Many inventors who try to bring their product ideas to market are totally crushed by rejection. So, I thought I’d provide a list of some of the reasons I might have been rejected. It doesn’t cover all the reasons why you might be rejected, but hopefully it will give you something to think about.
You have to realize that inventing is fundamentally a numbers game! Yes, you still need to come up with a good idea, but you’ll find that no matter how good you may think it is, you can still get rejected. Many marketing ideas get rejected all the time. Even if it doesn’t make sense to you that they reject an idea that they agree would be profitable. Here are some common reasons why even marketable ideas get rejected.
1. It is possible that the company already has a complete line of products and does not want to add more.
2. The product is out of your target market.
3. You sent your shipment to the wrong person at the company; don’t assume they will automatically send it to the right person.
4. You submitted the unsolicited idea without first contacting the company to find out their submission policy, and they rejected it for that reason alone.
5. You did not have the proper contact information on your shipment. (That’s one of the biggest mistakes inventors make. The company won’t bother tracking it down.)
6. They have too many similar products and that market is quite flooded.
7. Your idea appeals to a very small niche market and they want mass market items.
8. Manufacturing cost versus ROI is too high.
9. Your sales sheet did not impress them and lacked information on consumer benefits or was overloaded with too much information to classify.
10. Their product has already been patented by someone else and they don’t want to see if they can get around it or risk infringement issues.
11. Your product or idea is not better than what is already on the market. This tells them that you didn’t research your idea very well and that you have no idea who your competition is in the market.
12. You shipped a product that is exactly the same as your current product and that current product is a marginal seller. So yours won’t fare any better.
13. Your idea is outdated or on the decline compared to what will come out next year.
14. They already have a better solution than yours in the works for release next year. (This is also where inventors can yell that the company stole their idea even when the company has already invested in molds, engineering, samples, etc. before the inventor contacts the company about their idea. This happens frequently.) Inventors forget that they are not the only ones who invent.)
15. Have already received a similar idea from another Inventor and are in negotiations with that Inventor.
16. You’ve posted your idea unprotected online on one of those invention posting sites where others vote on your product to see if there’s interest. Public disclosure of it makes the company concerned whether it would allow any patent protection and rejects it based on that issue.
17. You posted your unprotected idea and working prototype video on YouTube and it has a significant number of views. This again raises the concern of whether any patents would be possible due to the public disclosure of it.
18. You stated that you have an issued patent, but when they do a quick search on your patent, they see that it has expired due to non-payment of fees and is significantly past the expiration date. Which makes the chances of it resetting unlikely.
19. You have a patent, but it’s poorly worded and doesn’t cover the actual product. (This happens a lot)
20. You have a design patent and designing around your patent is a simple task, which means you can expect very little protection in the marketplace.
21. Sometimes the company you’ve approached just doesn’t look at outside ideas and doesn’t publicize that fact. Then he gets a rejection letter, but he doesn’t explain that they just don’t look outside the company.
22. You sent them your product but they have already decided on their line for that year or the following year and they are not open to accepting anything else at that time.
23. They only consider items with a sales history that they can review and your item has never been in production or sold in stores or online. So they don’t want to take the risk of being the first company to market it.
As I said before, these are just some of the reasons why a company may reject your idea/product. Really take the time to research and understand your market, your place in that market, and do your part to be as marketable as possible.