Invention, Intellectual Property and Business Models

Assignment

Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project. 

 Who is the Target User / Buyer?

This product will be targeted at families who want to give their children a back yard toy / game that helps them with one (or many of their favorite) sports.  In talking to a few parents who have athletic children, they seem to believe this product might make sense.  Everyone seems to agree that combining a moving/changing target for children to aim with some feedback on the force would be quite viable given most back yard athletic toys don't do either of these things.


How will I distribute the project?


I am unsure of how I might distribute this product.  The main reason I am not sure is because I don't know how much "invention" will be involved.  I don't think the idea itself is patentable, but the final product might have some element of invention that will be parentable. For example, I need to figure out how I'm going to accurately determine the force of the shot.  As I learned in this project, Velostat did not do a great job of this.  Perhaps there are things I can do to improve the accuracy with velostat, but even Neil suggested in the final presentation that I might want to consider do capacitive sensing with foam.  So, once I get the issue of accurate sensing nailed down, I will look at whether this idea is worth patenting.  Fortunately, I have a brother-in-law that is a patent attorney who has offered to help me.  As he pointed out to me, there are multiple reasons to consider doing a patent:
  1. It could be worth something if someone else wants to build a similar product
  2. It could put a small company on the map/radar of a bigger company as it give a bit more legitamacy to the idea

Having said that, I totally recognize the cost (and implications) of having to have a patent you need to protect.


What else needs to be done?


There are three big issue I need to resolve before I can seriously think of distributing this:
1) As mentioned above, I need more accurate sensors for the force.
2) The cost.  Right now all the parts are too expensive.  I need to find a way to manufacture something with fewer/cheaper parts.  The price would need to be below $100, which means the parts and manufacturing would likely need to cost less than $25 or $50. 
3) I need to look at the physical design of this to...1) make it more resiliant and 2) to make it look a little better.


How would I distribute this?


I think there are four channels I would pursue to get this product on the market:
1) Talk to sporting goods stores.  Having a deal with someone like Dick's Sporting Goods would put a product like this on the map, but a deal like that would be hard to close without some market success.
2) Talk to a sporting goods manufacturer.  There are many companies that make sporting equipment who want to break into sports like lacrosse.  If you could get a Nike, Warrior or other sporting good manufacturer to buy in you could leverage their distribution channels.
3) Schools.  Schools buy sporting equipment.  They buy the bouncebacks that I have referenced throughout my web pages.  Why wouldn't they buy something like this?  I know the kids at our middle school would love something like this. 
4) Online stores.  An Amazon like storefront could be a great way to get started with little cost.

Initial Funding


I've been wondering about this one.  My current thinking is that I won't even try for funding until I resolve some of the big questions listed above.  Having said that, there are three potential sources I might consider (in the order in which I'd go after them):
1) Friends and family: I know of many people who are crazy about their children's athletic successes.  So I might attempt to locally "crowd source" the funding to get this off the ground.
2) Kickstarter (or some other platform): I have seen many successful (and some not so successful) kickstarter projects.  Having said that, if I can't get local friends to contribute, I would likely go to a crowd sourcing platform.
3) A local institution:  I know of a few schools and some leaders of athletic club teams.  I wonder whether they'd be interested in seed funding an idea like this.