Hustler Series: Refining An Idea

04: Refining An Idea

After you evaluate your idea and decide it’s promising enough to move forward with, it’s time for refinement. This step is all about increasing the scope of your idea. You want to fill in details and turn the basic idea into a mature concept.

A few things worth exploring are the user needs of your product, the aesthetics, the manufacturing technique, the distribution channel, the marketing angle, and the brand message. This will help you determine what your product is, how it will be made, and how customers will buy it. Once you have these details of your idea better defined you should have a mature concept that’s ready for the initial design phase.

Refining the idea for Hez Cases began by first choosing a smartphone. Developing a physical product is expensive and I only had enough money saved up to produce one style of case. This meant I had to think carefully about what phone I wanted to design around. I chose the iPhone X because iPhones are very popular, the iPhone X only comes in one size, and being Apple’s flagship phone meant better marketing potential. After narrowing down the smartphone, I refined the user needs and aesthetics. I wanted the case to be thick enough where it was protective yet minimal enough where it wasn’t bulky. I also wanted it to be understated and compliment the look of the phone. As for manufacturing, the case was to be injection molded from either plastic or silicone. The finer details of the aesthetics and materials will come in the next stage: the initial design phase. But for now all that matters is a general idea of design and manufacturing. For distribution I honed in on Amazon fulfillment. Nearly half of all online purchases in the US are through Amazon so it made sense to sell my own product through there. And having Amazon handle the shipping alleviates the stress of having to manually do order fulfillment.

The brand message required a lot of refining. My initial idea was to go all in on the patriotism associated with being made in America. But, by stepping back and reevaluating the scope, I determined this would be a divisive approach in today’s political climate and would likely pigeonhole the product. So I kept exploring and refining the message until I arrived at the tagline “Honest, hard working cases.” I believe this gets to the heart of what we value as Americans while not being overtly nationalistic. Not only is it a more approachable message, but it also offers a deeper emotional connection for the consumer. And it’s a message I really believe in so the brand is an extension of my own core beliefs. Hopefully this makes for a more authentic brand interaction for the consumer.

And finally the marketing angle. I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuck so I wanted to follow his approach to marketing. This means three key things: leveraging social media to drive attention, putting out valuable content regularly, and having an authentic brand experience. This is where the Hustler Series came from. It’s a way for me to inspire young entrepreneurs (which is in line with the Hez brand message), it leverages social media to drive attention, and it forces me to put out actual content of value every day. Let’s evaluate how successful it was in achieving these three tasks once this series is over.

So with all that you can see just what it took to refine “a smart phone case made in America” into “an understated iPhone X case that’s manufactured in America, sold through Amazon, and has a brand that inspires young entrepreneurs to work hard.” That is how you turn an initial idea into a mature concept. And that mature concept is now ready to move onto the initial design phase.