Carrie Jeske, a product launch expert and helping inventors for more than 15 years, joins Justin Recla to tell us more about As Seen on TV. She is a team builder, motivator, leader, and salesperson. She thrives in long-term business and personal relationships built on mutual benefit. Currently, Carrie Jeske serves as a direct licensee for the “As Seen On TV” category and works to educate inventor-entrepreneurs on low-cost, high-return product launch strategies. As president of Inventive Ideas, she connects finished product designs with trusted manufacture distributors through her team of licensing agents and helps people create new product concepts inside Inventing Workshops. Listen in as she shares her knowledge regarding As Seen on TV.
Welcome to the In The Clear podcast. I am your host, Justin Recla, and today we are talking to Carrie Jeske of Will It Launch. She is a product launch expert, and we’re talking about how to get your products on TV. The As Seen On TV type products. I’m excited to have her here because this is one of those business ventures that so many people have a great idea but really don’t know what it takes to get on TV and become the next big hit, next big seller. So I’m super excited to have Carrie on the show with us. Carrie, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks a lot, Justin. Excited to be here.
This is good stuff, so Carrie, tell us a little bit about Will It Launch and what you do for your clients.
Yeah. Will It Launch is a company that does market viability testing at the early stage for products specifically to determine if they would be big sellers on the As Seen On TV shelves at Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and wherever As Seen On TV products are sold. We launch through television, and then that drives store traffic.
That’s fantastic. So what would you consider to be the ideal product line for the As Seen On TV?
Some of the main characteristics that we look for are products that are physically small because shelf space at retail is at a premium so you want your packaging to be very, very small. These products are very simple. They’re not real expensive. You know, $50 and under, with $19.95 being the sweet spot, so the price point is important. I usually tell inventors, “Don’t so much worry about the cost of goods.” A lot of inventors spend way too much time thinking about manufacturing. By the time we take it over, we’re going to get that cost so down, so low, way lower than an inventor could, so I don’t ask inventors to worry about the manufacturing cost nearly as much as the retail price point. What would consumers pay for this kind of product? It’s got to be simple materials. These are little gadgets.
You know, some of the famous products in our category are the Snuggie, you know that was a big one. Everybody sells that one. The Pet Egg was a big product in our category. Our company, Will It Launch, in particular, we’ve been very successful with the Magic Mesh. That’s one of our big winners, and that’s one of the longest-standing, longest on the market As Seen On TV products. It’s kind of right up there in that top, and it’s that little mesh for your door with magnets that go down the middle and click so you can go in and out your sliding glass door without opening the door. The Windshield Wonder was another big product of our, and we’ve got a lot on the WillItLaunch.com website.
Mainly, mass-market focused, physically small, under $50 retail, and something with a wow factor. You know, we advertise on TV and that drives store traffic, so it’s got to be like it slices, it dices. You know, it’s the magic mesh. It’s got a magic material, it’s got a special click, click, click magnets. So, something kind of outrageous in the demo. You see a lot of those flashlights where they’re driving a Mack truck over it, and that’s kind of an exaggerated quality thing. And the boat with the flex seal and the tape and all of that. So any kind of outrageous wow factor that can set the product apart and really make it unique. Those are the main things that we look for.
Fantastic.
And I know you said the packaging is a key to making sure you have the proper shelf space and whatnot. Do some of these As Seen On TV products, are there larger ones that have had success?
Well, you know, I was just in Kentucky, and I was looking at some stores there. There’s some Rite Aids that do a lot of kind of early test retail sales programs for us. I did notice the package size was getting larger. There was a collapsible cooler, there was a grill … not a grill like an outdoor grill, but more of a stovetop kind of a grill. These packages were as large as I’ve ever seen, so we’re always pushing the envelope and testing the assumptions. And you know, time will tell. I don’t know if I think … I think it’s risky to go with large package size because, at a retail store, every square inch on the plan-o-gram has a value. So the bigger your packaging, the more dollars per square inch that product has to generate. So if you can’t do that, it’s tough. You increase your challenges. So I think physically small.
Now, we did, I launched a cane, actually, called the Get Up and Go Cane that was one of my products with my product scout team, and you know, a cane is a much longer, narrow product, so you wouldn’t necessarily think it would be able to fit on our shelf space, but the product design people were able to make that thing collapse into a tiny little package that was only about six inches by three inches. So there are clever things that you can do with packaging. The inventors so much don’t need to worry about that as much as they need to make sure that it’s just, I would say physically small and not too heavy. But I don’t think they need to overboard all the packaging unless for some reason your product is very, very big, and that’s going to be an objection. Then it would probably be a good idea to think through ahead and make it smaller. That gives us a little bit of a headstart whenever we take it to market.
Fantastic. I love it. And outside of the clear business directory and taking a look at your profile there, where else can our listeners go to find out more about what you’re doing?
They can go to willitlaunch.com or InventiveIdeas.com, or find me on social networking. One of the things about me is, I do do my own social networking. I don’t hire a company to do it. It’s really me on there that you’re talking to. And you know, you can call. I answer the phone. So those are the best places.
Fantastic. Fantastic. We’ve been talking to Carrie Jeske of Will It Launch about As Seen On TV products and how to get your product on with that branding and on store shelves underneath that As Seen On TV market brand. When we get back, we’re going to ask Carrie a little bit more about what it takes to get your product in the stores with the As Seen On TV branding. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
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