585: The $100K Mistake Most Founders Make with Manufacturers (and How to Avoid It) (Best of Foundr)

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey guys, welcome back to the Founder Podcast. Today we're joined by one of the world's top product sourcing experts. He's a good friend of mine, Kian Gulzari. He's personally sourced over 2 ,500 products, worked with major brands like NBA, Olympics, and FTSE 100 companies, and he's built his career by going deep inside factories, not just behind a laptop. Kian breaks down everything from how to properly develop and validate a product idea, the exact way to negotiate with manufacturers, and why most entrepreneurs, they leave a huge amount of profit on the table just by not understanding their supply chain.

1:22So if you're thinking about creating your own product or scaling an e-commerce brand, this episode is a must listen. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:42The first question we ask to everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're in today? Yeah, well, I was extremely fortunate, really lucky. I mean, I got, I started in a family business and I guess it started off from curiosity because my dad went to China. like he had this idea I want to start my own brand he had his own shop and then he went to China when China started coming out of a communist rule maybe 35 years ago and as a kid growing up I would just always see my dad going to China and for that I was always curious he'd bring me back these like weird gifts these cool products he was working on so my whole life I was like I wonder what it's like in China because I just heard all these stories and then when I graduated university my dad was like hey do you want to take over do you want to come to China do you want to look at how I do the products and stuff like that I was like yeah absolutely and what was supposed to be a two-week trip ended up being a three-month trip and I ended up moving there setting up an office there so it all started from curiosity but that was led from my childhood and from my dad so I can't thank him enough yeah there you go so you've sourced now over two and a half thousand products you've worked with a lot of big companies big and small right and you really help people when it comes to sourcing and developing products and also supply chain issues which has become a big thing now with everything going on in the world like what are you getting right like like because we're going to go deep here but i'm just curious to hear from your perspective what are you getting right i would say one of the most important things is attention to detail because that's the way i've always developed products that's always been the way i've selected my suppliers and negotiated prices and stuff like that and i feel that like in the past before we had all the supply chain issues like maybe a lot of things were overlooked in supply chain but as long as you do things right you know like i used to split my content between like okay are you beginner intermediate and advanced and then we would kind of look at okay here's some strategies but you can throw that to the side now it's like you either do it right or you don't do it at all you have to be following the right principles in order to master your supply chain and luckily having gone to china when i started my journey like i didn't start my journey online sourcing products it was in the factory in the trenches like touching feeling the product like making making an item myself getting to know the factory get to know how they think i'm curious so um you spent over 12 years how many times you've been to well uh so i lived there for like about five years and then when i moved back so i grew up in scotland uh when i moved back to scotland i would travel back and forth to china like every three months so if i was to look at my passports i would say i've probably made like over 50 trips to china i've been to over 20 canton fairs and that's like the largest import export exhibition in the world and I used to just travel to that all the time but it was always so much fun like all those trips were a lot of fun yeah well that's awesome so can you speak Mandarin?

4:19Indian. And what's your opinion on drop shipping? I've never really been a big fan of drop shipping because like you don't really get to tailor that customer experience you don't really get to because when you're mass producing something you because you have that volume and scale you can make it exactly per your requirements and really build that brand message, brand story, brand identity but when you're drop shipping something you tend to just sort of take what the factory has available and there's not that consistency in terms of like okay well product 68 is going to be exact same as product 350 and you don't really necessarily know that so and for that reason the delivery time is also a bit longer as well when you order something online people expect it the next day but when it's drop shipped it can be a few weeks and that really frustrates the customer as well so I've never been such a big fan of it because you have less control on the production process and so what's your take when it comes to I guess um you know selling a branded product versus the non-branded product I think brand is so important and it's where like you can really have long-term success in this game because I feel that you can identify here's an opportunity to make some money online I'm going to sell this random product or if you build a brand it's like well i'm really building something that i believe in something that i'm passionate on something that i can build a community around and as a result a lot of people are looking to you know build and grow and scale these businesses and then exit them but if you have a brand you can demand like a lot a much higher valuation a much higher multiple because you've built a community like think of all the products that we buy like there's cheaper alternatives and then there's a branded ones branded ones you can always afford to charge a little bit more so i feel like you are leaving a lot of money on the table if you don't develop your products into a real brand experience.

5:58So somebody's watching this right now and they're thinking about creating a product. They've got an idea. They believe that there is something there. Talk to me about your strategies around product development research. And then I'd love to talk through how you source it or how would you recommend sourcing? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always feel the best products are coming from the ones which solve a problem. So like if you ever walk in down the street and you pick up a product in the store or you have something in your house and you're like i wish they made it like this or i wish this product would do this like that's your starting point to be like all right well let's see if this exists if not let's work on it because i'm just solving i've just solved the problem for myself and i think product development really comes from a deep need to solve problems in the market but a lot of people look at products online and be like hey i'm going to make this product like a little bit lighter or i'm just going to add this changes pattern or changes color but if you solve a problem that's where you can essentially really bring value to the market yeah so um do you have any uh i'm curious do you have any case studies or any stories or experiences you can share with companies you've worked with when it comes to sourcing products and also helping with margins as well yeah i mean like margins are really important uh because i feel like a lot of sellers don't really understand like the true cost of something like you get your the price of the product online maybe look at it on alibaba.com and then you essentially need to calculate your shipping costs your import duty costs but when i talk to a lot of sellers they like to tell me about their revenue on the seven figure seller i'm an eight figure seller and i'm like that means nothing unless like you're extremely profitable and like really understanding your supply chain is going to determine how profitable you actually are like where can you save costs and it can be like you know in the product it can be in the packaging it can also be like in the delivery your products your strategies working for suppliers for them to hold on some stock for you to drip feed it to working with shipping companies so there's loads of different ways we can save cost and i would love to go over all of them in great detail but because i've done over two and a half thousand products i've got loads of case studies of products that i've developed and um i've got some favorite ones uh but i don't know if there's a particular story that yeah what tell us one of your favorite ones i'd love to hear just because i think you know we were talking about this offline before we you know hit record and you said something that was really interesting you said look Nathan like a couple of years ago when e-commerce wasn't what it is now people didn't take sourcing and supply chain really seriously but now it can be the difference between having a business that is viable and super profitable and not and I'd love to hear just kind of any stories you have all the experiences you could share because this is so important for people that have e-commerce businesses or looking to get into e-commerce yeah so i would say like one of my favorite things to do and for anyone at home who like really wants to understand the cost of their product and where they could save the most is if you're um if you're able to go into your factory one thing you can do is like make one item yourself and if you can't go into your factory because of like travel restrictions and stuff like that then you can deconstruct one item yourself but for me i was very lucky because the first factory i ever went to was a backpack factory so before I went into that factory I always thought of one backpack in a store on a shelf but when you go into the factory I saw it in 30 different pieces like I saw the shoulder straps the foam that goes in the shoulder straps the webbing the zippers the buckles and the pullers the waterproof fabric inside lining all that sort of stuff and then when you actually can see the product it's almost like you can think of it in 3d so if I have a$15 product and I need to make it a$12 product I've got 30 different calculations I can make in my head in terms of here's where I can reduce the cost or if I have a product where I want to improve the quality I can now think here's 30 different places where I could actually improve the quality without maybe adding so much cost but I wasn't really able to think in that way until I actually went into a factory and when I went into the factory I started to become obsessed with that and then I went to loads of different factories but for someone at home who's maybe got a few samples you can also just deconstructor samples you can cut them apart to be like all right how thick is that foam inside is it sponge back foam is the eva foam do i want to make it shorter i want to make it wider so you can really play with the product and understand the product and really attention to detail as we said before like really understand the materials so if you have like say an outdoor furniture chair for your garden right online you look the same uh always but they're different prices and one might be polyester fabric one might be nylon fabric within that polyester fabric is it 300d is it 600d is it 900d and the d just stands for denure which is amount of threads um in there is a tubing steel or is aluminium what's the thickness of the steel and you might be sitting home thinking well i don't know what are the right components i should be doing but the beauty is it you can ask all these questions like let's say you identify here's the top five suppliers i want to work with i would also find a list of the top five suppliers i don't want to work with and i'm going to ask them all my questions to learn about the product so i would say what's the price difference between polyester coating and nylon coating um what's the quality difference what's the different difference in weight between the steel tubing the aluminium tubing and you're like okay cool i'm going to go for steel because it's cheaper it's a little bit heavier i'm going to go for the nylon fabric because it's higher quality and then i'm going to make that specification sheet of what i want and i'm going to go to the factories i do want to work with and be like look i want a 600d polyester i want this thickness of steel and that supplier is going to be like wow this guy actually really knows what he's talking about and he's going to give us their best service from day one and they're not going to mess you around with the price because they know you know about the product but you learned it from the suppliers that you didn't want to work with and then you applied that to the suppliers that you do want to work with yeah wow this is game-changing so no one ever thinks like this right you usually just go on alibaba and you just assume that's how it's going to be and you're saying that that is that's the old way and the new way is actually breaking it down and looking at some of these like economics and getting down to the nitty-gritty yeah for sure because like you know you can look at any product on alibaba let's go back to that outdoor furniture chair and it might be like eight dollars and then you're like okay i'm gonna negotiate this right it's 650 awesome i got one dollar fifty off the price really proud of myself i got it for 650 but you didn't actually know that the real price of that product was actually 550 and you were overpaying for it but to find out the real cost of a product it starts with that specification sheet of like here's all the details that i want in the product here's the pantone colors the dimensions the packaging the testing that i need and here's on a one pager and i'm going to send that to all the factories but we're going to get pricing back now from five factories and the pricing will come back you know 650 670 680 and so we know the prices of the product is around that price so we are now negotiating from a position of knowledge to be like i know how much this product costs so i can maybe bring it down like five or ten percent and if you get a product price which is like three dollars you know it's too good to be true and there's going to be quality problems and if you get a price which is like ten dollars you know that factor is just added on way too much margin but from knowing what you want creating that spec sheet sending it out to your top five suppliers which i'll show you how to do in the course as well now you're able to actually negotiate the price from a position of knowledge because you understand what the market price is so you know how far you can actually bring it down that's gold man so i'm curious as well like one thing when it comes to sourcing and manufacturing is it can be quite intimidating because you don't actually, a lot of the times, you actually don't even see what you're spending all this money on for your minimum order quantity, or, you know, you just keep ordering stock.

13:22You don't see the quality. How do you work that out? And how do you overcome that fear of just kind of not knowing and like, you know, translation and, you know, barriers there as well with languages? Yeah, it's a great question. and to really like you know um protect yourself against that and the sample process is so important right so we talked about that specification sheet and we chose our suppliers now we're going to maybe pick our top three and we're going to ask them right go ahead and make some samples now of exactly what it is that we want and when you get those samples you might tweak it a little bit those are like your development samples right i've given my idea i've got my sample but until you get a sample in your hand of like this is 100 perfect this is what i want to order this is exactly the color the dimensions and materials of what I wanted now I'm going to place my deposit now I'm going to place my purchase order because this is a sample I confirmed to go into production so now we get started then after that they take maybe 45 60 days to do the production and because I've developed a good relationship with the factory I'm going to see photos and videos of the production line and things like that they'll send you an email to be like look yeah and production's finished I'm like okay cool now send the pre-shipment sample and I'm going to compare the pre-production sample this is what i confirmed for you to go into production with and this is a pre-shipment sample this is exactly what the production is you've made me and it should be a hundred percent match it should be exactly the same and if there are any discrepancies well your products are still at source and you've not actually paid your manufacturer the full amount yet so they can be fixed at source but most times they will be absolutely correct so that's another way to protect yourself and then on top of that as well you want to organize for a pre-shipment inspection with the third party company it costs about like 200 but they'll go into the factory and they'll see right kian ordered a thousand goods we have a thousand here we'll go into the boxes we've grabbed number sample number 37 and 222 we're grabbing them out take photos videos packaging all that sort of stuff and now you're going to receive a 60 page report of all information about that production so you confirm the sample you paid your deposit you confirmed your pre-shipment sample you sent in your pre-shipment inspection and then only when the goods are actually shipped and set still on water is when you pay your remaining balance so you know the goods are on the way to you before you actually pay your supplier so those sort of ways you've given yourself that protection and then on top of all that when you're paying your supplier you can pay via alibaba trade assurance so if there's any issues with the stock you can also get that money back as well so that kind of sample process pre-shipping inspection and the way you pay your supplier gives you ultimate protection but on top of all that the most important thing is the relationship that you build with the supplier because at the end of the day people buy from people and like just a quick tip on how to build a relationship with your manufacturer you know um add them on wechat do some video calls with some share some photos you know when um you know when you're watching your favorite tv shows or like you know when you're out if your buddy's having a beer like hey we're just out on the weekend having fun what are you guys having for dinner and now you sort of have that sort of um communication with them on the app like obviously on email stick it to like the more formal delivery dates prices all that sort of stuff but now I've got like I've got video communication with my supplier through the app and I've built that relationship but I can also say to them hey the goods are going to be ready on the 5th of October and I might call them on the 4th of October and say hey do you mind going down to the factory floor taking a quick video for me while I'm on the call and let me see the production so now you've got eyes and ears inside the factory because you've built that relationship as well yeah wow this is gold so I'm curious as well you talked about the inspection man we've always done inspections and you know from we don't really do physical products we do a little bit of founder but for my you know fiance's company and other things i've done um they have to fail yeah like like what's up with that and can you trust like yeah talk to me about that because you laugh because you know i'm talking about yeah yeah yeah like what does that mean yeah so the most important thing to look at on the inspection report is the aql level which is the accepted quality level and on an inspection you'll get minor major and critical faults right minor you're allowed four percent defects major 2.5 percent defects and critical zero percent defects so say for example we're doing like a kid's scooter right yeah a minor defect might be there's some scratches on the scooter a major defect might be um the handlebars are a little bit too short the handlebars still work they're just a little bit too short so that's major and the critical might be the wheels don't turn like the products don't work right so it's very important to be able to read an inspection report because sometimes inspection companies can be overly harsh and overly critical because at the end of the day you're paying the inspection company not the factory so they want to keep you happy so sometimes when I see a fail I never like really get worried or freak out because I'm like well first thing what is the root of the failure what actually happened and it turns out that maybe five percent of the goods that they tested had some scratch marks on it or some dust marks on it and I can easily correct that I can use that information I can say to the factory hey can you just open them all out can you polish them can you clean them can you wipe them etc and then do it and then here's a key thing if your inspection ever fails you must do a re-inspection but at the factory's expense because you paid for the first inspection and I'd always write in the terms and conditions of my order and maybe on the purchase order as well I will pay for the first inspection but if the inspection fails the factory must pay for the re-inspection and they sign and they agree to that so you'll tell them what things that they need to correct and then they're going to we inspect at their expense and then the goods will be absolutely fine but yeah the important thing is like not to freak out when your product fails because sometimes it's actually absolutely fine it's just the inspection report trying the inspection company trying to help you out and cover you basically yeah so when it comes to defect percentage what are you usually comfortable with anything within the AQL level so if it's less than that four percent because and the thing is like they're always they're also being like overly critical as well but to prevent all of that um defect rate as well it's going back to the sample process because on that pre-production sample if there's anything i'm not happy with i need another sample before i confirm this to go into production but a lot of people mistakes that they make might be right i found this product on alibaba.com and it just hit order without receiving a sample so of course you're going to have production issues or they might get that first sample and they'll be like you know what like this material isn't right they might say don't worry we'll correct it in mass production like okay cool go for it but you have to see touch and feel and confirm and sign off label that sample date that sample take photos of it take videos of it and like this is what i'm confirming to go into production i would never ever place a deposit place an order until i've got something in my hand to be like this is 100 % what i want yeah look and there's something really special about when you get that sample it's fun creating these products like that's really fun and there's something so rewarding about creating it holding it touching it feeling it and then seeing people buy it yeah right and you're solving a problem yeah for sure and it's such a a nice feeling and a proud feeling you know for anyone who's gone through that sample process to be like i had an idea for my product and now i've got it right here in front of me and then it's kind of like reps in the gym like the more you do the stronger you get like the more samples you develop the more suppliers that you talk to you just get better at it and then to your point as well when you see it in the street i mean like the proudest moments I've had is when I've products I know I've been long hours late nights in the factory making those products and I'll just see someone wearing it down the street and it's just like they've got no idea but I've just I feel so good when I see that it's the best feeling in the world I agree agree agree and I've seen that uh many times with founder and other things we've done so I'm curious timing how long from your perspective do you believe it should take to take a product through these phases from coming up with the idea, sourcing and manufacturing to get the samples, then to run and do your first MOQ?

21:06What kind of timeline do you give yourself when you're working with a client or working on your own projects? Yeah, great question. I mean, I would kind of allow myself about 10 days to find the right suppliers online, communicate with them, share with them what I want. And then after that, maybe two weeks for them to make the actual sample, depending on how complicated the sample actually is then maybe allow yourself a week for that sample to be sent from China to wherever you're located and then once you have that gold seal sample in terms of like this is what I want to order I would normally allow two months for production those lead times can extend a little bit because of supply chain issues at the moment but generally two months it's kind of 30 days for material preparation and then 30 days for actually manufacturing and QC and stuff like that and then depending on where you're shipping it to whether it be the US, allow maybe another 30 days for shipment.

21:52So of me having this idea for a product, going through the sample production and then delivery of it, you could allow maybe three to four months in that window period. But in the sample stage, we just talked about two weeks, but it depends if you're developing a product from scratch. And I think the timing of that is really important depending on the level of innovation that you're doing. If I'm developing the next electric toothbrush which brushes your teeth on two rows it's never been done before i'm not under the pressure of time because no one knows that product is actually coming out so i would kind of judge it by what's the level of innovation of your product and then use that allow yourself how much time is your window of opportunity to launch that product got it got it so three four five six months give or take depends on how fast you move etc etc yeah but if it's a reorder normally just and it's something you've been happy with before like two months for production and then one month for shipping 90 i would say 100 days is a safe measure and stick to be like here's your order to when i get my stock 100 days yep i'm curious as well do you ever worry about over developing an idea 100 and i've been guilty of it many times as well because like as product developers we're all perfectionists like we want to launch that perfect product and if you spend too long developing it that's when the window of opportunity could actually pass because while you've spent so much time developing it other people have launched their version as well so i always say like develop until the product is 80 ready because it could take maybe you know a few weeks to get that from zero to 80 but it could take nine months to a year to get it from 80 to 100 so you're killing yourself to get it from 80 to 100 when you've lost the opportunity so i would launch it when it's 80 ready and then while it's in production while it's um selling that's when you're working on get it from 80 to 100 and a lot of people are worried about oh well what if someone copies my product well if they copy your product they're copying what is already out there so they're copying what you've already made but you're working on the layer the newer version so by the time they bring that copied product to market you've brought out your newer version so as long as you stay innovating stay on top of your product you'll always be one step ahead of the competition when it comes to i guess uh ideas being stolen during the development process that's a big thing that a lot of uh people worry about you hear horror stories i'd love to hear if you've got any good stories there or if it's something people should be worried about yeah yeah for sure because it's one of the most like common questions i get asked right it's like what if someone copies my idea but i think the most important thing is to be self-aware of how did i get my idea in the first place because you might have got your product idea because you saw something out there and you're like hey i really like that but i can improve it by doing this but when someone does that to us and they take our product and they change it a little bit and they're like oh this guy's still my idea so it's like i would so there are forms of protection um if you're worried about well what if my manufacturer copies my idea you can get them to sign an nnn agreement which is non-use non-disclosure non-circumvention write it in english and chinese proper contract so like it's good but that goes against what we said before about you know developing a good relationship with your supplier because it's like hey i trust you to make my order i like you but i think you might copy my product in the future so i need you to sign this like you're not setting your relationship off on the right foot but if you do have something of real innovation then you can design you can get a design patent or a utility patent on that product so a lot of people think their manufacturer is going to copy them in actual fact it's not your manufacturer it's a competitor which will copy you they'll give it to another manufacturer and then they'll copy your product so don't protect yourself against your manufacturer protect yourself against the competition and the best way to get that is through a design patent and if a design patent is too expensive for you or utility patent is not worth it well how innovative was the product in the first place and one final thing i'll say about that as well is that let's say we do have this new product idea this new innovation like that electric toothbrush which brushes two rows right i'm not sending that product idea to the top five suppliers i find on alibaba.com i'll maybe find a similar product just a normal electric toothbrush and then i'll find the top five suppliers and i'll get my samples i'll do my negotiation and you know find out who's got the best communication.

25:56And then with my first choice supplier, that's who I'm going to share that new idea with. So I still went through the filtering process, but only one supplier actually saw my idea. Yeah, I love it. And when it comes to you talk about Alibaba, is that the go-to or what you preferred? My preference is always building relationships in the factory, face-to-face, hands-on with the product. But Alibaba.com is the best platform that we have at the moment for online and credit to them like the platform has improved so much in the last like three years so they've really taken this opportunity to be like well you know what big companies can't come to China anymore so let's make sure our platform looks right and there are horror stories that have happened on Alibaba so there are like really bad suppliers there but they're also really good suppliers and the purpose of using Alibaba correctly is to find the best suppliers.

26:44yep awesome and talk to me about like the supply chain issues and navigating them right now because you can still start a successful e-commerce business in today's climate there's nothing stopping you yes there's more competition but you can spin up the shopify stores and you've got a great product great idea and the unit economics work out there's nothing stopping you you can use tiktok instagram organic traffic off you go don't need to run ads if you don't have to you can just start small as plenty of people doing this every day talk to me around supply chain and navigating it right now what are things that people need to be thinking about i would say supply chain issues is an opportunity because you know you could look at the supply chain issues oh shipping cost has gone up lead times are longer why is this happening to me but if it's happening to you it's also happening to your competition so what can i do about it right now to get ahead of my competition so if it's shipping prices i'm asking my manufacturer hey this has been the increase in shipping goods the increase is like five thousand dollars per container can we split that 50 50 so i can pass that saving on to my consumer if i can pass that saving on i can sell more if i sell more that's more orders for you so it's all about like controlling those conversations and controlling those situations if for example like you need shorter lead times well if you're if you were ordering you know two thousand units per order but you order you know 10 ,000 units over the course of the year I'm going to ask my manufacturers hey can you hold the raw material of my product in stock in your factory so let's say I'm doing this black hoodie and can you get this like 10 ,000 pieces worth of this black polyester on the in the fabric rolls and you know store it in your factory and then when I need to order the products then you can cut and sew and manufacture but at least all the materials are there in stock and the good thing is one if you've got a good relationship with your manufacturer they're willing to do that for you.

28:32Two, if you were ever to like not take the goods and not order it, this is a black polyester that they can sell to other customers as well. So it's not just dependent on you, but you've kind of half your lead times because they no longer have to go and order this material. You've also reduced your cost because you've got that economies of scale, you've got it all in bulk up front at once, and you're also not paying any storage. So these are the things that we need to do to have an advantage over a competition. But if everyone thinks, oh, I'm stuck, supply chain issues, I'm not going to order this product.

29:02Well, you're leaving so much money on the table, you're not developing that next product and you're letting your competition get ahead. So it's like, what are the problems? And then come up with a solution, which also I want to cover in great detail as well. Yeah, man, this is gold. I'm curious as well, when it comes to working with manufacturers and rates, and how do you manage them over time? you've given us a few examples around kind of materials what are some other examples and like yeah obviously you you go in depth in this program and on our platform but like yeah do you have any more just for people to help with rates raises in like prices of product yeah so you know you know we cover like the specification sheet that's the most important thing to really understand what is the actual price of the product and then from there i can negotiate down having them hold materials in stock for you as well but a quick hack you can do as well is always ask your manufacturer what materials are you holding in stock because quite often manufacturers are holding materials for maybe items that were cancelled by other customers and stuff like that like they might have like some lime green or purple fabric that like hey that's been there for like a year now and like that customer is like going out of business and they but you might say like oh yeah cool I'll take it but they're just willing to give it to you at like half the price or 75 % off because you just want rid of those materials.

30:19So asking manufacturers as well what items they have in stock can sort of give you some great price advantages as well. Yeah, interesting. And when it comes to, I guess, testing your products and seeking feedback, what advice do you give there? Yeah, so most important is test it yourself. You will be the toughest critic of your actual product. Like when I'm making outdoor backpacks, I'm climbing the mountains, I'm making sure that the water bottle fits the lines on the side, I'm making sure the sleeping bag fits in the backpack. If it's a tent or a sleeping bag, I'm sleeping in it to make sure I actually stayed warm at night.

30:51Even if it's something as simple as a coffee mug, I have to make sure I'm drinking five cups of hot water out of that. And then, like, you know, it doesn't chip, the handle doesn't fall off, all that sort of stuff. So you are your own toughest critic of the product. That's first. Once you're happy with it, you might want to send it off to a third party company for, like, actually doing the legal and product testing if it's required. Like, if it's an electronic, there might be legal testing required. I also like to send it, you know, we talked about, like, building a community in the course. and like you know if you have that facebook community you might offer it to be like hey i'm launching this new product uh do you guys want to be one of the beta testers and then you get that feedback from your inner circle as well and then the other thing is also the final one is like working with influencers because working with influencers can be quite transactional in terms of like hey if i give you this product can you post it right how much you're going to pay me but if you work with an influencer who's actually someone which would use your product as well i might say hey i'm developing this travel backpack you talk to a travel influencer like hey do you mind like i've not launched this yet but i'd love your feedback on it if you use it and test it you know let me know what you liked about it what you didn't like about it and then they might say you know what the shoulder straps were a little bit too thick and then you might say all right cool i'm going to reduce it so then when they promote it they're going to say hey i was involved in the product development process of this product i didn't like the shoulder straps they changed it credit to the brand so get the influencers involved in the initial stage and then they'll be more compelled to sort of um share it with their audience when it's launched as well yeah gold and i'm curious like you've sourced over 2500 products what's been some of the biggest mistakes you've ever made tell us some war stories man because you know you have a wealth of experience yeah i had a couple of horror stories where um i had a couple yeah so we um we were doing military boots for the army and it was like we had like many many orders and stuff like that and something can happen in China called a quality fade where like gradually your manufacturer can start reducing the quality of the materials to maybe save a bit of cost and I was you know inspecting my products all the time and I was testing my products all the time but because we've done so many orders I was like you know what I stopped doing it took my eye off the ball and then we had like two 40 foot high cube containers of military boots and I remember when they arrived like a few weeks later we started to get a few returns like all the soles were splitting and it's like two returns five returns 20 returns 50 returns 100 returns and then the stores were like we're sending all of it back i was like what has happened here and i looked at the soles and like when he flexed the sole just like tore and um what happened was the manufacturer had used less rubber content it was supposed to be 40 rubber sole but it maybe gone down to like maybe 32 just to save a bit of cost a tiny bit of cost but because the volume was so high that would be good for them but ultimately products ended up failing now i was able to turn that around and i I was able to fly my manufacturer over, went over the products with them.

33:39They took responsibility for it because they're an honorable supplier. Because if you go through that selection process and you work with bad suppliers, they will just wash their hands of it. But if they value you as a customer, they'll put their hand up, look, I messed up, it was a mistake. And then they remade the goods at their own expense. And then we were able to go from there. But that just shows you don't take your eye off the ball. You should be inspecting every order. Because sometimes these mistakes aren't intentional. Sometimes they might just order the wrong material. but if they were tested at the source i could have fixed it there before shipping it out and getting all those returns any other good lessons yeah i mean um testing the products yourself will also um you know sort of surefire you of that but when you're doing so many products it's really hard um to sort of um actually you know one thing i will say as well is it's really important to prevent that quality fade is to have all those samples in your office or in your home from every order you do.

34:34So let's say, for example, you're doing like those boots, right? And then I would get a sample from every single order, right? But label them, tag them, store them. And what to do is that like randomly you want to take the boots from like order number five and the boots from order number 12 and send them both to an inspection company for product testing. And if those boots are any different in any way, then you're starting to see a quality fade. but you can always reference them back. And another cool thing you can do as well, regardless whatever you're doing, whether it's a t-shirt or whatever, I always put the purchase order number on the label of the product.

35:07So for example, if I've had a bad batch of production, I'm getting all these returns. Some of your stock might be in Amazon. Some of it might be in the USA. Some of it might be in China or other parts of the world where you're selling. And you start to get returns. You're like, I don't know which batches were affected. But if you have that product order number on the label, then you know which ones you have to reclaim. you can go to your warehouse and be like, right, those were the ones from the batch. Let's pull those ones. But if you've never put that order number on there, you don't know which are the dodgy ones and which ones you can sell.

35:34Oh, so it would be like you have a rotten apple in a tree but not seeing where it is poisoning all the other fruit. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, wow. Okay, that was a good one. All right, what's a recent product that you've developed that you've seen that's left you speechless and why? one that I've developed or one that I've seen one that I've seen I'll tell you one that I've seen which I've and I've just been so impressed with is uh and it's totally different to what we do but it's Invisalign retainers right because they mix technology and so Invisalign retainers basically straighten your teeth for anyone who doesn't know but they use the technology and they adapt that to a product they send you like 20 different products and they straighten your teeth but it does exactly what they say they're going to do it's like hey we're going to give you perfect teeth and then they sort of send you one every week and it just works it just works so I was very very impressed with that product but going back to something that I've done as well I think that the best products as I said come from like solving a problem and one of the product examples that I gave in the course was that like a u-shaped travel pillow right so essentially I worked with a couple of guys in Scotland and you know they were like you know this u-shaped travel pillow doesn't work you know you sleep like that it doesn't protect you you sleep on your side you still get a sore neck and someone would look at that and be like all right okay let's just make it a little bit thicker let's change the material to like some microfiber or something like that but the actual problem is people can't sleep while they're traveling so how do we fix this so what we developed was like a fleece scarf that goes around your neck it's got a little foam padding inside and then we created this like plastic shaped curve where you could slide it under your neck you can sleep like that you can put it there you can sleep there and these you shape travel pillow and that particular product cost roughly the same but one solves the problem and that product was sold over a million units but it came from an issue of i can't sleep when i'm traveling and i was just saying all right let's tweak this let's tweak that it's like let's just solve the problem through a product yeah that's cool well look dude thank you so much for coming down to melbourne and uh just an incredible interview just giving so much gold so thank you so much kian absolute pleasure bro thank you for having me it's been an honor hey founder fam Thank you so much for tuning in today.

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