So You Want to Be an Inventor?

By Cathy Elcik

Tamara Monosoff invented the TP Saver™, a product to keep little ones from unraveling the toilet paper roll, and founded Mom Inventors Inc., to create a community of support for mothers like herself. Beth Besner launched her company, Neat Solutions Inc., with an invention called Table Topper™ and is currently in the middle of a product launch for her Shopper Topper™. And Nancy Cleary founded Moms Business Magazine.

These three mom-inventors all agree on one thing: Launching a successful product is harder than it looks. A lot harder.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Don’t get frustrated, and have patience,’ but you really do have to have so much patience,” Cleary says. “Timelines are so much longer than you think at first. You think you’re going to be successful in a year, but it takes five.”

From idea to store shelf, there are more steps to launching a product than we could ever hope to cover here (see Resources for further reading) but there are two general roads to take with your product idea: launching it yourself or licensing it to a company to launch for you. Both paths require a lot of initial market research on your part, but licensing puts many of the day-to-day concerns regarding your product on someone else’s plate.

“When you get to the crossroads about whether to launch the product yourself or license it, really think it through carefully,” Besner advises. “If the product takes off, are you prepared to go the full race and do everything it takes to make it a business? If the answer is no, then you may need to take the licensing road. It’s really a family decision.”

If you’re about to launch a product idea, here are some helpful tips from those who have gone before you: