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Guest: Robson Splane, creator of the Prorise Seat Assist and product business owner.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Choosing Between Licensing and Building the Business
Robson Splane explains why he walked away from a large licensing deal after long negotiations and chose to manufacture, market, and sell the product himself. He also shares how his company selected product opportunities during the 2008 downturn and the personal realities of carrying business risk.
Episode transcript
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the product startup podcast, podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by Mako
Filip Valica: Design + Invent and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: This is not for the weakhearted out there. I mean,
Filip Valica: last big hit I had. ad, we got our first big royalty check right after my wife told me, we just used up our last credit line and our last credit card. So, you know, this is not for everybody.
Filip Valica: This can wear you down. But for me, for me to have a situation where I don't have to ask anyone's permission to produce a product. I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do the best job I can. I have
Filip Valica: total creative independence. And financially, when it works, the financial independence, it really, it really changes your life. This is the product startup, episode 25. Welcome to the product startup
Filip Valica: podcast, helping you turn ideas into successful products step by step with your host,
Filip Valica: Philip Belizeza. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the product startup podcast. In the last episode, we talked with Terry Lynn, the founder of Forever Home Blankets. The company sells high-quality blankets for people to use at home or around the office or on the road.
Filip Valica: And for every blanket he sells, one is donated to an animal shelter in need. Terry raised $3,500 on Kickstarter to get the first batch of inventory in Vietnam.
Filip Valica: And we get into some of the other businesses that he had before Forever Home Blankets and find out why they didn't succeed. So make sure to check out Episode 24. So make sure to check out Episode 24. haven't heard it yet. And now on to today's show.
Filip Valica: I'm joined by Robson Splain. He created the pro-rise seat assist. Robson is an industrial designer who has over 30 years experience in design with about 70 national patents and 20 international patents to his name.
Filip Valica: During the interview, we really talk about how he developed the pro-rise seat assist, which allow senior citizens, wounded veterans, and post-surgical individuals to rise from their seats independently. So let's get started. Hi, Robson. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Filip Valica: Thanks for having me.
Robson Splane: So please tell everybody a little bit about your experience, particular your skill set with design. Well, my backgrounds in industrial design, which is really a terrible name for a really great profession.
Robson Splane: People hear industrial design, I think you design factories or something. Right.
Robson Splane: But in fact, what it really is about, it's almost as if you took an engineer, a sculptor, and an inventor and kind of mashed them together. and add a little bit of marketer to it.
Filip Valica: And we just do avoid confusion. We often refer to ourselves as architects for things instead of buildings.
Robson Splane: What an architect would do for a building, we would do for a product or an object.
Filip Valica: That's a very good description.
Robson Splane: Definitely the creative side of design and how people use and interact with things. I love doing what we do.
Robson Splane: It's a lot of fun. So tell everybody a little bit about your experience. experience with that. What kind of products have you worked on in the past? Oh, my gosh.
Robson Splane: Well, we had a design consulting firm for many years. I mean, I started as a freelancer and what they used to call hired gun. You'd basically go from studio to studio and they'd pay you to
Robson Splane: create designs for them.
Robson Splane: I also worked as a staff designer for a big industrial design firm that had offices all over the world and really had a good time. I was a professional. professor at three universities teaching this area.
Robson Splane: But as a lot of designers, I ended up opening my own consultancy, and we had two offices north of Los Angeles. And we're kind of, I don't want to say designers are prostitutes, but we'll work on almost anything.
Filip Valica: So we've worked on everything from toys to robotic medical devices.
Filip Valica: we've done marine and aircraft interiors lots of fitness rehab medical it kind of runs the gamut it doesn't
Robson Splane: really matter to us what the subject is because we're going to basically apply the same methodology to most any project that we take on that's a very good point and what i'd like to do is maybe you can
Robson Splane: talk about your newest product the pro rise which is something that helps people get in and out of their seat. And maybe you can discuss how you developed it from maybe from cradle to the grave.
Robson Splane: Going back to our consulting days, I should kind of preface this if it's not too long. We came to realize that we made our clients a lot of money. The products that we worked on,
Robson Splane: oftentimes were very successful. And as an industrial designer or consultant, you can make a You can make a nice living, but you're really not going to realize that kind of financial independence consulting.
Robson Splane: So what we decided to do was to reinvent ourselves some years ago.
Robson Splane: And we started developing our own products that we owned.
Filip Valica: And we eventually took them to the infomercial world.
Robson Splane: And in the infomercial world, which is also referred to as DR, direct response, We actually were very fortunate. We worked some great people.
Robson Splane: We did well at it. But as the DR world grow, it became more and more difficult to cut a deal that was worthwhile for designers. It was just, it took too long. It was too kind of cutthroat.
Robson Splane: It was kind of like watching Shark Tank on steroids. Sure. I heard some of the deals that people make on those types of shows are pretty ruthless. you know, 50, 60% margin.
Robson Splane: Well, and I've worked with some of those people who are on the show, the investors.
Robson Splane: And, you know, they're trying to put their best face on at that time. They're on TV. But it can be very ruthless. And, you know, for that reason and others, we decided to lead the area.
Robson Splane: Ironically, we ended up with about, I would say, three or four of the really good companies that basically came back to us after we're saying we're leaving infomercial.
Robson Splane: And they said, look, we know you have a lot of inventory of products. And if you don't cut us off, we'll cut you the deals that you want.
Robson Splane: And if I'd known playing hard to get was so successful, I would have done it years ago. But at that point, we'd already decided to roll out our own products. I'd been in manufacturing before.
Robson Splane: And we had a negotiation going on for a product with a company. One of the big companies really wanted. And we negotiated for a year and a half.
Robson Splane: half. And at the end of, yeah, it was a long time. And at the end of that time, we just said, look, if we sell 10% of what you would sell, we're
Robson Splane: going to make a lot more money than if we licensed to you. And we're not going to do the deal. So what we decided to do was to create a new kind of
Robson Splane: company. And that company was an innovation slash TV marketing and e-commerce company, which actually would also do regular and traditional wholesaling. So having come away from the DR market with,
Robson Splane: a lot of inventory. Our attorney actually made us create a spreadsheet for him of the products that we had that were far enough along to either license or roll out for manufacture. And the list
Robson Splane: included over 40 products. And that's a lot of money for us to have invested in, to leave it sitting there. Right. So we decided to come up with a new business model. And that business model
Robson Splane: had to do with the fact that a lot of creative people are very good at what they do, but they're not necessarily good business people. The exception to that might be engineers, but I would say
Robson Splane: inventors, designers, sculptors, lots of different kind of innovators are very good at what they do, but they seem to have kind of a different personality and skill sets from the people who are good at running businesses. Sure, they're really into their art. They connect with that. That's their
Robson Splane: passion. It's absolutely true. And they tend to be kind of different personalities. So what we decided to do was to basically enlist business professionals to come on board and work with us.
Robson Splane: And over a certain period of time, they would actually own part of the company. But as the designers and the founders of the company, we actually own the company. Because what often happens in these
Robson Splane: situations is the designer ends up working for the marketing genius. So what we did was we looked at the products that we had. And we went and we researched markets that did well, even during the
Filip Valica: meltdown of 2008. And these were products that just weren't, they weren't just holding their own.
Robson Splane: They actually were flourishing. And we identified about seven markets that were growing during the meltdown and which we had products for. And so our plan was to start with one market at a time
Robson Splane: and start rolling out products under our own name, which our company name is called risability. And what we looked at of the seven different markets was one extraordinary market, which is
Robson Splane: products which are both rehab, wellness, and assistive products for the aging baby boomers. And we were shocked to realize there was a demographic that was like nothing you've ever seen
Robson Splane: in the history of mankind. I mean, right now, my understanding is there are over 100 million
Filip Valica: people in the United States over 50. Yeah, it's one of the largest growing segments of the population for sure. Absolutely. And in the next couple of three decades, there will be countries
Filip Valica: that have populations nearing or exceeding age 65, which will have aging populations of about 40% or even greater. This has never, ever happened. There are countries that are saying
Filip Valica: there literally are not going to be enough nursing homes
Robson Splane: for all the older people. Countries like Japan,
Robson Splane: Germany, Italy,
Robson Splane: China is going to have a huge problem.
Robson Splane: and there really have to be products that allow these people to remain in their homes as long as possible and kind of give them some dignity and some independent living.
Robson Splane: You touched on one point where you said dignity because a lot of the products that are on the market today are very industrial. I would say function of reform in a sense that they're trying to make it for the cheapest cost as possible
Robson Splane: because it was maybe a product that was purchased through Medicare or something like that. And maybe in the past after, you know, World War II, a lot of the development for that was kind of put on the back burner to where it was just something that needed to get you through the day.
Robson Splane: And it wasn't something that that brought you joy or happiness or, you know, where the form was pleasing. No, that's absolutely true. And for me, it was a little bit more personal.
Robson Splane: I used to be a climber. And I'd taken a couple of falls without a rope.
Robson Splane: And at the time, I thought I'd pretty much healed. and I then taught martial arts for 19 years. So the amount of wear and tear I experienced,
Robson Splane: it was kind of extreme.
Robson Splane: So I got to a point where, you know, my knees were kind of not in great shape. I had a compacted spine.
Robson Splane: But I also had an artificial hip put in.
Robson Splane: And as I was recovering from my hip surgery, I bought acetocyst. It was a product that in one form or another had been on the market literally for decades. Right. I was appalled.
Robson Splane: It absolutely did not work.
Robson Splane: It didn't even start to help me until I was almost standing up. Yeah, and most of them don't even have handles that you can grab to help you get that additional leverage. No, and on top of it, I'm not a small person.
Robson Splane: You know, I'm over six feet tall and I needed to crank up the power on the device. And when you do that,
Robson Splane: it actually lessens the number. number of degrees that it lifts you. So you just kind of, you can't win. And the amount of aid it gave me was negligible. And it didn't really give me anything until, like I said, I was
Robson Splane: almost standing. Yeah. I just was incredulous that somebody could have been selling this product for years. In fact,
Robson Splane: there's another seat assist on the market that claims to help you. It's literally a wedge of foam. You sit on this foam wedge. And supposedly, The foam expanding as you stand up helps you stand up. I mean,
Robson Splane: it's ludicrous. Yeah.
Robson Splane: So having been involved with over 300 medical rehab and fitness products, I thought, you know, this is something maybe I should do something about. So we came up with a product that we call the pro rise.
Filip Valica: And we probably built, oh, gosh,
Filip Valica: probably 20 prototypes before we started refining our final design, which is probably another 15 models prototypes. And the kind of ironic thing and the nice thing about it was that our best solution ended up being the simplest solution. And what I mean by
Filip Valica: that was we tried motors and we had pneumatic pistons, we had springs, we had all this folder all. What we really came up with something that uses fulcrum points that move and leverages
Robson Splane: so that it can lift 100% of your weight. I can literally lift my feet off the ground and lift myself up. And the more I weigh,
Robson Splane: the more it lifts, folds down flat and it's portable. I mean, it's not going to, you know, there are our motorized chairs out there that you can buy that
Robson Splane: will very slowly lift you up, but they're expensive. Right. They're not portable. And so we felt we'd hit a home run and we had the first of maybe 15 products that would help wounded warriors,
Robson Splane: the senior population. We've demonstrated these in school systems. for exceptional children who have, in some cases, severe handicaps in motion. And there's this huge population that are looking for some independence. And that's where it came from.
Robson Splane: And it evolved from there. Well, Robson, so you touched on a few things that I want to dive into a little bit deeper. You mentioned that you iterated the design a lot and created a bunch of prototypes.
Robson Splane: And I don't think you can stress that enough because in my job as an engineer, we do that constantly and I think people have this impression that you create a prototype and there's this
Robson Splane: linear path to then the next step is creating the design and then going out to manufacture but in reality it's really iterative where you're trying to get that feedback and really trying to tweak things can you kind of dive into that a bit more yeah absolutely I mean we have solid
Filip Valica: modeling computers here in our studio we have 3D printers but we would die without our shop yep yep I mean our shop we have I mean we're we're fortunate it's not huge but we We have milling machines and engine lades. We have,
Filip Valica: you know, wood shop. We have a plastics area where we can mold plastic parts. We even have our own forge. Nice. We can do one C, two Csies of almost anything.
Filip Valica: But even with a great computer program and even 3D printers,
Filip Valica: you know, if I can't, if I can't feel it, if it's something that has to fit the body,
Filip Valica: I can't feel that on a computer screen. And even if I'm going to go sell the product. or license the product,
Filip Valica: what we often do, and we can put, you know, we can create computer
Robson Splane: renderings that look like photographs. But if we go in for a meeting for funding or we go in for a meeting to license a product, you know, basically they can sit there at the meeting and say, well, that's a beautiful rendering, but it doesn't work. So whenever we have a meeting,
Robson Splane: we always have, you know, a rendering what it's going to look like, but we have a model that absolutely works. So there's no doubt that we're on the right path. And so, Sometimes that takes a lot of iterations.
Robson Splane: And for us, I kind of, I like Japanese and Scandinavian design. I like Simple. Right. Yep. And a lot of times, yeah, a lot of times we do a lot of work to get to Simple. It's actually, in some cases, more work.
Robson Splane: Yeah, I would have written a shorter letter if I had more time.
Robson Splane: And I totally agree with you there because it just, you start having to take pieces off what you created and try to combine parts. And you're able to really reduce cost.
Robson Splane: and simplify things and make it easier to maintain and to manufacture and for the consumer to use even. So while we're talking about creating functional prototypes, you know, people will always ask
Robson Splane: me, where can I find a investor that will buy off on my idea? And my advice to them is that you need to take your idea as far as you can to de-risk it for that investor because they're not investing in the idea. They're investing in that execution.
Robson Splane: And so, again, in my opinion, it's about, you know, maybe taking it all. all the way to creating a functional prototype and testing some of the market so you can have something to present to them. What are your thoughts on that? It's indispensable.
Robson Splane: It's indispensable
Filip Valica: not, you know, having a model. Just you cannot beat it. I mean, I've been in meetings for licensing where I unfortunately had to learn a hard lesson. That was that at these meetings, they've got
Filip Valica: the head of the company there. They may have the head of marketing. But they also may have their engineer who's head of manufacturing.
Robson Splane: And I remember one time we came in and we showed this great rendering.
Robson Splane: And I said, this looks great. But the engineer basically looked at it. And that won't work.
Robson Splane: And what I learned was I should have reversed my presentation because we then pulled out a prototype and said, here's the prototype. Yeah, it works. Try it. Well, that was great
Robson Splane: in one respect. But in another respect, we just made an enemy. Right. We did not make
Filip Valica: him look good in front of his, in front of his bosses.
Filip Valica: And, you know, our goal is not to make anyone feel bad or look bad. So what we generally do is, you know, we'll show the working model as early
Filip Valica: as we can. In fact, what we do now more often than not is in-house, we actually make our own TV commercial. And, you know, we talk about the need for the product. We talk about what the
Filip Valica: product does. We have videotapes of being used. And it's been a great tool.
Robson Splane: for us because instead of me taking a flight to New York or Beijing, I can literally put that video on our website with a password. I can have, I can call the people at the other end of the
Robson Splane: world, say, okay, log in, here's your password, watch the video while I'm online, and we can have a meeting without me ever getting onto an aircraft. That's a really great tip. I think
Robson Splane: anybody could take something away from that is to try to, you know, we hear a lot about cut sheets and sell sheets that people use to, you know, get their licensing deals.
Filip Valica: But I think the video is just the logical next step where you're able to show your product
Robson Splane: in action if you've been able to get your prototype to that point. And I guess what you're saying is that you absolutely need to get it as far as you can. Absolutely as far as you can. And I think also, and I think you'd agree with me on this,
Robson Splane: you know, in my case, you know, we're good at what we do. But my own, all of my degrees, they're not in. business. They're in, you know, industrial design and related areas. So for us to be able to put
Robson Splane: together a team that have a really experienced CEO and a, you know, highly experienced marketing person, you know, a lot of people want to see what the team is as well.
Robson Splane: And for us, that's been a really important factor. Yeah, and you can see that a lot on some of the crowdfunding campaigns where the ones that are the most successful have really good teams. And they
Robson Splane: They talk about the heritage of everybody and what products they've worked on before and why this product is going to be successful and why you can bank on them because really that's what
Robson Splane: the investor is buying into is the team because right now you don't have a product that's generating revenue. It's just the thought of one or you know, you've created a prototype but you haven't really created any revenue yet.
Filip Valica: Yeah, I mean, it's basically you're building confidence. I mean,
Filip Valica: I recently had to upgrade my resume, my brief bio.
Filip Valica: and one of the reasons I had to do it because I kind of, it's a little difficult for me to kind of toot my own horn. Yeah, I can relate to that.
Filip Valica: But you have to come to realize, and not, you know,
Filip Valica: I've had resumes like that for decades. I mean, I've been at this a long time.
Filip Valica: And I had to realize, look, I'm not doing them any favors by holding back information and achievements.
Robson Splane: And so I only just recently rewrote it. And I think it makes a big difference. Yeah. So maybe dive into that a little bit. Did you just highlight some of your business experience or your experience taking products to market? Yeah.
Robson Splane: In fact, we have a, I have funded this project, this new company for the last three years.
Robson Splane: And I mean, that's staffing and licenses and, I mean, just everything.
Robson Splane: But I don't have the, I don't have the funds to take it to TV, which is one of our goals. Because we can grow the company so fast by.
Robson Splane: by taking it to DR and talking to a broker who's helping us with one of our potential investors.
Robson Splane: And what he asked us to do, he said, look, would you add to your resume some of the products that you had at one time we had three hits on TV all at the same time? He said, would you actually list
Robson Splane: those products and tell them a little bit about the kind of money they made?
Robson Splane: And I did that for him. And I talked to him recently, and he said, I've got a big investor in the Midwest who normally doesn't invest in projects as small as yours.
Robson Splane: Not asking enough money makes you not very attractive to a lot of the investors.
Robson Splane: And yet, once he looked at the kind of money we have been capable of making in the past, I guess he decided, I want to meet with these guys anyway. And if I hadn't done that,
Filip Valica: I don't think we'd be having the meeting. Great advice. You touched on these licensing deals.
Robson Splane: Can you describe how much of the product has to be protected before you go into the licensing deal? Because I've heard both sides. As an engineer, I've only worked on licensing deals that have IP, that have patent-protected products.
Filip Valica: And to me, it seems a bit foreign that a company would pay you a royalty for a product that isn't protected in some way. But I've definitely heard of those offers out there. So can you kind of dive into that a bit? Yeah, there's kind of two sides to that coin.
Filip Valica: One is that, yes, we always protect it with at least the provisional. Okay. We have enough of a reputation or enough of a track record that we can actually get a lot of companies to sign a nondisclosure with us.
Filip Valica: Where it'll have the normal terms, but it also said, look, you won't reverse engineer us.
Robson Splane: and it'll include the term that if you have a product like this,
Robson Splane: show it to us within 10 days. Don't come back, you know, six months after we've rolled the product out and say, oh, we had the same idea a week before you did. Right.
Filip Valica: That said, though,
Filip Valica: there are several factors involved what you're talking about.
Robson Splane: I think a lot of companies, especially in the infomercial world,
Robson Splane: A,
Robson Splane: with having 40 products,
Filip Valica: for me to be supporting the maintenance fees on 40 products, let alone the application fees, we're talking a fortune.
Robson Splane: The companies often don't want you burning the life of that patent.
Filip Valica: If I've spent several years cutting a deal, that's several years that the patent is idle and not working for us, right?
Robson Splane: But the flip side of it is this,
Robson Splane: is that once I have a patent, once I've filed for patent, after a year in the United States, I can't file anywhere else in the world. And so a lot of the companies that I deal with, they don't want me getting in their way.
Robson Splane: If I have a provisional, and we have a good, especially if we have a good non-disclosure on top of it,
Robson Splane: they would rather be able to go and file a patent in the United States, Japan, China, you know, Italy, England, France, Germany,
Robson Splane: and if I've already done that and I can only afford the U.S., I've just shot down their ability to get any of those other patents. You've stunted growth pretty much. Pretty much.
Robson Splane: So we do take out PTCs, which give us like another 18 months to file foreign.
Robson Splane: But usually we usually just go in with a provisional or a patent pending. The takeaway, though, there is that you're still. protecting your idea in some way it's not you're not just going off of your relationship and assuming
Robson Splane: that people are going to be nice and uh and not take your ideas and run with them um no provisional patent applications are great i i advise everyone to do them if they feel like they're going to go the patenting
Robson Splane: route just because it's so cost effective to get that one year of protection and hopefully within that year uh like you said the market is going to basically pay for your patent full patent application yeah yeah that's true uh and it's
Filip Valica: they're responsibility to maintain the patent as long as they're making the product. So does that mean that you sign over rights to the patent to them and you're not the inventor anymore? No,
Filip Valica: absolutely not. Those patents are taken out in my name and we technically own them, but they have exclusive rights to commercialize and sell the product.
Filip Valica: And once they have stopped doing that, it reverts to me. Nice. So you have some clauses in there that say if you haven't commercialized this and amount of time.
Filip Valica: We get it back.
Robson Splane: Yeah, exactly. Or, you know,
Robson Splane: if they have commercialized it for several years and they cease production, we get it back. Great tips. So let's move into manufacturing. You know, you said you've created this functional prototype and you're sitting down with a company to sell
Robson Splane: them on the idea and they buy off on it. What's the next step from there? So you're talking about licensing right now, not about risability. No, we can talk about either. You know, with licensing, obviously, the company that you saw the license to is just going to take on the manufacturing aspect of it.
Robson Splane: But what if it's a product that you've developed yourself like the pro-rise?
Robson Splane: Well, the pro-rise, then what I do is I actually open up a corporation.
Robson Splane: And in this particular case,
Robson Splane: we wanted to take it as far as we could. and we had met some great people in the logistics world, and they had come to visit us because we wanted to line up
Robson Splane: all of our sources of, you know, all of our vendors and such. And they saw what we were doing. They said, my God, you know, there's a huge need for this product.
Robson Splane: Well, they met with a factory that they do a lot of business with in China and just outside of Hong Kong.
Filip Valica: And what ended up happening was something we didn't really even ask for.
Filip Valica: They basically came back and said, look, we will provide initial fulfillment and we will do the tooling and get you the early, you know,
Robson Splane: you know, for a certain number of delivery of actual product. And we will do it at our expense, but, you know, we will, you know, it's like an invent.
Robson Splane: That's pretty amazing. I've never heard of that, to be honest, not in China anyway. We weren't going after it. It was just something that came up. So basically,
Robson Splane: they've been great people to work with.
Filip Valica: And we just recently, like week before last, we now have inventory in a fact, in a warehouse in north of L.A., which this is a company that specializes in
Robson Splane: working with the infomercial world. So in our case, we actually have everything up to including design engineering prototypes tooling and inventory that's really exciting that
Robson Splane: when you were going through this process to find a manufacturer did you uh you know there's this debate about made local versus made abroad and you know my take on it is i would love to make it local
Robson Splane: if the market supports it but most that most of the time the costs and especially on some of the products that i've worked on recently could be five x or four x of what it costs
Robson Splane: in China, just because, you know, China has subsidized material costs and all sorts of things that make it a lot cheaper.
Robson Splane: So can you talk about some of that? Yeah. Costs in China are going up. And as they do, and you've got three weeks on the water to get to California, you factor that all in. And we're starting to talk to companies that do work
Robson Splane: in North America, but just south of the border.
Robson Splane: Being in San Diego County, we're not that far from the Mexico border.
Filip Valica: And there are more factories popping up that they can do good work. And once you factor in shipping costs, they claim they can get pretty close.
Filip Valica: So we're actually testing that right now because some of the products that we've created around the pro-rise, we've actually met, for instance, with the United States Veterans Administration. They saw the product, they liked it, and they said, could you turn this into a chair?
Filip Valica: We said, yeah. Yeah.
Robson Splane: And the problem is that if the product is manufactured in a country that's not a member of the World Trade Organization, the U.S. government can't buy it. And
Robson Splane: in addition to, you know, people at home, a big part of our market for these products is going to be hospitals, nursing homes, the U.S. government, companies that actually are
Robson Splane: caregiving companies that go to your home. But especially the U.S. government, you need to be from a W.S. WTO-based company.
Robson Splane: And for that reason,
Robson Splane: or for that reason, we're looking at North America as well,
Filip Valica: because we really would like to serve those markets. Right, absolutely. Do you find that you might be creating a different version of product for the government versus what the consumer sees, or do you think it'd be just one product down the… I think there could be some that are the same.
Filip Valica: I think there'll be others that are actually different.
Filip Valica: That's very exciting. So I guess you've made trips down south to check out the fact. factories yourself and kind of see the type of work that they do?
Filip Valica: I have in the past. What I'm doing right now is working with a company that specializes in doing that for me. They have sources of manufactured north and south of the border.
Robson Splane: And we're kind of test driving the relationship right now to see how it works. And so actually there's a product that we have licensed that should be on TV this coming year.
Robson Splane: And we're actually having it cost by these people north and south of the border as well as in China. Oh, that's very exciting. So that takes a lot of legwork out. I've been the one that's been chasing all the different manufacturers, and you can get
Robson Splane: into dozens of different manufacturers, all asking you questions about every detail on the design, and it can definitely bog you down. Definitely. And to have a prototype that you can share helps enormously.
Robson Splane: At the same time, I insist that whoever we're working with can read engineering drawings or solid computer files.
Robson Splane: Because if they don't, my confidence goes down a bit.
Robson Splane: China in the past has been famous. We've sent in the past, we'll send a prototype that is,
Filip Valica: we've made modifications to in the drawings. And what comes back is the old prototype, not the revised design. Yeah, because they never looked at the revised set of drawings. They never looked at the drawings. They just copied the model. And so that's been a problem.
Filip Valica: We've even had, we had a very well-known, product on the market,
Filip Valica: sold in excess to half billion dollars globally. Wow.
Filip Valica: And it actually had rollers that rolled on a track.
Filip Valica: And the first prototype that China set us,
Filip Valica: the wheels were welded on at right angles to the track. So instead of rolling, they had to skid along the track.
Robson Splane: Obviously, none of the engineers in China ever got on the thing and tried it. We have multiple stories like that. That said, there are good factories over there. You just have to find them. Yeah, I have to say both the factories that I'm using now, read manufacturing drawings well,
Robson Splane: and the third-party QA has improved a lot too. In other words, you can hire a company that you pay a day rate, usually $3 to $400 a day, and they will come in and run a gamut of tests for you based on the plan that you put out.
Robson Splane: And so it gives you that additional, you know, the sense of confidence that, you know, your product's going to work. And you can test the first product off the line and make any corrections just to
Robson Splane: case. That is vital. I mean, that's what our logistics company is doing for us. They actually send their QC person over there. Let me tell you a story about a man I met with as we're trying
Robson Splane: to fund this. And he's from Mexico, but lives in California. And he's a shoe manufacturer. And he told me a story about having a whole container of shoes come in to the port of
Robson Splane: Los Angeles. And they're all left feet. There were no right footage. shoes in the order. Wow. So, you know, if you don't have someone looking, you know, taking care of you, it's, it can be a huge, huge problem. Yeah, especially since you've already
Robson Splane: paid for the, you know, the freight to get it to you. And a lot of the companies, and I think what some people don't know is in the U.S., there's this, this, the culture with a lot of the
Robson Splane: manufacturers that will make it right. So if it doesn't come out right, they're going to do something to maybe rework it or fix it and to make you whole in China. I think because the margins are so slim,
Robson Splane: it's very difficult for them to make you whole. The best that they can do is say, hey, we'll give you X percent off your next order, which doesn't really help you, like you said, if you have a bunch of left shoes that show up.
Robson Splane: Yeah, it's true. I think there's other things.
Robson Splane: There is a huge middle class and a wealthy class in China. So not all their margins are as lean as they used to be.
Robson Splane: But, and I have to say the factory I'm with have been great to work with. The fellow we actually deal with, he's Chinese, but he lived in San Diego County from, like, junior high till, I think through college.
Robson Splane: So he's wonderful to work with. And I feel very comfortable with them.
Filip Valica: But I've heard some horror stories about, you know, companies that are going back to their old factories and the factories. is kind of the attitude is we kind of don't need you Americans anymore.
Robson Splane: You know, we've got a huge market here, and we've made a lot of money, and, you know, what have you guys done for us recently? And to be honest, a lot of the American companies really ground these guys down for a long time.
Robson Splane: But the tables are kind of getting turned a little bit. Yeah, and I definitely see that on some of the high-tech or some of the harder-to-machine
Filip Valica: components, your steel alloys and things like that that are very difficult
Filip Valica: to make that you need specialized tooling and things like that, U.S. manufacturers still have a leg up when it comes to those types of parts. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, you know, we've talked about manufacturing and QA a bit.
Filip Valica: What do you think is the next step? When do you start your marketing for a product? You know, when do you reach out to some of your test group that you used early on to say, hey, we're, we're coming up to the market, you know, tell all your friends.
Filip Valica: We don't have a large e-following. I personally don't even have Facebook.
Filip Valica: We actually have a company that is handling that for us, and we have another company that handles our website for us. What we have done is we've actually signed a distribution contract with a $4 billion
Robson Splane: company back east. So we're going to be doing traditional marketing. We're going to have reps.
Filip Valica: We're going to have e-commerce. And what we're doing right now, is we're still having meetings with companies about funding the infomercials because with the
Filip Valica: infomercial, we can grow the company in months as opposed to years. I mean, it's just, it's astonishing how fast you can grow a company. So we are just where we're starting to offer product. And we've all
Robson Splane: are, like I said, we only recently had our inventory here in California. So we're putting the finishing touches on like our website is transactional now.
Robson Splane: And a number of things like that, which fortunately my CEO and marketing guy have to take care of because I've got my hands full. I probably have the next maybe five products in the shop right now
Robson Splane: at different stages of development, of prototype and engineering. So my hands are really full.
Filip Valica: But our next step is getting funding for marketing. And I wish we had started that earlier. We had a couple of companies that said that they were on deck. They're going to be there for us when we were ready. And the truth is they, they weren't there
Filip Valica: when we expected them to be. Or in some, you know,
Filip Valica: you even have situations where the deal changes, but you're ready to go, but now we want this kind of thing. So I've had to learn a big lesson that
Robson Splane: you go out for funding as early as you can and you keep meeting with people until someone transfers the money into your bank account. Right. You don't count anything as done. No. And that, that was very foolish on my part. But I've never, actually, I've never had to raise funds before. I've always done it by myself.
Robson Splane: And,
Robson Splane: you know, this is not for the weakhearted out there. I mean,
Robson Splane: last big hit I had, we got our first big royalty check right after my wife told me, we just used up our last credit line and our last credit card. So, you know, this is not for everybody.
Robson Splane: This can wear you down. But for me, for me to have a situation where I don't have to ask anyone's permission to produce a product. I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do the best job I can.
Robson Splane: I have total creative independence. And financially, when it works, the financial independence, it really, it really changes your life. Well, and you're still connected to the products that you design.
Robson Splane: And to me, that's the whole reason that I got into engineering is because I love building and creating and seeing your creations change the world in a small piece at a time, so to speak. Well, yeah, it's true. I mean, my first job offer was from General Motors,
Robson Splane: and, you know, I could have spent my creative life, you know, putting fins on Cadillacs to make them sell them.
Robson Splane: Certainly, I've done my share of that type of thing, but the idea that I'm making, I'm creating products that actually make a difference in people's lives, I know it sounds corny, but it is nice.
Robson Splane: Yeah, you have to connect to that, you know, recently the company that I worked for went out of business because of the recession that we have here in Houston.
Robson Splane: And so now I have this opportunity where I've got the six months to kind of decide what I want to do.
Robson Splane: And it's almost the silence is deafening in a way because my whole life I've worked for corporations and helping them build products and take them to market.
Robson Splane: And I definitely took jobs because of the financial independence that I was seeking and maybe less so what I really believed in my gut or what I really wanted to do. And now that I have that opportunity, it's, I mean, it's just amazing.
Robson Splane: But it's also really difficult because I've never really sat down to say, hey, this is what, these are the types of products that I want to build for myself or, you know, to share with the world.
Filip Valica: It's, I've had to do definitely do some soul searching with that. Well, as soon as we get funny, we need an engineer. Are you willing to move to California?
Filip Valica: Yeah, I would love to.
Robson Splane: You know, you talked about finances. I think one of the unsexy tips that I've told people is that you definitely have to below your means. My wife and I paid off our house here a while back and that's basically
Filip Valica: what's been able to give me this opportunity to work six months on or more on whatever I want
Robson Splane: to do without us feeling the pressure to go back into work. Yeah. No, it can be really stressful.
Robson Splane: You know, we've used up savings and IRAs and, you know, cashed in parts of my life insurance
Filip Valica: policy so you know it's you know it is something you really need to take seriously but i've seen the other side of the fence and i think i've gotten kind of greeted and greedy in that i want to just
Filip Valica: have the best life i can have and you know if i can have the security and the creative freedom it's just i mean
Filip Valica: we get up in the morning we say what are we creating today i mean you just can't beat that if you're a designer no that's awesome living the dream for sure well along those lines can you give everybody a tip if they're kind of struggling
Filip Valica: taking their own product to market they might not even be a designer and they have this idea that they've been sitting on you know maybe uh something they've been playing around with for a few years and they just haven't been able to take that next step or they might be a small business
Filip Valica: owner and they they don't have a designer or engineer or anybody technical on staff what kind of advice would you give them to help them take that yeah there are a lot of things you can do um
Filip Valica: The first is, I mean, we used to get people who are coming in, mostly we work with big corporations when we're, we're consulting,
Robson Splane: but we get people coming in with these ideas they've had for 20 years. And we do like a little bit of searching. We say, well, you know, there are three products just like
Robson Splane: this on the market already. They said, oh, I've never seen one. I said, well, you need to look. So before you spend a lot of time doing anything, you need to go on to the patent search or even Google search. They have a great patent search. And make sure your ideas. And it's, you know,
Robson Splane: isn't out there already. And don't just check the patent office. Go online. Go to China. I found a product in China once. I couldn't find anywhere else. And it saved me a lot of work because it was basically a cell phone related product that we thought, well, we're going to make a fortune. And
Robson Splane: we found it in China. And it wasn't patented. But being that it was part of the public domain, we couldn't get a patent on it at that point. So there's a whole list of things that they can do.
Robson Splane: I've got a book about this. I'm not here to flog a book, but we actually wrote a book just to kind of help people.
Robson Splane: And there's a whole list of things that they should do. But if they've got a clear road to move forward in terms of intellectual property,
Robson Splane: there are things they can do. Having been a college professor for quite a few years, you know, you can go to a great university. It's got a
Robson Splane: great engineering or design department. And you can get students to help you for equity or little pay or there are things you can do. You can trade services.
Robson Splane: So you're not totally left without resources. There are things you can do.
Robson Splane: I would say that score from a business standpoint is a great asset. You've got all these retired executives who are willing to give their time and their expertise.
Robson Splane: So there are inventors forums that are quite helpful. I just did a demonstration at one just a couple weeks ago. I think they're enormously helpful. One thing I would not do
Robson Splane: are these inventor resources that you see on TV that are going to help you get your idea on in the market. Run the other way. Don't walk. Run. They are in my experience,
Robson Splane: hardly ever successful. They're going to charge you for a lot of different things.
Robson Splane: And, you know,
Robson Splane: my personal feeling is that you absolutely want to avoid those companies that are in the business of helping struggling inventors.
Robson Splane: Robson, great. Thanks for that advice. If people wanted to find out more about your company or maybe get a pro-rise for themselves or somebody in their family, where could they go?
Robson Splane: Oh, the Riseability website for the ProRise, the first product, is at www.
Robson Splane: www.tri-P-R-R-R-R-R-I-S-E dot com. Awesome. And if they had any questions, can they reach out to you somehow?
Robson Splane: Yes.
Robson Splane: We have a website,
Robson Splane: as I'd mentioned, but if they wanted to contact Splane Design Associates,
Robson Splane: We have an email address of Splane Design at gmail.com. Perfect.
Robson Splane: Well, Watson, thanks again for coming on the show. It was really awesome to see how a product gets taken from idea to market from a designer's perspective. So I really appreciate the opportunity to geek out with you and talk about some specifics.
Robson Splane: Thanks again for coming on the show. I appreciate you're having me. and that concludes today's episode thank you for joining me if you have any questions or comments as always i've put all the links that we've covered under the show notes posted on the product
Filip Valica: startup dot com slash episode 25 join me next week as i speak with tanya heath she's the creator of a multi-height shoe with removable heels she got her idea on her first day at work in a paris
Filip Valica: management consultancy where she was taunted by her colleagues because she changed from flats to heels at work. So tune in next week to hear that episode. Lastly, I like to thank everybody
Filip Valica: that has subscribed to the show by hitting the subscribe button in iTunes or in your favorite podcasting app. If you haven't done so already, it's the best way to be notified of new releases
Filip Valica: within hours of the episode going live. So thanks again for listening, everybody, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast with your host,
Filip Valica: to look the leads up for more great content and to stay up today visit the product startup.com
Filip Valica: your guide to getting there
Filip Valica: thanks for tuning into this episode of the product startup podcast the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success this podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent the first firm in north
Filip Valica: america to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups inventors, and small product businesses. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to macawdesign.com.
Filip Valica: That's m-a-k-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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