When I created The Stowers Swaddler, infant swaddling blanket I had a lot of older women (70-80 years old) tell me that they had put together something like my product for themselveswhen they had children years ago.  Those comments were usually said in good spirits, with them usually adding  if they knew there was money to be made with that they would have brought it out long ago. 

  So times moves on and my product line evolves to include hand decorated note cards.  Most people have never seen cards like this and will ask a few questions.  There are alot of things that people ask of me at craft fairs or when I do stationery for small boutiques or brides to be, but the one thing that people ask me the most is “How do you make that?” 

     I know this shouldn’t be a disconcerting question, but I have answered this question for a few people only to have them come back and say that they tried it they could not make it look like mine.  Maybe this has made me a bit wary when people ask, because as an inventor or designer in small business you are trying to make a product that is not seen everywhere so that you can be competitive with other small businesses and big businesses.  I mean can you walk into the Coca Cola company and ask what they put in their drink that makes it taste so special?  I don’t think so.

My question is this, when you have a product that is more design based than than something you can patent, what do you do with the people who want to know how you made it.  I would love to hear what others say when you have a product that you are trying to sell and people come up to you and say How did you make that?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 5:58 am and is filed under Baby Product Mom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.