Starting a Business Because You Have a Great Idea

You’re a mom.  You’re creative.  You’re smart.  You see countless ways that your life could be improved upon – if only this or that existed.  Bingo, you think, I’ll go and create it and sell it and make a million dollars.  Heck the mom form the Baby Einsteins did it, so did the Grocery Game lady.  There are lots of examples of inventor moms out there who struck it big.  But hold on there lady.  Inventing something is totall cool and a great way to entrepreneurial riches.  The world loves a totally new product right?  But before you go down this route, you should stop and ask yourself a few questions first.  Why?  Because while inventing and marketing a product can yield a huge payoff it usually takes awhile.  And it takes money to design, prototype and manufacture.  It’s not always a low overhead, high margin type of deal. And once you make it and take delivery of your inventory, you have to figure out a way to sell it.  But don’t be discouraged – anything is possible.

So, before you get started, ask yourself why are you doing this – are you looking to make a little extra money?  Quit your day job, stay home with the kids and still earn some money?   If these are the things you’re looking for, then maybe a different entreprenurial venture has your name on it.  But let’s go back.  Say you have an idea and you just have to bring it to the world.

What kind of product is it?  Is it’s the world’s best organic cookie?  Well then it might be easy enough to start your business – after all, all you need is your ingredients and people who like cookies.  Say you have an idea for a great new line of sassy and fun t-shirts.  You just have to get them made up – again, your start up captial might be more than a batch of cookies,  but custom t-shirts are still pretty inexpensive to make.

Of course the problem with these ideas – loads of competition – which is both good and bad.  Good because there is a great deal of demand for these products.  Almost everyone will buy a cookie or a t-shirt at some point.  In some cases you won’t even have to market that much to them, because they will wake up one day and want the cookie.  Bad, because there is a lot of other people with a great chocolate chip receipe and cute t-shirts.  You will need to cut through the clutter to make your mark.  Your success will mean you need a great product of course, but it will also be about how well you manage costs, how many people you reach, etc, etc.  You might never become the next Mrs. Fields, but maybe you can pay for the business and leave a little something on the side.

But, what if you truly have what you think is a new invention, a brand new product – something that deserves its own infomercial? Well the good news and the bad news – lots of other people have these ideas too.  Of course if your product is so new, people may not know they want it or need it.  How complicated is your product? How many people can this help – is this only for mothers with brown hair and blue eyes with kids between the ages of 0 to 1?    Sometimes a great invention is just great – for you.  And that’s ok.

On the other hand, the retailing world loves new products.  Retailers thrive on them and want to add new lines to their stores to keep customers coming in. Trade shows exist to show off your product.  You can even go to trade shows with samples, right up orders on the spot and order your inventory afterwards.

In other words, there are lots of ways to start a mom and family friendly business.  When I started, I was convinced I had a totally new idea – girl power t-shirts.   On the one hand I did.  No one else was doing it at the time.   And therein lay one of my first challenges.  No one, tween, mom or kid woke up and said “Wow, what I really need today, is a girl power t-shirt.”  Sure people loved the idea when they heard about it, but no one was searching for exactly the type of product I was selling.  It made it hard to pin my market down.   But there are ways around it.  And if you truly have that great idea, the next big invention or just the newest in mommy haute couture wear – don’t be afraid to go for it.   Just remember some paths to business success are longer and harder than others – but they are often the ones that yield the biggest rewards.