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Inventors greatly increase their chances of success if they find a key industry professional to help them.  This is true for inventors introducing their own product as well as inventors trying to license their idea. The question is how can inventors hook up with an insider that can help them?  One tactic is to contact presenters at industry trade shows or conferences. But even if you can’t attend you can also gain by contacting presenters after the shows.

Recently I was working on a filtration product for water clean-up process for produced water that is the result of fracking drilling for oil.  I found the names of all presenters at a conference on produced water. Some presenters were consultants, which could be a partner, but also editors at two key industry magazines, and key contacts and three possible customers plus a variety of marketing and engineering personnel at companies that sold products that were used in conjunction.  These were all possible key contacts and I was able to talk to three of them and may collaborate with one of the contacts.

But you don’t have to have a high tech product to use this technique.  Choosing an consumer product industry at random I looked for speakers for craft products on the Internet.  That led me to the web site for the Craft and Hobby Association.  https://www.craftandhobby.org.  I put into the search box the term presenters and there were 138 pages listed.  Many of them were contained the information about presenters at various industry trade shows and conferences.  These are possible key industry contacts.

Once you have people’s names to contact but be careful.  You can’t just call people up tell them you are an inventor with a product that can’t miss. Your potential key contacts will think you are a rookie and not want to deal with you.  Instead you need to show you have some understanding of the industry, and ask some intelligent questions.  You need to read several back issue of the trade industry.  I did an Internet search for Craft Industry trade magazine and found the magazine Craft Industry Today.  I put in the search box new products and found many articles.

As I looked through the listings I found that there are quite a few products for children’s craft kits.  I also noticed there are hot new product contests for the craft industry, and also new product sections at the trade show.  Assuming I had a paper crafts product, I also noticed that there was a new product two years ago called the FOLD-EASE® by Manwise Products Ltd,  Putting this together I could ask the following starting questions after calling the contact and explaining you have a new product to introduce and wonder if they could answer a few questions.

1.  I have a new paper crafts products and have noticed that there seems to be a lot of interest in Children’s Crafts products.  Is the market still looking for new paper crafts products?
2. I saw that a few years ago a new product the FOLD-EASE® by Manwise Industries came out.  Do you know if that product was successful?
3. Are you familiar with that product?  IF yes, could you explain why you think it succeeded or failed?
4. The industry seems to have a “hot” new product contest. Do you think that contest is worth entering?
5. The industry also has new product sections in the trade show.  Do you think I’d be better off in the new product section or in a booth in the paper craft section.

Questions like this should give you a feel how responsive the potential key helper is and if they are cooperative you can ask them additional question about the best way to introduce your product.