage redesigns almost always cost time and money. The earlier you freeze the design, the faster you launch.
Trap #2: Certification Surprises
You think you’re ready to ship and then you fail FCC or CE testing. Or even worse, you didn’t budget for testing at all.
A lot of people assume that using a pre-certified wireless module means the whole product is automatically compliant. That’s never true.
Keep in mind that certifications are about more than just a wireless radio.
Your layout, your power supply, your grounding, your enclosure, everything still affects emissions.
If your board is noisy or your enclosure leaks, you can absolutely fail, module or not.
Of course, if your product also has safety concerns, such as it plugs directly into an AC electrical outlet, then you’ll need to design with this in mind too.
Trap #3: The Endless Prototype Loop
This one’s a classic trap almost all of us fall into.
You keep making small tweaks, re-spinning the board, adding one more feature. Then another prototype. Then another.
It feels productive, but you’re stuck in a loop. You’re moving, but you’re not really making progress.
Most people fall into this because they want everything perfect, or because they’ve never decided what good enough to launch actually means.
And you know, every product ships with limitations. There’s always something you wish you’d done differently.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is getting it into people’s hands so you can learn from real use. Nothing gets validated sitting on your desk.
So pick your minimum viable product, lock it and build the version you’re actually willing to test in the real world.
Because the real risk isn’t shipping something imperfect. It’s never shipping at all.
Trap #4: Manufacturing Isn’t Ready
Getting a prototype working is a big deal. But scaling it into a real product, that’s a whole different challenge.
A prototype doesn’t have to survive drop tests, thermal cycling or humidity. It doesn’t have to pass FCC or CE testing.
It doesn’t have to run through automated test equipment. And it definitely doesn’t have to be manufactured repeatedly at a profitable cost.
But a real product does.
So when you’re preparing to build more than a handful of units, you need to make sure the design is reliable, testable and ready for certification.
This is where a lot of products slow down. A layout that behaves fine in the lab suddenly fails EMC testing.
A connector that felt solid on your bench starts loosening up during vibration testing.
Components that were easy to buy for a prototype end up with 40-week lead times when you need a thousand.
Or a board that you only now realize wasn’t designed with testability in mind.
Scaling exposes every weakness.
So before you ramp up, make sure the design is actually ready for manufacturing.
Think through reliability, testability, certification and all the documentation your factory will eventually need.
And you know, getting a professional design review at this stage is one of the best ways to avoid expensive problems later.
Trap #5: BOM Bloat and Supply Gaps
A design can look great in KiCad, but when you go to manufacture it, half the parts are on 52-week lead times or the BOM cost has doubled.
Sometimes it’s one key part that suddenly isn’t available. Sometimes it’s dozens of small increases that slowly price you out.
And if you don’t catch this until the end, you either delay your launch or make bad compromises.
So be sure you do a BOM audit early, flag risky parts, check real distributor stock, and don’t assume something available now will be available later.
Also don’t trust whatever your CAD library suggests because those parts can be completely out of date.
And don’t box yourself into whatever parts your assembly shop happens to carry.
They might have stock today, but that doesn’t mean the part is widely available or good for long-term production.
Watch out for minimum order quantities too. That perfect op-amp might only come in reels of 3,000.
If a part looks risky, find an alternate now. Not later when it’s holding up your entire build.
Trap #6: No Real-World Testing
Your product works great on your bench. But what about in the real world. Like in the heat, or the cold, with a weak battery or after it’s been dropped.
Most people only test under perfect conditions. But customers don’t use your product in perfect conditions.
So what happens if someone leaves it in a hot car. Or plugs it into a sketchy USB charger. Or drops it on concrete.
Products pass the bench every day and then fail instantly in real use. So test for real use. Heat it up, cool it down, drop it, power cycle it, run it on a low battery.
You’re not trying to torture it. Okay, maybe a little.
But, your ultimate goal is to find any problems before your customers ever do.
Trap #7: Packaging
Your product might be ready, but you can’t ship without packaging.
The main goal of the package is to protect the product during transit and present itself to the customer in a good way.
If selling in retail outlets then the packaging becomes way more important because now it has to also grab a shopper’s attention and effectively sell the product.
You know, this was one of my biggest mistakes with my own product. I placed a pretty big order with packaging that didn’t actually sell the product very well.
And I had thousands of units with this bad packaging that I had to sell before I could order new inventory.
So don’t treat packaging like an afterthought. A great product in bad packaging will rarely succeed, especially in retail.
Trap #8: Overcomplicated Design
It’s really tempting to load your product with lots of cool features.
But every feature adds complexity which means more cost, more development time, and ultimately more risk.
The best version of your product is the one that’s stable, reliable and easy to support.
So ship the simplest version that solves the core problem well. You can always add features later.
Most customers don’t care about every fancy feature. They care that the core function works every time.
I had to remind myself of this recently as I’m developing a new PCB design review tool.
And what’s hard in software is harder in hardware.
Trap #9: No Real Customer Validation
You’ve built it, but will anyone buy it?
It doesn’t matter how many people tell you they love it, or what survey results show, or how many social media likes you get when you talk about it.
And here’s the thing most people don’t understand, and I know I sure didn’t when I first started.
None of that matters unless they give you actual money.
What people say they will buy, and what they really do buy, almost never are the same.
This is why pre-sells and crowdfunding work so well. Someone pays for the product before you make it.
And honestly, it doesn’t get better than that.
Another earlier-stage alternative is called a reservation funnel.
This is where you get someone to pay a small fee, say one to ten dollars, to reserve one of the first units once the product is available.
Even getting someone to give you a single dollar is a hundred times better validation than someone just telling you they would buy your product.
Heck, it’s a million times better if that person saying they’d buy it is your friend or family.
You don’t know if your product is viable until someone pays for it.
And if you wait until after manufacturing to figure that out, it’s too late.
Trap #10: Trying to Do It All Alone
So, I fall into this trap all the time. I naturally like figuring things out by myself. It’s fun for me. But it also slows me down more than anything else.
Going it solo feels productive, but it’s incredibly limiting, especially if you’ve never fully developed and launched a product.
Small missteps now can lead to huge problems later, if you don’t already have experience with all the steps ahead.
Developing a new product is already complex and expensive, so you really need to minimize how much trial and error you do, otherwise it will take you too long and cost too much.
If like help from me and a team of experts who have done this all before then come join us in the Hardware Academy.
Since you’ve made it all the way to the end of this video, then I bet you’ll like watching this video next.
