We had a very rough prototype. We needed to make it significantly better. We had no idea where to start. We are not handy people. We don’t even own a toolbox.

So we needed a product engineer. Through basic research, we were blown away at a costs to hire a product engineer / designer for a consulting basis. Some costs ranged as high as $15K for basic CAD (3D) designs. We narrowed in on the search. It was important for the product engineer / designer to be near us in Austin, TX.

We knew we would have a lot of questions. We didn’t want to be nickel and dimed for every minute of their time. We were looking for a partner. So through Google searches, we narrowed down to three companies. We met each one.

We decided to move forward with Bruce McLellan at McLellan Engineering. Bruce had proven experience. He invented products and commercialized products himself, which is important criteria for us. Also, Bruce was located just 15 minutes away from us. In our initial meeting, he was genuinely excited and was more concerned how Zohra and I limit our costs and do this right. He gave us a reasonable fixed fee rate, and he welcomed meeting us at a local Starbucks every other Saturday. This was super important to us. Bruce was great. A true engineer. Bruce worked with us on several prototype iterations. We would try them, test them, and make it better.

We did this cycle constantly. Bruce would pick up my calls on the weekends. I would be able to bounce ideas. Bruce also invited me over to his garage to test new product ideas on his 3D printer. For the amount of time and effort Bruce spent, he was worth every penny. We are grateful for Bruce. His passion for this product gave us even more confidence, which was very valuable to us. Bruce said the best way to repay him was to get SimplyHold made. We didn’t want to let him down. Here are some pictures below of us working at the local Starbucks, an image of Bruce's garage where we iterated on the product, and a sample of the many iterations of the prototypes.

Website & Marketing

We had an updated prototype. Now we had to create a basic website and marketing collateral to eventually use it to test with social media ads. Goal here is to keep costs low. We used UpWork. We hired Andrew Murray to put together our initial Shopify page. Andrew did this very quickly and professionally. We also hired Alex Hoffman to put together the video and photos. Alex lives in Tennessee, so we mailed Alex our only prototype. Alex was awesome. He was able to run with the idea with little input from us. He also took great lifestyle photos. We were really pleased with the quality of work. You can reach Alex here for any video projects you may have at alexrosshoffman@gmail.com. You can click on the image to see the video Alex created.

Looking back on it, I am torn whether a video was necessary at this point. We love the video. It showcases the use cases very well. However, it wasn’t necessary this early in the process. It showcases our v1 product, which we have made drastic improvements since. Perhaps we could have just gone with photos and create a basic video ourselves using our iPhones. I would recommend this approach for others who want to keep costs low. Also, on our website, I had Andrew iterate on this way too much early in the process. The current website is a lot simpler than the original one. In addition, for those with a little more time and tech saviness, I recommend building your own e-commerce website. There are great YouTube videos that have step-by-step walk through guides that you can set-up under 30 minutes. It’s also a great skill to have so it’s worth the time investment to learn.

IMPORTANT LESSON(S)

1. UpWork is a great place to find marketing resources. Look at their ratings, review their portfolio, and take the time to document your requirements (lesson we learned).

2. Create a one page website to start off with. Keep it simple. Feel free to get inspiration by looking at the last three internet store websites you bought from. What did you like about it?

3. Focus on getting professional lifestyle and product photos. This is a place you want to get right. It’s a relatively much lower costs than doing videos. You can do this yourself, but for the ROI you get on this, it’s worth every penny getting someone who dedicates their living on this.

4. Hold off on creating a professional video early on in the process. A 60 second high-quality video will range between $800-$2,000. It can wait after you have validated your idea. Also, with the recent improvments in the latest phones and free video editing software, you can create your own high-quality video yourself.

Yes, we liked what we saw. Based on the market analysis, using the product at home, the competitive analysis, dozens of 1on1 interviews, and positive social media testing, Zohra and I decided to move forward. We made a decision at the time to move forward with a 1,000 unit order to limit the downside risk. Now we had to figure out on the hell to get it made.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” -Mike Tyson

After tons of research on the manufacturing process, Zohra and I felt we had a good handle on next steps. Goodness gracious, were we wrong. Based on getting feedback from multiple mentors, including Bruce, our master plan was to source all the parts (phone holder, gooseneck, strap, and plate) separately, get them shipped to Austin, and assemble, package and ship to future buyers. Why do this?

Here were the two key reasons in doing this:

1. Keep the product a secret from each supplier – By having the suppliers focus on each part separately, no one supplier would know what’s the overall product we are trying to make.

2. Keep costs low and quality high – Having a strap manufacture focus on just making a strap ensures that 1) They will be pretty darn good at making that one part, and 2) Since this is their bread and butter; it should keep costs low.

The feedback was unanimous from the Kickstarter mentors. Getting this assembled in Austin (in our garage) would be very bad. Each mentor gave us warnings the quality control will be waaaay too difficult to manage. And if our north star was least amount of stress, this was completely contradictory.

I asked several of the mentors if they had a trusted manufacturer in my mind that can manage the full manufacturing for a product like SimplyHold. A lot of them weren’t comfortable to share this type of information, but others did. There is one mentor that just got back from China and met with a manufacturer at their factory and thought SmplyHold was right up their alley. The mentor also did reference checks to confirm that they were legit. I asked if he could put me in touch with them. He did. And a week later I was talking to the CEO of the manufacturing company over Zoom video call. The product was right up their alley. The CEO liked the product, but shared concern we were too small of a company to take on at this point. But by showing them our pre-order list and the landing page site, this gave the manufacturing company assurance that this is worth spending time on. I was also upfront in sharing my concern with them of the stories I hear about intellectual property theft in China. They were aware of that perception. To alleviate my concern, they agreed to sign a lengthy confidentiality / non-circumvent agreement. This is still hard to enforce, but their eagerness to sign one in place did alleviate initial concern.

We were lucky to be put in touch with this manufacturer. They were responsive, spoke and wrote great English, and felt like a partner. I am still shocked how lucky we got in getting connected with them. One knock is that they won’t follow your timetable. The whole process from initial contact from the first shipped products took over 6 months. I am glad the mentors prefaced this upfront. Overall, I wish things obviously went quicker, but couldn’t be happier. The biggest value they provided was to completely re-design the product. The latest prototype Bruce and I built was heavy, expensive to make, and overly complex. A lot of work took place for their team to test new ideas and see what worked best. We didn’t have to spend a dollar on the new design work, which would cost us over $20K to do it in the US. Another reminder that we spent too much time and money on all the initial prototypes.

We scheduled video calls twice a month for them to showcase new prototypes and we worked collaboratively across the Pacific Ocean to get SimplyHold to where it is today. When we received the final prototype, we were overly ecstatic. It was 2x lighter (weighs 12 ounces). The innovative design also made the gooseneck much more stable (less shaky). And most importantly, it was very comfortable to put on and take off. I had to admit, I teary-eyed when I put it on the final prototype. It was way better than we ever dreamed the product at the beginning. I still use this final prototype every time I take guitar lessons online. In addition, they added the ability to easily assemble and disassemble the product for traveling purpose. They also added the ability to take the plate and gooseneck out of the strap and rest it on a hard surface like a kitchen counter. We weren’t even thinking about this. Another major differentiator.

One major takeaway is my perception of Chinese suppliers has changed. Maybe we got extremely lucky with the manufacturer we had, but the horror stories I read on the internet and hear from my network is simply unwarranted.

After some final design iterations, SimplyHold was ready for prime time. We needed to make a 1,000 of them and get it shipped to Austin. We agreed on a final price with our manufacturer. Then we learned getting things shipped from China to Austin is not straight forward as you think. First, we needed to find a freight forwarder. Luckily, our manufacturer put us in touch with a good one. We also got myriad cost options of ways to get it to Austin. You can take a crash course on global logistics, but to save you time, you want to have a light product.

Shipping costs are determined by package size and weight. This is why I am so thankful our manufacturer focused getting the product as light as possible and fit in the smallest box package possible. This saved us thousands of dollars in current and future shipping costs. Then there is a question of getting the shipment from a plane or ship. In short, air freight is expensive, but you get your product in less than a week. Delivering by ship is substantially (2-3x) cheaper, but it can take up to 8 weeks, and you can deal with customs issues that can delay you even more. I learned a lot here. I am going to spare you with any additional detail, but again, make your product as light as possible, and packaging as small as necessary.

We obviously agreed to go by ship. We had no pressure to meet any deadlines, but more importantly, we wanted to keep costs as low possible. At last minute we agreed to up our initial order from 1,000 to 2,000. We were getting even more pre-orders at this point, but the main reason was that the delivery cost to ship 1,000 versus 2,000 units by ship were negligible. To deal with potential quality control issues, we hired a third-party inspection services company (they’re a lot of them out there you can Google) to walk the factory in China and confirm the quality was good before and after the assembly process. They shared an inspection report that alleviated and concern. We highly recommend doing this. Also, make sure you document in detail what makes a good product and a bad product. Giving an objective checklist will ensure all parties are aligned on qualifies as an acceptable product. Don’t leave anything up for interpretation.

I am happy to share you our quality control list if you share an email at contact@simplyhold.com.

If you read this whole thing, god bless you. Overall, we couldn’t be more excited. I promised we would publish this at our launch, and here it is. We will write more on our journey over the next few months. Mistakes will be made (guaranteed) and you guys will be the first ones to know about it. Hopefully you found it helpful in your venture journey. If you guys have any questions or areas we can support, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@simplyhold.com.