Sell your product before you make it
Written by John Teel.
Ronald Wijnsema was woken up at 6am because his phone kept chiming over and over again with new notifications.
Turns out the notifications pouring in were from people pre-ordering his new product!
Within a couple of hours he had sold about $15,000 from his own website.
Then within a few days his sales had climbed to over $40,000, and within a couple of weeks it grew to over $64,000!
Keep in mind his product wasn’t even available yet – these were only pre-sales – and now he can use this money to fund the manufacturing.
Smart move Ronald! Funding and product validation all rolled into one:)
Pre-selling your product simply means getting people to pay you in advance for your product before you manufacture it. It is without a doubt the #1 way to validate that your product will sell which drastically lowers the overall risk for your project.
But pre-sales also produce the cash that you need to then manufacture your product just like Ronald.
In fact, with these pre-sales under your belt you’ll have manufacturers begging to work with you, instead of them ignoring you.
In most cases you need to have at least a functional prototype, otherwise there are just too many unknowns for you to be able to realistically commit to any type of delivery schedule yet.
Ronald’s product is called the Button+ and it’s a modular control panel that can be connected to any smart home system.
His project was definitely no overnight success (they never are).
“I’m over the moon by this, but it did not come easy. I spent more than 4 years developing this, of course with the help of John Teel and others in the Hardware Academy.” – Ronald
Ronald got his big break recently when a Dutch tech platform called Tweakers interviewed him for an article about his product.
Obviously the Netherlands isn’t exactly the world’s largest economy, which makes what he accomplished that much more impressive.
Not only did he raise over $64,000, but the article also received hundreds of comments from people expressing their excitement for his new product.
Slam.dunk!
I couldn’t be more excited for Ronald’s success!
And I look forward to continue guiding him inside my Hardware Academy on the next steps of setting up manufacturing.