Designing New Pet Products

An introduction to designing new pet products.

Designing new pet products can be an exciting and highly rewarding journey. The market is large and growing with a real hungry for a new generation of pet products that are eco-friendly, better designed and use highly quality materials. It is also great fun testing and trailing product ideas with animals and there is lots of room for innovation in the sector.

Assessing the viability

It is often very easy to get carried away with new ideas and the excitement of the development journey. We see this with businesses large and small but it pays huge dividends to take a step back at the beginning of a project and to work out what is really going to be viable.

The fundamental aim of the Commercial Viability stage of work is to ascertain whether or not the project is feasible. To do this vital assessment there are several important factors to be considered:

  1. Does the product fulfil a ‘real’ need?
  2. Is there a potential market for the product?
  3. Can the product be patented or protected through other forms of intellectual property?
  4. Is there similar technology available and if so how applicable is it to the product? Can this technology be used? How much research and cost would this technology require to be fully utilised?
  5. What are the costs associated with producing the product? 
  6. How much time and  budget will it take to develop this product?
  7. What are the key competitors for the product and how does this new concept stack up against them?
  8. What would be a minimum viable approach for this project?
  9. What will be the key marketing messages?
  10. Can we tie down a really precise, clear project brief?
Inevitably some of this work you can do inhouse but some elements might be professional services such as patent searching, market research and ball park costing work. The key is to assess how much it is worth spending to limit your risk for the remainder of the project.
commercial viability risk
Idea to Business

Concept Design

Product design consists of transforming an initial idea into an appealing and viable product that can be manufactured. It is often necessary to commission a professional product designer with strong creative ability and an excellent knowledge of engineering materials and manufacturing techniques in order to develop an idea.

The product design process should involve:

  1. Research into materials and processes for manufacturing the product
  2. Detailed consideration of technologies for the key functional requirements.
  3. Developing innovative concept development through sketching and initial Computer Aided Design (CAD) models
  4. Functional design development giving full consideration to the environment where the product will be used.
  5. Full consideration of usability and ergonomics
  6. Product styling
  7. Functional mechanical or electronic development, if required

Product design refines and improves how an idea works and is therefore often integral to achieving strong patent protection.

This process should result in a detailed design, either CAD or sketched diagrams for textile products, that can then be used to move into prototyping where the design will be developed and refined further.

Product Design Guide
early stage prototype

Do you have an innovative pet product idea?

We’ve worked with a number of clients to bring innovative pet products to the market. 

If you would like to carry on reading more about designing new pet products click here. 

If you’ve got a project for a pet product but don’t know how to go about developing it, contact us today and we can arrange a call to discuss it. 

Do you want to discuss a pet product idea?

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