The StartUp Blog at PartnerUp

As Director of Design for Cincinnati-based product development firm Kaleidoscope, Demetrius Romanos leads a team of multidisciplinary specialists in design, strategy and research. Over the past seven years his team has worked with clients that include Motorola, Procter & Gamble, International Trucks, Staples, Evenflo and Ethicon Endo-surgery.

Demetrius recently answered some questions for us on the process of working with a product development firm and on today’s consumer market.

Q: What kinds of details should your customers keep in mind when conceptualizing their products? 

A: Different yet similar to the real estate world’s mantra of “location, location, location,” with a product it’s all about positioning, positioning, positioning.  Even more basic than that is just being honest enough with yourself to look at your product idea and ask a very blunt “so what?”  What’s so great about my product, and why would anyone spend hard earned money for it?

Q: Do you ever have to turn people down and say, “This will never work?”

A: Well, not so much turn down, but try to open their eyes a bit.  As consultants we’d be doing our clients a disservice if we didn’t offer solutions to their problems, since that’s what we’re paid to do.  A lot of time it’s getting back to the core question of what is their product trying to solve, which you could likely accomplish several different ways.

Q: What are today’s consumers looking for as opposed to consumers 10-15 years ago? How are they different and how should your customers’ product ideas adapt to their changing needs?

A: The biggest difference we’ve seen is that consumers are seeking to make a connection with their products.  This makes designing products far more challenging because a gadget alone that does what it says is not good enough.  Whether it’s an MP3 player or a toothbrush, a product now also needs a soul.

Q: What effect does a downturning economy have on consumers, and therefore also have on you as a product development firm and the number/type of customers you get? 

A: With consumers it comes down to choices.  If there is any money left after housing, energy and food costs are covered, what will people spend their money on?  That’s a big part of why the connection with a product becomes so critical.  As for us, the number of clients can remain the same but will vary in the type of work.  The focus shifts to more recession-proof industries like consumer goods and medical equipment.

Q: Is there anything at all that you are doing differently to compensate for or adapt to the current economic situation, or is it business as usual? 

A: It’s not quite business as usual for many companies right now so you have to be really focused on what your goals are as an organization.  We’ll tend to focus on two areas to grow our business:  1) Recession-proof industries like medical equipment and consumer goods, and 2) development of our own intellectual properties.

Q: At what point in the process do your customers come to you? Do they already have a prototype, or are they just sitting on an idea? 

A: Our clients span the range from one side, where they don’t even know what it is they need yet,  all the way to other clients having an item that they may just need help getting manufactured.  We’ll engage at any point in the process, which is why flexibility and adaptability are so critical in consulting.

Q: Once your customers come to you, where does the process go from there? 

A: This depends on where we’re engaged, but the primary point of entry is that a client needs to enter a market with a product.  We’ll do research and strategy to define the consumer needs, positioning and business opportunities, with the outcome driving design concepts.  We’ll then start broad then focus in on the design and engineer of those concepts, working our way down to the direction for manufacturing.  At that point we may even assist in selecting the appropriate vendors and may serve as a liaison during the manufacturing process to maintain design integrity.

Q: How involved are your customers in the product development process? What is the give-and-take between the two of you? 

A: This also depends on the interest or knowledge of the client.  We like to work collaboratively and find that the best solutions come from leveraging our clients’ knowledge base.  It’s important for everyone to feel ownership in the process and product to ensure its ultimate success.

Q: Do you ever find yourself at odds with your customers in terms of a conflict concerning your designs?

A: As designers you have to develop thick skin for the purely subjective, but inevitable “I don’t like it” that you’ll get.  The key is to have real reasoning for why the design is the right design for that product/market and that’s why the research and strategy components are so critical to good design solutions.

Q: Do your customers ever come back to you after their products have hit the market and complain because they aren’t selling?

A: Fortunately this has never happened.  We do judge our success by our clients’ success, which is typically judged by sales.  After all, a beautiful object that doesn’t sell isn’t really good for much.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about costs and how you charge your customers for your services?

A: Service costs vary and are dependent on a formula that is strongly dictated by overhead.  Firms in more expensive commercial markets tend to have higher expenses, both in fixed and variable costs which ultimately drive their billing rates.  Areas of specialty and costs of amortization for capital equipment also factor in.

Q: What cost-saving tips do you have for small business owners who only have a minimal amount of funds and can’t afford to go all out in terms of product design but still want a high quality product? 

A: It’s important to work with the right firm, where you can have an honest and open dialogue so that everyone knows explicitly what can or can’t be done within your budget.  There are ways to be creative on service fees too, like using a royalty based model versus a fixed fee-for-service model.

Q: What do you suggest for small business owners who can’t afford to hire a product development firm at all?

A: There are times when a larger firm doesn’t make sense to engage and in times like that, you turn to freelance designers or smaller one to four person shops that can be less expensive and more flexible on their fees.

Q: Kaleidoscope seems to pride itself in being incredibly innovative in terms of product development. How is your product development process different from traditional product development? 

A: At Kaleidoscope we pride ourselves on being highly collaborative (both internally and with our clients) and easy to work with, which sounds like it should be a given, but you’d be surprised at the horror stories we hear.  It’s also a process of constant checks and balances.  We may be in the engineering phase of a project but will still get input from design, research and strategy to make sure that we’re hitting all the objectives.

Q: Are there any hot new trends in the product design/development sector that small business owners should take note of? 

A: In our opinion, trends shouldn’t dictate product development, but can inspire it.  Specifically you can point to sustainability and how that’s working its way through every aspect of developing a product, from design to distribution.

Q: Do you ever make suggestions to your clients as to how to market their products or where/how to sell them? 

A: That brings us back full circle to question one about positioning.  You have to know who to market to first so that you can get the most credibility and impact to have lasting growth and adoption.  Most of our clients already have finely tuned plans as far as channels are concerned, but our strategy work is focused on making sure that we’re pointing out the most valuable opportunities.