First, let’s talk about what a manufacturing broker is exactly, and what they do. They are a single point of contact for a group of manufacturers who can often together produce fairly complex products. This all happens without you needing to go to manufacturers individually. They either charge a percentage on top of the manufacturers for their time or are paid by the manufacturer like a salesperson would. They often act as a pass-through entity for your goods and money. Brokers are not designers or engineers typically, though they sometimes are. They are advocates for both sides as they get paid when both sides are happy.
Saving Money
You can save money long term by using manufacturing brokers who are constantly looking for the best manufacturers for you.
If you already have all your own manufacturing sources, then you may not need to hire any manufacturing brokers. With that being said, if you are paying someone a yearly salary to manage all those vendors you currently have, then outsourcing to a broker may free up some of your cash.
Often brokers are paid by the manufacturer, just like a salesperson and you don’t pay more for it. Finding a good broker can help get your product manufactured cheaper than hiring employees or doing it yourself. They already have relationships with the manufacturers and can sometimes help guide your project.
Manufacturing Backups
Having backup manufacturers is important if you want to survive hockey stick growth.
Good manufacturing brokers also always have backups for their manufacturers. This can save a start-up, or a Kickstarter project. Many Kickstarter projects have had issues where a manufacturer has closed their doors between launch and time for production.
I talk about Kickstarters and Manufacturing in another blog post because of how much of a problem this can be. For start-ups and large businesses, having vendors go under is a consistent issue. Sometimes this is detrimental to the point of collapsing a company or product.
What We Do
We provide support beyond just design, but managing and ensuring production continues for you.
We provide a rare combination of being a design firm with full engineering & production support. With our team, we have many technical skills including sourcing. Pair all that with our ability to be a broker for your production needs and we are your product launch team.
We can launch your product and keep it in production even if a vendor goes out of business. You don’t have to deal with scrambling to find a new vendor, we’ve already got that handled.
Supply chain management is important and the right broker, sourcing agent, and development firm can make it so that issue is dealt with quickly and for you. This is something we handle in phase 4 of the Peterman Method™ and continues through the life of the product. So, in my opinion they are worth it, especially if you don’t have the resources to have a dedicated person doing sourcing and vendor vetting and management.
Your Next Steps
How important is your supply chain?
It's the core of your success, let's go over the highlights
Related Conscious Design BLOG Posts
What is Design for Manufacturability?
Logically, you could figure out what Design for Manufacturability means in a broad sense. What does it really mean for you and your product? Design
Choosing a Manufacturer
We’ve talked about why you should hire out sourcing here, but in case you want to dive into this yourself, here are some things to
The Importance of Prototyping
I can’t tell you how many clients have come to me saying they need help developing a prototype to get funding or the feedback they need to finish developing the product.
