Documenting Your Vision

Documenting Your Vision

If you’re anything like me, you’ll get an idea and then the details either hit you like a whirlwind, or you get stuck in a mini writer’s block. When you have an idea for a conceptual product, or product line, it’s important to start building a roadmap around your launch. The concept brief is an important piece of that plan, it is designed to prompt important information about your product that you may have in your head. This document will be the key bridge from you to the product development team.

This concept brief is a staple in most projects I’ve worked on, and it is either given to our team via a template provided by the visionary, or a filled-out version of the template we have. For this segment we’ll focus on the brief template that we provide.

The most important data we like to gather when initiating a project includes the following:

The Basics

  • Brand and product name
  • Product profile and objectives - what is the end use of the product and what makes it unique

This section is a good opportunity to document you inspiration.

About the Project

  • Elaborate on benchmarks (comparative products and competition) and if we’ll need to acquire samples
  • What is the desired component?
  • What is the timeline, when do you plan to launch?
  • Who is the desired customer and how do you plan to market and promote to them?
  • What markets will you be selling to and what is your distribution plan?

This section is a good opportunity to start your plan and can be thought of as a concise and summarized business plan.

Product Details -

  • What specific ingredients did you have in mind, any active ingredients?
  • What ingredients would you like to avoid
  • What marketing claims would you like to achieve with the product or with specific ingredients
  • Elaborate on the desired physical/chemical characteristics - color, texture, viscosity, fragrance
  • Provide label details

This section will be utilized for customization.

Regulatory and Additional

  • What are you regulatory and compliance requests
  • Do you need any additional documentation or testing other than the standard that we provide?
  • Target pricing that you are able to provide (formula and fill) and budget for product development
  • Initial launch quantity
  • Timelines

This section is utilized during the optimization phase.


Like anything else, you might not be able to fill this out in detail on your first go, but it is designed to get you to start thinking about the end result so you can work backwards to develop a roadmap. We are always available to provide some insight as you work through this as well.

I mentioned building a roadmap around your product launch above. By initiating your concept brief, you’ve already started working towards your launch. But it will also help you to think through the steps that are necessary to get there. When you're asked what component your product will be in, you’ll start to think about “how will I acquire these and how many do I need?”. It becomes daunting, but it’s exactly what you should be thinking about. The detail you’ll get from the brief will be used to build your roadmap to launch, so the hard work will go in at the beginning. Then it’s all about executing your plan on-time.

Flex Cosmetics - Custom Formula & No-MOQ Manufacturing

Flex Cosmetic’s Product Launch Program provides custom formulations within six weeks along with no-MOQ manufacturing. This allows new and smaller brands to test the market quickly.

Take the first step to joining 100s of new and household brands by filling out your Product Launch Assessment or learn more by downloading our free Product Launch Guide.

 

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