Indie Brand Builder: how to build a successful business online Dan Chadney: Creative entrepreneur, Online Business and SEO Expert, Blogger

Kevin Mako is a leading expert on hardware startups.  He is the Founder of MAKO Design + Invent, the pioneer firm for providing world-class end-to-end physical consumer product development tailored to inventors, product startups, and small manufacturers.  Est 1999, Mako Design is a 30-person team with offices in Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto, has developed over 1,000 products for clients and has earned over 25 design and business awards including Red Dot, Inc5000, Entrepreneur360, Indigo Gold, Creative Pool Gold, Best Places to Work, Lux Magazine Best Design Firm in North America, and many others.  Kevin lectures at the Masters of Engineering program at Ryerson University, sits on a number of entrepreneurship and education boards and holds the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award designation. He is the host of The Product Startup Podcast, the hardware development industry’s leading podcast.

The financial formulas for scaling a consumer product business are really only applicable if your goal is to build a scalable venture. If you're just looking to run a lifestyle business you can disregard this article -  but if you want to build a scalable consumer product business,  these are the numbers that you need to understand. Use the financial formulas to compare the efficiency of each channel in your consumer product business and increase or decrease your resource allocation to the most efficient channel or customer segments.  

So you’ve got your amazing product idea, and maybe you even have a prototype. But now you’re considering larger scale manufacturing and you’re speaking with factories that are halfway around the world where English is not the native language. You’re also talking about spending tens of thousands – or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on your production run, and it’s starting to dawn on you how much could potentially go wrong – and how much those mistakes could cost you!  One of the most important factors in the factory/designer relationship is how you communicate your product requirements. And that’s where TECH PACKS come in. Belinda Jacobs is a technical fashion designer from London (now based in California). She had her first job in fashion at the age of 15, stapling swatch cards together! Belinda has been designing & creating tech packs for more than a decade for household brands and independent designers alike

Thinking of auditioning your business to appear on a show like Shark Tank or Dragons Den? In this episode, I cover SoYoung's experience from the audition to taping to the deal itself. 

Hiring decisions are some of the most crucial decisions you will make as a small business owner. A great employee can take your business to new heights and open up new opportunities for growth, while a poor hire can set you back months and thousands of dollars, causing undue stress and frustrations. In this how-to podcast, I’ll lay out a step-by-step hiring process for small business that will help give structure to your decision making and increase your odds of bringing on a great employee.    

Julie Ellis a co-founder of Mabel’s Labels, one of Canada’s greatest small business success stories.   Back in 2002, Julie and her three partners Julie Cole, Cynthia Esp and Tricia Mumby decided  they could do better than the scribbles on masking tape that were being passed off as labels to keep track of for kids clothing and personal items. So, after much research, they brought a brand new product to market in the form of personalized waterproof name labels and tags. From its humble beginnings Mabel's Lables has grown into an award-winning, market-leading company loved by Moms and kids alike.   Mabels labels was recently sold  to paper and label giant Avery Labels which lead to Julie’s exit from the business she had founded and run for nearly 15 years   Julie is now entering a new phase of her career as she shares her experience and expertise with other entrepreneurs helping them gain clarity and accelerate their success.   Mabels Labels hadn't been looking to sell the business when they were approached by Avery but quickly realized that the idea acquirer “checked all the boxes” and helped them address some big questions: how they would finance further growth and who of the 4 founders would ultimately lead the company.   Julie adds that what’s best for the business may not be what’s best for you personally and what you would do as an autonomous leader is much different than what you would do as part of a 4-person team   While selling a business is often the end goal for many entrepreneurs, the experience can be bittersweet as it was in Julie’s case. As someone who is used to giving 110%, she says it took her at least 3 months to accept the idea that she was able to take some downtime.