My big chance // What should I do?

[rebel82]

Hey guys! I think this could really change my life.

My mother is cleaning the house of a 70-years old engineer (not dentist ). He has been working in the fitness business his whole life and he's REALLY good at it. He has developed different products.

- A small training device that can be used to train a lot of different muscles. He uses high quality components to assemble the device himself at home. The NASA used this product and he is allowed to advertise with that. To make it short - this product is really good. I tried it too, but I couldn't motivate myself to do it more than a few days. I had muscle soreness everywhere though

- Different food supplements that really work (my aunt just lost a lot of weight with it).

So, guess what... he has no clue about marketing. Really. Even the pictures he uses on his crappy non-english homepage look like a joke to me. No english marketing at all.


Now I need your advice. Since this product is REALLY good people WILL like it, but how do I make money of this opportunity? I have an appointment with that guy next sunday at his home. What should I tell him? I am into IM for ~3 months now. Should I look for someone experienced for a JV?

Thanks for your time!

 

[rebel82]

pushhh

 

[bertbaby]

Besides IM for 3 months do you have any marketing or business skills? If no and since you are asking this question, you maybe in need of an experienced partner otherwise you and your client will be walking the wilderness together.

 

[flamingpanties]

Before any marketing should occur, the inventor should have his contraption patented. Hasn't a patent come up in discussion?

If you want to promote this device yourself, you'd need a lot of start-up money from investors. An easier way to sell this device might be to license it to an established fitness company that manufactures exercise equipment.

 

[rebel82]

I had a first talk to the guy now. He puts a lot of effort into his products, like writing reports about latest developments in the health/fitness niche. Everything he sells is like the best available quality (including the manuals), so the price for the product is ~$280 for the smallest version. He told me that even doctors recommend the product to other doctors to use themselves and also for their patients. It also is patented, so that is no problem.

On the other side, he lives 20 years in the past when it comes to marketing. He agreed to let me sell his stuff based on comission - and since noone else is doing outside of germany - exclusively.

I have no experience with selling stuff besides from trying methods to make money and reading a lot here and in other forums.

Should I create a website for the product, maybe with forum, and sell it and also the food supplements there? Or should I try it i.e. with clickbank? I'll also need to have a lot of information texts translated.

 

[Slaughtlander]

I had a first talk to the guy now. He puts a lot of effort into his products, like writing reports about latest developments in the health/fitness niche. Everything he sells is like the best available quality (including the manuals), so the price for the product is ~$280 for the smallest version. He told me that even doctors recommend the product to other doctors to use themselves and also for their patients. It also is patented, so that is no problem.

On the other side, he lives 20 years in the past when it comes to marketing. He agreed to let me sell his stuff based on comission - and since noone else is doing outside of germany - exclusively.

I have no experience with selling stuff besides from trying methods to make money and reading a lot here and in other forums.

Should I create a website for the product, maybe with forum, and sell it and also the food supplements there? Or should I try it i.e. with clickbank? I'll also need to have a lot of information texts translated.

I think a nice website and a bit of seo would do the trick to get things rolling, then you can move on to more things. If you want me to help you build a website and do some seo, let me know. Sounds like you have an amazing opportunity to make some great money here.

 

[zivmaymon]

Ebay man, what's the problem?

 

[Slaughtlander]

Ebay man, what's the problem?

I don't think feebay would be a good place to start. People know what they are going to buy when they search ebay, so you won't get too many people looking at your product. + fees and payment holds with paypal... feebay sucks.

 

[paincake]

I'd recommend you to open an online store (there are many free e-commerce CMS platforms) and start promoting his products. Start out with a german version, do SEO for the site and then move on to international market. If the product is as good as you say, it might go viral.

 

[rebel82]

thank you for your help

 

[oinky222]

first start by getting his products patented so nobody can steal them. then create a promotional video showing how awesome the product is. you may need to invest some money in a good camera and a good video editing software like sony vegas or something. make the video as awesome as possible, upload it to all the major video sites through tubemogul, add it to youtube jumpstart or tubetrain or whatever to give it some momentum, find a bunch of health "gurus" (most of them actually know very little) with a popular youtube channel (vince delmonte, craig ballantyne, jeff anderson are a few popular ones) and invite all of their subscribers to your channels using tube toolbox, find a bunch of people on facebook and twitter who are interested in fitness and mention the video in your facebook status and your tweets, and have a link in the video description pointing to a salespage with the video embedded and some well-written copy. if the product sells well, then start investing in CPC advertising, finding affiliates for it, and using other methods of promotion, but a sweet video combined with some well-written copy should be enough to test out how well it will sell without having to first invest a ton of money

 

[Topher]

If it is a new invention, then there might not be a demand for this specific product. I would focus on B to B (business to business) and not B to C. You need to focus on building a brand and thus creating demand for your specific product. I would create a corporate website that just has company information along with the product specifics and no shopping cart. I would then contact athletic equipment distributors and submit your product to them for consideration to be carried in their inventory. A distributor will carry thousands of products from the various manufacturers in the industry and will already have sales distribution channels with all of the sporting goods stores. Once you build the brand then you can market to consumers. You are also gonna want to have the product manufactured overseas, so you can cut costs enough to wholesale. GL

 

[rebel82]

thanks for your comments, they are quite helpfull! The guy makes the product seems to be as slow as he is old, so no real news yet. I will keep this updated.