idea now what

[onlinebeginner]

i have a relatively simple idea that i came up with while brainstorming for a marketing project. Without revealing the idea i think it is a product that a large cheap chips and salsa company would be VERY interested in and most certainly make them money... bascially TOSTIDOS

i have no idea what to do next, i would hate to waste such a good idea, maybe ten years down the road seeing it in the grocery store

[Misfire]

Get your product in Wal-Mart and let Tostidos buy you out. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Evan]

Is the idea a marketing plan or a product itself? If it's a product that you can patent, patent it.

You might want to just try going to Tostitos' website and try to get in touch with someone who can actually make decisions about products or whatever.

[Misfire]

Contacting Tostitos is a good idea obv, but I think if you can establish a bit of a track record distributing/selling it yourself, you're going to command a higher price offering it to Tostidos/Doritos/Fritos.

Think of trying to sell myspace to NewsCorp before it had 18 bajillion users. If you ship x thousand units a week, you're gonna command a higher price than if you just have a neat idea.

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
Contacting Tostitos is a good idea obv, but I think if you can establish a bit of a track record distributing/selling it yourself, you're going to command a higher price offering it to Tostidos/Doritos/Fritos.

Think of trying to sell myspace to NewsCorp before it had 18 bajillion users. If you ship x thousand units a week, you're gonna command a higher price than if you just have a neat idea.

[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe. I don't know jack about the salty snack industry. I'm guessing that in a lot of cases it might not be feasible to start manufacturing it yourself.

[spex x]

[ QUOTE ]
you're gonna command a higher price than if you just have a neat idea.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that your idea will be worthless without a patent or some other legal protection. If you don't have legal ownership of the idea, then you don't have anything to sell. If you can't patent the idea for whatever reason, then I'm not sure what you really have. I suspect that the salty snack industry is relatively difficult to get a foothold in.

If you do want to make a go of it, you have to start pretty small. I started a salsa company several years ago, and my experience was that you need to take it slow and steady. We moved pretty slow - got our product into a local coop, sold it at farmer's markets, etc. But we focused on the local market, hoping to expand from there. After two years, we were selling about 4000 pounds of salsa per week. We sold the company.

Now our company had a trully great recipe and an innovative product. We were the first company in our community that offered fresh salsa. It was new and it tasted a lot better. IMO, the product really spoke for itself. We'd make it and take it in to store managers. They weren't hard to convince. We gave away a ton of free salsa just to get people to try it.

Now, we didn't have a patent on our product. Really, our product was just a recipe, and recipes cannot be patented. Obv, the recipe was a secret. When we sold the business we were selling a small kitchen, the recipe, and our reputation - mostly the reputation.

So I guess I agree with Misfire. What I would do is 1) try to get a patent if you can, 2) start producing and selling the product on a small scale, 3) grow, 4) sell to Tostidos. But without the patent, I don't think you've got much to sell to a big company.

Sorry if this response is a bit rambling. Your post made me a little nostalgic.

[beeyjay]

op -
I would agree with others that said getting a patent would be the way to go if it is a packaging type idea

spex-
I thought you could patent a recipe but then after X amount of years it was made public, hence the reason coke/pepsi and everybody else just keeps them secret instead of patenting

[elus2]

I thought coke only pretends that their recipe is a secret as a marketing ploy?

[beeyjay]

i don't know, kind of one of those random facts i remember hearing one time.. was trying to confirm.

fwiw ive never tasted anything that tastes like coke.

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
i don't know, kind of one of those random facts i remember hearing one time.. was trying to confirm.

fwiw ive never tasted anything that tastes like coke.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would think it would be fairly easy to reverse-engineer their product with today's technology, maybe not.