Questions

What sort of marketing strategy goes into selling a product prototype in the pharmaceutical industry? I'm looking at retailers such as CVS, Walgreens and Walmart.

It's not entirely clear what your situation is, but there are a few possibilities.

If you have only a prototype, but the ability (including capital) to manufacture it and you are seeking to be on their shelves, then you'd be dealing with the appropriate category buyer. But your odds are quite low. Why is your product better than others on the shelf? What kind of price point and sales velocity can be expected? Do you have the capital and capacity to fill an opening order and orders after that (the faster you grow, the more financing you need, because your working capital will never be sufficient based on the pay terms of the vendors). Is your prototype full working and ready for production? Or is it just an idea, because buyers want products to put on the shelves, not ideas that might or might not ever be able to be manufactured.

If you are looking to have someone else manufacture your product, then you probably don't want to go to a retailer at all. They sell products. They're not in the manufacturing business. You'd need instead to deal with manufacturers in your product space, but with one whom you don't compete with or where your idea would advance the state of the art. Then there are question as to whether you have an IP protection or whether you product is fundamentally different than others in the same space. Hence, you perhaps need to be talking either to pharma companies like Merck or to medical device companies like Medtronic (depending, of course, on what your product does).

There may be other possibilities. But there's not enough information in your question to be more specific.

Should you have any specific questions, message me to request a call and we can get into this in more detail.

Steve


Answered 7 years ago

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