Hello my friends, as the year is coming to an end, I would like to share my product making summary for 2023. Here you will find the best moments, observations, the shitty times, all in here. Let’s start. 😎 1. Best Moment - Entering a new product category Well this year, I had a great chance to work on a new category. A very traditional and niche product that has not been digitalized. Our customer came up with a cool idea and we designed it from scratch and added our electronics with cool features. And of course, connected with app control 🙂. The product is not launched yet so I cannot share further information. But it is completely a new design with functions that haven’t been in the market before in its category. Exciting!
2. Observation - Personalization More of our customers are asking for personalization tips in the design stage. With personalized products, end-consumers create more bonds with the brands. So when we design our products, we focus on customizable/modular designs that can be personalized for end consumers. So that consumers can have their DIY configuration during the purchase. This can be a name tag for your pet in a smart pet product, a more powerful motor in a massage roller for pro users, or a special color for your loved ones. 3. Shitty times, well, challenges - Fluctuating prices As the chipset crisis, trade wars, and actual wars, became the new norms, the pricing became more important than ever. In our projects, some of our component vendors kept updating their prices weekly, sometimes daily. This happened many times this year and this makes it very hard for our customers, entrepreneurs, and brands, to keep their projections correct. The planned budgets at the beginning of the project vs. the end product are usually different. So we guide our customers to have more buffer in budgeting when we kick off a project and usually when we complete the project, we are still within the budget.
To avoid these, being quick on time to market is also very important. - Logistics While we were recovering from the Covid trauma, the security problems started causing logistic problems just now. When I was writing this post, the ships from China and other far east countries to Europe changed their routes due to the attacks on the Suez Canal. The new shipping routes through Africa will be longer, shipping fees will increase and of course, this will reflect end-consumers buying prices.
I hope these problems will be solved quickly and things will be back to normal. On the other hand, these challenges remind us, the people in the product industry to be always careful, and take necessary actions as much as possible beforehand to minimize the impacts on the total project timing and product costing. Well this is my product making summary for 2023. I hope you enjoyed reading it. What best moments and challenges did you have in 2023? I am happy to listen your product making summary. Please write in the comments. Cheers all
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