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Inventor's Corner
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Mechanical Engineering
Professionals works to enable each customer to sucessfully meet their
engineering goals through professional, creative, engineering design
and development.
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At
Mechanical Engineering Professionals, we are happy to work with
inventors and individuals in developing their ideas and bringing them
to reality. However, we do get a fair number of calls from
inventors who have not been exposed to product development and the
design and manufacturing costs that it entails.
Developing a product is a serious business and bringing a
product to market cost tens of thousands of dollars if not hundreds of
thousands or millions. This is not a process for the faint
of heart or the casual person as most new products rarely cost less
than
one hundred thousand dollars to develop. Myths in the culture
abound about people getting rich quick off of simple ideas, but these
are a rarity and in reality most successful inventors work very hard in
selling their ideas or raising the capital to manufacture them.
Developing an invention is very much like starting a business.
In fact, if you are looking to profit from your invention, it
is starting a business. Before coming to an engineering firm
or other manufacturer, an inventor should at the minimum perform a
market analysis to establish the market value of their product (to
understand how much the product is worth) and lay out at least a rough
business plan. The business plan could be that the inventions
are to be sold to other companies, but that is still a business (a
business of creating and selling invention ideas), and the inventor
should be ready to invest time and money in selling those ideas.
If you would like help in doing a market analysis or creating a
business plan we can certainly help as consultants. However,
if you are capable person, the Small Business Administration
provides an excellent resource for writing a business plan (http://www.sba.gov).
Another good resource that we advise all of our individual
clients to look into is SCORE
(http://www.score.org)
which provides free couseling to small business owners. Score
keeps local offices throughout the country but also can help over the
phone or through their website.
If pursuing the development of your invention is still of interest to
you and would like Mechanical Engineering Professionals, LLC to create
an estimate and help with the feasibility of the project we
now offer a startup package:
Business
Startup Package - $2445*
This includes:
A detailed scope of work and development plan with associate costs.
A detailed timeline for development including a project gant chart.
15 extra hours of consulting
(* we often also create 2D and 3D concept models but we would need
detail on your product to quote this seperately)
If you have an established company and these don't seem to suit you,
please see the information for our corporate clients or give us a call.
Frequently
Ask Questions
I do not have
money to develop my product but I have revolutionary product which will
change the industry would Mechanical Engineering Professionals, LLC be
willing work free for a percentage of the profits?
No. We are an engineering consulting firm and not venture capitalists
or angel investors. If you own a company or have a startup
that is partially funded we may be able to work out a deal for a lower
rate initially for larger profits later, but we would still need some
ongoing consulting fee to maintain our business. Also most of
our extra capital goes into developing our own product.
I do not have
money to develop my
product, is there any other way that you could help me?
Certainly the package offered above will help
you get a handle on what the development entails. There are
also many books available at bookstores or your local library that
explain how to sell or profit from your inventions. We
reccomend books by Mike Rounds of Rounds, Miller and
Associates as we know him and respect his integrity.
He also offers consulting
and product solicitation services for inventors, you can find
out more at his website at www.roundsmiller.com.
More
information on the
specifics of working with Mechanical Engineering Professionals, LLC
such as terms and rates can be found on the following page:
Working with
Mechanical Engineering Professionals
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