Here am I, starting a business for the first time, bringing a new product to market. As a former full-time engineer, I now appreciate the freedom and the satisfaction that comes from being my own boss...truth is, my grandpa had his own business, same with my father, and now, me. It's fun to be able to develop my own ideas and inventions, tinker around and find new and convenient ways to solve problems. It takes years to build up a business from the ground up, but the first year is just about over and I'm about to launch my first product: A convenient solution to permanently destroy CDs and DVDs without breaking or shredding. Smaller and quicker than CD shredders and other devices. The most practical way to destroy CDs. To recap the year, I finished prototyping the final version of my invention and did more market research. I have gotten my company website
www.SunZag.com, product website
www.DiscEraser.com, and found a capable manufacturer for my new invention. Applied for trademark, Disc Eraser TM. Studied up on marketing and business, entrepreneur, etc... it's going to be a challenge but I have people to help. It's all about faith and believing in myself, my product, and determination. Don't let people discourage me, especially those who don't know anything about my industry or my product or assume they know. My original plan was to manufacture and sell my Disc Eraser on my own, as a company, rather than license it to another company and collect royalties. But it seems like most 'expert' inventors and industry people recommended me to license it exclusively to a company and collect royalties. I've tried this route, spent over 6 months...found out that you really do limit yourself when you give your rights to someone else to manufacture and sell it. They make all the money, and give you very small percentage in return. I probably would be lucky to recover my patenting expenses on licensing, but it's not going to be enough to make a living off of. Duh! Many people think just get some money, a little money is better than no money at all, so just license it... and move on to your next invention. Well, I believe all you need is one good invention. Push it all the way through, and you will be successful if you have a hit. You must focus on it. Focus on your best inventions, as long as the light remains green, continue with it.
Well, I like to do things myself, and it's reward/risk ratio is high. I'm a risk taker, life is all about risks, calculated risks. If I fail, so what, I've learned, I've tried.
Hope the market of consumers will like my product, so far most have had positive things about it. It is good to be able to destroy a CD or DVD, and there aren't alot of cheap or easy products out there that does so. Personal information, confidential data, etc... are stored on optical discs now. Recordable CD-R and DVD-R discs are the way to go, cost effective way to store data. So it makes sense to have a useful and affordable way to destroy it. And CD shredders are bulky, messy, too expensive, requires electricity, etc... so we'll see. Time to market is important. I had planned to get it out before this christmas shopping season, but it looks like it'll be late. The manufactureres were delayed a few months, due to a component availability, and now a couple weeks, due to packaging. This is the first production run, so it's not high volume yet. But I'm hoping to get large orders via wholesalers/stores/distributors. Need to seek those out. I'll be able to send them samples in a couple weeks or so.