Episode #79: The 3 BIGGEST Mistakes To Avoid When Working With A Factory
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Are you in the process of sourcing with a factory overseas? Or perhaps you’re in the middle of working with a factory to produce your toy product. Or maybe you’ve just been considering reaching out to a factory in China but you haven’t taken the leap just yet. If you answered yes to any of those questions, then today’s episode is a must listen. In today’s episode I walk you through three of the 3 BIGGEST and most common mistakes you need to avoid when you start working with factories. Some of today’s lessons are taken directly from the early days of my toy career, so listen up, learn from my mistakes, and save yourself time and money!
By The End Of This episode, you will walk away with the knowledge you need to avoid these common mistakes. This knowledge will make your china communications easier, save you money in product development and sample making. All to guarantee that you show up like an experienced product developer the next time you work with a factory to develop your toy idea.
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Azhelle W: [00:00:00] You are listening to making it in the toy industry. Episode number 79.
[00:00:04] Well, Hey there toy people, Azhelle Wade here. And welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast, making it in the toy industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. For today's episode, we'll focus on three main mistakes that most new toy people make. The first time that they work with a factory. And by the end of this episode, you will walk away with the knowledge on how to avoid these mistakes knowledge that will make your communications easier. Save you money in sample making and help you show up like a pro. So let's not waste any more time and dive right them.
[00:00:57]So mistake number one today is going to be not using Pantone colors. We've got to start this conversation with a lesson on the importance of utilizing Pantone colors when communicating with an overseas factory. The importance of having a Pantone booklet by your side has grown exponentially in the past year since we're spending more and more time working with one another virtually globally. Pantone colors, aren't only for communicating with your factories, but they're also a must when communicating with freelance designers that aren't with you in person. Okay, but you may be wondering right now, what in the world is a Pantone? And why on earth is Azhelle so excited about it? Well, Pantone is the worldwide standard for choosing and matching colors, and it's used across many industries, fashion home, and of course the toy industry. Now a Pantone book can include over 2000 colors, all named with Pantone or pan followed by a series of three to four numbers and ending with a letter either C to represent coded, U to represent uncoded or M to represent Matte.
[00:02:24] And all of those end letters represent finishes of those colors. So coded could be glossy and uncoded is not glossy. And Matte is even more, more on glossy. I guess uncoded is a little bit like satin and matte is completely uncoded. Like someone just printed on a piece of a plain printer paper. That's kind of what matte Pantone looks. like Now an example of a Pantone color that you might find in a Pantone book is Pantone 1 1 4 C, which that color, that code actually represents a bright, sunny, yellow color. That reminds me of a favorite dress I had while growing up. And I have forever been trying to replace and my adulthood. Now, if I wanted to create a toy doll wearing an outfit of that same yellow. I would tell a factory or even a freelancer that I'm working with make that dress Pantone 114C, or PAN 114C. And the factory or designer that I'm communicating with would know exactly what that means because they would cross reference, check it with their own Pantone book. Now Pantone sells Pantone paper fan books, they sell Pantone paper swatch books. There are cotton swatch cards and Pantone chips. All of these different things that you can buy for all of your color matching needs. Now the cotton swatch cards are actually designed for textiles. So in the example, I'm giving of a dress. If it's a fabric dress, you might use the actual cotton swatch cards to choose a Pantone color. The Pantone swatch books can be used for plastic matching and textile matching. Honestly, sometimes in the toy industry, we don't use the exact right book that you're supposed to use for textiles.
[00:04:27] So we might just use a regular Pantone book for everything, but the Pantone plastic chips. Now that's something different. And those are little plastic chips that are colored the different Pantone colors. And I'm telling you. Those are the gold standard for plastic matching in the toy industry. In all of my jobs that I've had, those chips were treated like they were just, you know, heavenly gold because they are extremely expensive to purchase. So no one ever wants to lose them or misplace them. And they are the best way to make sure you know exactly what color a plastic piece is going to come back as from a factory. Now, aside from the materials and formats that you can get Pantone books in there are actually also different color categories as well.
[00:05:21] I know it's a lot, but there are metallic Pantone books. There are pastel Pantone books. There are neon Pantone books and even, as I said before, Pantone books that are designed for textiles with a completely different letters, other than PAN or Pantone, but we're not going to get into that in this episode. Like I said, the toy industry usually just uses pantones for everything. And that means there are some slight variations in the color when you get it back, but it works pretty well. We're going to stick, talk and Pantone for this episode. That is one of the mistakes we will cover today. So we will get to that a bit later my friends. Now some Pantone books also include CMYK values of each of the colors right next to the Pantone color. And CMYK is an acronym for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, and it represents printer colors values. So having the CMYK color equivalence, when you're designing something and you're choosing a specific Pantone color can come in really handy when you let's say when you want to match the skirt of a doll's dress to let's say a color, that's going to be printed on the packaging, having the CMYK values of that Pantone color allows you to create that digital equivalent really quickly without too much guesswork.
[00:07:00]Now for my toy coach podcast insiders club members. I wanted to let you know, at the end of this episode, I'm going to get into what Pantone books you should get for your plastic and paper goods. And give you a couple of resource links. Now, if you aren't a member of the toy coach podcast insiders club, you can head over to club.thetoycoach.com to learn more. Let's get into mistake number two, when it comes to mistakes that most toy people make when working with factories. And that mistake is using non-specific language when requesting changes in product samples. Now, when you're developing a product with an overseas factory, getting back that first sample of your idea is really exciting at first. Like when you first see it, you first see this idea that you had in your head come to life in full 3d, tangible form. You can't help, but get excited and think, oh, it's perfect. I'm a genius. It's done. It's going to sell millions. But once that initial excitement and a euphoria wears off, you are bound to see the flaws and you'll start Analyzing your product and noticing mistakes in the samples. You might notice things like parting lines in the plastic where they shouldn't be or embossed text that's too small to read, or you might notice a paint color that's too dark and a little bit darker than it's supposed to be. And I just want you guys to know that seeing those small problems with your initial samples is 100%. Okay. It's okay. To request changes to them. Changes are expected from the factory. Honestly, you'd be foolish to approve the first or even second sample that you receive. When you are working with a factory, you might find yourself in a situation where you're getting back samples and you're rushing to give responses.
[00:09:09] And you might ask for your changes in non-specific language. So you might say something like make that embossed text just a little bit larger. Or you might type an email that says, make the color a little bit brighter, or you might say something if you're talking about a doll, make the hair just a little bit shorter, but all of that non-specific language is absolutely no good when working with a factory overseas. The factory that you're working with typically is going to want to keep you happy. Right? So they're going to say yes, no problem to all of the requests that you send in, but in reality, they can't actually read your mind and they don't know what's going on in your head. They don't have your eye that you have for this product. While it's natural for you to start to feel like they're a partner in your business. Like they, they really are a partner in your product just because they produced a first sample. You have to understand that they really aren't. They don't really know what you want. They don't really know what's best for your product. They aren't. you They don't have your eye and they don't know what you want. So you've got to be specific in all of your change requests as reviewing samples. You've got to use measurements, preferably centimeters. Whenever you're talking about changing sizing, you've got to use Pantone colors. If you are talking about changing colors, even if you feel like the change is so subtle, they could just add a little pink or make it a little bit brighter and be done with it. No, you've got to pick a new Pantone color. And if you want a piece of plastic to potentially be more or less flexible, you've got to explain what you want that piece to be flexible enough to achieve.
[00:11:27] So that might mean making an illustration, showing a doll or a fidget toy, bending a certain way. Even if it's a faked Photoshop illustration, you want to show what your end goal is so they can come up with a solution to meet that end goal. for you And I hope that you can just learn from what I'm teaching you today and never give a factory and unspecific comment in regards to reviewing a sample. Now, the third mistake that I want to cover today, the third biggest mistake I see new toy people making with factories is not reviewing a pre-production sample after any change before approving an item for production. Now I have to be honest with you here. There are times when toy companies will rush and do this and trust their factory partner to approve a small change that shouldn't affect the item greatly. Half the time when that happens, the toy company ends up making an adjustment to the produced items to either fix the packaging or change something that was missed because a pre-production sample was never prepared.
[00:12:59] Now the product development process is very time-consuming and expensive. Typically it takes about a year to develop a new item, six months, if you're going to rush it. And the absolute biggest mistake that you can make in the entire process is rushing the approval. Approving an item for production when you haven't actually seen the pre production of the item in your hand and is a really risky move pre-production samples should be the closest to the real material that your product will be made of. Sometimes you won't be able to get exactly the same material before going to production, but you should get as close as possible and you can always get reference samples for the correct material from another toy. Now, when you start working with a factory and you start making change after change on your items, they might start sending you pictures or video of your product and request your approval based on the pictures and the video.
[00:14:09] But I really have to encourage you to not approve anything via video or picture. If you can avoid it in any way, you are almost guaranteed to miss something. And when you miss it, you will have to fix it in production and it will cost you so much more. In my toy career, I have distinct early memories of reviewing photos of products and videos of products that I was working on and thinking, oh, this looks perfect. We should go right to production. But luckily I had a mentor who would just insist much like I'm telling you right now, that I wait for the sample to come in before I make any comments at all.
[00:15:04] And 10 times out of 10, getting that sample would reveal something that you just simply could not evaluate by looking at images and videos. And sometimes that thing is just the feel of the product. Sometimes it's the finish of the material. If it's a harder material, sometimes it's the weight. Sometimes the weight of a product could be cost prohibitive. And you might not realize that by looking at pictures and videos, other times, It's actually a problem with the function. You may believe that your product will work because the factory created it and it looks just like your drawings or your 3d models. But when you get that sample in your hand, and when you attempt to play with it, you might discover flaws in your own design. Yeah. You might find that your initial design it's self was flawed.
[00:16:09]Now another benefit that I've experienced when evaluating a sample in person is that I often can identify areas where we need to cost reduce the sample. The process of developing your sample with your factory, learning about their processes, explaining your product time and time again, that process actually helps you see your product from a brand new perspective. And every sample that you get in your hands, you'll start problem solving them. You might notice features or details that could be removed from your toy product that would not affect the overall play pattern, but would reduce the overall cost. So before I jump into my summary of today's episode, I'd like to take a quick break and give a shout out to salso88, who I am guessing is a salsa dancer like myself. Salso88 says, Can't wait for more. I had so much fun listening to the toy coach, Azhelle has an incredible wealth of knowledge about the toy industry and she presents the information in such an approachable way. I'm looking forward to more episodes and what else has to come from the toy coach, Bravo. Well, thank you salso, I really appreciate that review. Thank you so much for that wonderful review salso88 and maybe I'll see you on the dance floor sometime who knows. Now, if you love this podcast and you haven't already left a review, what are you waiting for?
[00:17:45] I love seeing new reviews come in. It puts a huge smile on my face and keeps me motivated to keep putting out great toy advice each and every week. To wrap up today's episode, we are going to recap the three biggest mistakes you must avoid when working with a factory overseas. Mistake number one, not using Pantone colors you should be always using Pantone colors to select the colors of your toy products and even your packaging, Pantone colors, take a lot of the guesswork out of color selection and can save you a lot of money. If you don't already have a Pantone book Get yourself one.
[00:18:29]
[00:18:29]Mistake number two that you should avoid when working with factories that we covered in today's episode is avoid using vague language when requesting changes in factory samples. This means use measurements, percentages, Pantone colors, whatever specific information you have to describe your desire, changes with clarity that leaves little room for. And finally, mistake number three that you want to avoid when working with factories is you want to be careful and not approve your product for production based on photos and videos. You want a pre-production sample of your product in your hand, before you approve it for mass production.
[00:19:16]It can be tempting to rush the process and approve from a picture or a video when all you have made were small changes, but keep in mind the ripple effect that a small change could have on your product as a whole, trust me, request another sample before you approve for production. Production approval is huge and the bigger the toy company, the more layers of people you have to go through to get that approval. So take your time with it. Even as a solo entrepreneur.
[00:19:46]Okay. Toy people. Your action item for this week is super simple. I want you to listen To this episode one more time. Yup. That's it, there is a lot of information here that I want to make sure you really absorb. So even if you're not ready to develop a toy idea just yet, these are concepts that I want to be sitting in the back of your mind. So you can avoid the three mistakes that I outlined in today's episode at all costs. Once you've given this episode a second listen, posted as a story on your Instagram and tag me to let me know. I hang out on Instagram a lot and I will respond to you and cheer you on. As always, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I know your time is extremely valuable and that there are a lot of podcasts out there. So it means the world to me that you tune into this one until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
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