Momma told me there would be days like this. No matter what you do, there are always some big bummers. And there have been plenty working on this project. There have been days where label colors came out wrong, quotes for work came in a lot higher than I wanted, or could afford, and website […] Read more…
My product is engineered, the manufacturing quotes are in, the patent has been filed. Um, now what? This is the part where I have to start making real decisions. External decision. Where I can’t keep my secret pet project a secret anymore. Do I want to sell this in stores? On the Internet? In dermatologist offices? […] Read more…
As July approached, so did my anxiety about filing my “official” patent application. I had filed a provisional application for a patent on July 9, 2013, and you have exactly one year to file the real thing. This is a good time to re-evaluate whether you really want to go all the way with something. […] Read more…
Once I had my final, final prototype, I really needed to test it as much as possible to see if I really wanted to bring this sucker to market. I decided to spend three straight months testing it out. In actuality, I wasn’t just testing My Brush Betty — I was also testing the makeup […] Read more…
Some time around March, I signed off on the final prototype design from Justin, with the heavily revised cleaning disk, twist-off bottom and mat, and he began to create “production documents.” These were documents that included product illustrations, a BOM (bill of materials), engineering drawings and CAD (computer-aided design) files. I would need these documents […] Read more…
If you answered NO, you are correct! Hooray! While some people use the terms UPC and SKU interchangeably, they are actually different. UPCs, or Universal Product Codes, are standardized by an official organization, GS1. They provide a product description that, once scanned, anyone can read. On the other hand, an individual company can assign an SKU, or […] Read more…
It’s always the little things that drive you mad, isn’t it? While I was pretty much able to nail my product design in a few prototypes, the labels — of all things — went into overtime. After putting so much work into coming up with My Brush Betty, the first ever makeup brush lady, I […] Read more…
If I had any doubts about bringing My Brush Betty to market, my sister, Joyce, helped me take one more step toward curing them. Simply by being her everyday Millennial self. Joyce is 13 years younger than me, so she was 29 at the time of this story. We were home for Christmas, and I had […] Read more…
After testing my first prototype out for a month, I knew I wanted to make some changes to the design. The threading on the twist-off top and bottom needed to be more secure, to prevent leaks, so I wanted to make it a little easier to “catch” or screw on. I put a spongy cap liner (F217) […] Read more…
If there was one thing I really, really didn’t want to do myself in this project, it was design, build and manage my own website. Being a journalist for two decades, I knew enough about building websites and the back end of content management systems to be afraid. Afraid for my time and sanity, that is. […] Read more…
