Got an idea for a health and fitness product that you think could take off? Perhaps you’ve had an idea for a new exercise gadget, a new healthy food product or even an app? While health and fitness may be one of the fastest growing industries, it’s also a very competitive industry. Creating a product and getting it to stand out is no easy feat, but it can be done if you launch your product correctly. Below are a few steps for launching a successful health and fitness product.
Research the competition
Before you start putting any ideas to paper, it’s worth having a look into what other similar products are already out there on the market. For instance, if you’re thinking of releasing your own meal replacement shake, take a look at what other companies are already out there. You need to be sure that your product is not exactly the same as a product already on the market. At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other products – you may be able to blend some of the best features from multiple products in order to create one that is superior to all of them.
There are many types of competitor research that you can do. It could be worth buying a few rival products and doing an analysis of them. It’s worth also looking into their marketing practices, checking out their website and reading customer reviews.
Do some consumer research
On top of researching your competitors, consider doing some consumer research. This involves identifying your consumer base and asking them what they look for out of your type of product (for example, if you’re launching your own line of weightlifting shoes, it could be worth talking to fellow weightlifting about what they want out of these types of shoes).
There are many ways to do consumer research including creating surveys, assembling focus groups and reading reviews of other existing products. Do all of this before you start designing.
Work out the costs and find the right funding method
You need to work out roughly how much your product will cost to design, build and market. This will allow you to apply for the right amount of funding.
There are many different ways to fund a new business idea. You could save up the money yourself if you think you only need a small amount. Alternatively, you can try taking out a business loan. There’s also the option of seeking investment – either from a VC firm, an angel investor or from crowdfunding. There are some VC firms that even specialise in funding fitness startups.
Design your product
You can now start designing your product. Start with some basic sketches and once you’re happy with a concept, start creating more accurate designs with measurements.
You may prefer to hire a professional designer to create accurate designs. If you’re creating a fitness app and don’t have coding knowledge, it could be worth hiring the help of a mobile app design company. With food products, you should try to work out the precise recipe and design the packaging.
Test and refine your product
Once you’ve designed your product, you can try to create a working prototype. You should test this and use the results to refine your design until you’ve got a final product ready to put to market.
Testing is a process that shouldn’t be rushed. It could be worth assembling a focus group or hiring testers so that you can test your product on consumers. You should also do your own testing to try and find weaknesses that you can patch up. This could include trying to find glitches on an app or deliberately trying to break a gadget to test its robustness.
Choose the right manufacturing method
Once you’ve got a final product designed and settled on, you need to work out the right way of manufacturing it (this doesn’t apply to apps – only physical products). You could choose to manufacture the product yourself with your own machinery, this would allow you to benefit from economies of scale when the business grows. Furthermore, it would also allow you to implement a suitable ERP software selection in order to centralise your operations and collect data from all areas of the business to inform future strategies, as well as save time on day to day tasks. Alternatively, outsourcing your manufacturing could potentially reduce start-up costs with equipment, but the production costs will not scale as much in your favour should the business grow, as you will be paying a set rate to your manufacturing partner.
When it comes to processes like thermoforming and PCB manufacture, most people outsource manufacturing companies. If you’re creating your own organic health food product, you may find that you’re going to need a larger sized kitchen than your own to prepare it. You’ll also likely need to invest in equipment from companies such as Temp-Pro to ensure that the correct temperatures are maintained to safely prepare your products, so that they meet health and safety standards. The initial scalability of your manufacturing process will ultimately come down to how expensive the necessary machinery is to acquire and the volume required to meet your demand.
Build your brand identity
A good product needs a good brand identity. This involves coming up with aspects such as a brand name, a logo, a color scheme and a tone of voice. This will all help to dictate the style of your marketing, while also helping to give your company its own personality.
A good brand identity should help to convey what your product is and who it’s aimed at. For example, a cycling helmet aimed at kids is likely to have very different branding to a cycling helmet aimed at professional athletes. Brand agencies may be able to help you create a brand.
Create a website and social media pages
An online presence is necessary for any business. Start by creating a website that you can sell your product through. Then create social media pages that you can use to promote your product.
You could consider hiring a digital marketing company to create a website for you and set up social media pages, or you could do it yourself (there are code-free website builders that you can use). If you decide to use a digital marketing company, consider looking into companies that specialise in health and fitness.
Look into different marketing strategies
You’ll need to consider other marketing strategies beyond a website and social media pages. PPC ads and SEO are two services offered by many digital marketing companies that could help to boost awareness of your product. You can also consider creating video adverts, encouraging product reviews and encouraging product endorsements from influencers. There may also be events like trade fairs that you can attend and you may even be able to organize a launch party. Marketing companies will be able to help with this.
Connect with key fitness retailers
You may want to consider selling some of your products to retailers to help boost sales. This could include physical fitness stores and online fitness stores. You’ll need to be prepared for these retailers to take a cut of your profits. There are guides online that can help you when it comes to selling your product to retailers.