I've brought a couple of low-tech physical products to market in the last few years. There is no foolproof playbook, so I'll give you some advice in no particul

I've brought a couple of low-tech physical products to market in the last few years. There is no foolproof playbook, so I'll give you some advice in no particular order. - Be prepared to spend 18 months bringing even the most trivial product to market. - You find out literally everything having to do with manufacturing by talking to manufacturers. Start Googling, calling and emailing. - B2B bares almost no resemblance to B2C. No one will respond to your emails. Almost no manufacturers will want your business. Even if you are buying components that require customization with cash, they still won't want your business. All you can do is keep annoying them until you find a salesperson that takes pity on you. I was able to get a key component for my first product made because I happened to find a brand new salesman that needed something to do. - Don't worry about building the thing right until you are very, very sure you are building the right thing. Failure to do so will result in wasting of at least $10K. Spend at least $2K validating any product idea (landing pages, Facebook ads, product renderings, product video). Spending $2K to kill a bad idea you would have wasted $10K on later is good ROI. - Be as public about building your prototype as you can be. Get involved in communities of people, wherever you find them, that you think would be your customers and post there. If they feel invested in what you built, they will like you and maybe buy it. If you show up after it is done and try to sell it to them, they will hate you. If no one in these communities seems interested as you're prototyping it, then absolutely no one outside of the community will want to buy it. - Don't start trying to produce the finished product until people are begging you to sell it to them. I am not exaggerating when I use the word begging. If someone tells you they would buy it if it was available, they probably won't. If that person is your friend or family, they are likely lying to you because they don't want to hurt your feelings. - Do not, under any circumstances, think you can pay someone you've never met to solve a problem for you. (See other comments about you needing to become an expert in everything.) They will to a horrendous job and charge a fortune. If you find a person you can trust, hold on to them like a hungry octopus. - You need to have customers waiting when you first ship. Build a pre-sales mailing list. There are countless blog posts on how to do it so I won't rehash it here.