Are you facing challenges during your product development? If you want to stay competitive, you need to act fast and be agile, as speed to market is very important. What do you do first? Do you understand your consumers?

1. The challenges of new product development
Smaller businesses like yours have a compelling
advantage over the large-scale food manufacturers.
You can move fast and stay agile. When it comes to
new product development (NPD), speed to market is
key to success, and the big companies don’t let
anything out the door that hasn’t already been
proven by extensive consumer research, deep data
analysis, and concept design & testing. As a small-
medium producer, you can test and tweak more
quickly. What big businesses often have is a deep
understanding of their own brand and category
strategy. Not to mention the capital on hand to
invest in whatever production line or supply chain
changes may need to occur. But, there’s no reason
why you can’t be just as well informed ahead of
developing your next new product.
“If you want to stay
competitive, you need to act
fast and be agile”
- Juraj Durco, Food Advisor and Principal Consultant
www.fapicglobal.comFAPIC Pty Ltd

2. New products keep your brand relevant in a
constantly changing world. Whether it’s the
competitor landscape, advances in technology, a
chance opportunity, or changing consumer
preferences, new product development should be
part of your ongoing discussion in the boardroom.
They could be completely new products or modified
versions of existing ones. The important first step is
to be strategic about what products you consider
adding to your portfolio rather than jumping straight
into design and production. It may seem
counterintuitive, but when you put more time into
planning, you can put more speed into executing,
and that’s how you avoid fizzing out and
disappearing from consumers’ minds.
What do you stand for?
Think first—what do you wnt your brand to be
known for in 3-5 years’ time? How do you want
your consumers to describe you when they
recommend your products to others? Sometimes
knowing those things can be difficult, especially
when you’re creating a whole new category. You
may need to do some consumer education, in that
case, but most of the time, it will be your consumers
who educate you in the early phase of planning a
new product.
What does your market need?
Why does the market need your specific product? It
may be that they don’t need it the way it’s currently
formulated or presented, but you won’t know if you
don’t seek early feedback. Negative feedback is
often mistakenly interpreted as failure. Negative
feedback, and encountering failures for that matter,
are a normal part of testing and refining. Capture it
and analyse that feedback regularly, act on it, and
ultimately you arrive exactly where your particular
target consumer is waiting for you, while the
multinationals are still catching up.
What do you need to start testing?
After understanding your brand strategy and the
needs of your consumers, you need to know that you
have the expertise, the equipment, and the capital for
any new investments you might need to make to get
early versions of your new product underway. You
might need to seek external expertise to know where
best to spend your money and what the right
formulations would be for what you want to
achieve.
When you don’t have an in-house R&D function,
new product testing can be daunting. After all, most
small businesses in food production exist for the
love of food, not for the process of scientific testing
and market analysis that’s required to ensure
success. That’s why we like to provide businesses
with a process to make this important work easier to
do.

3. At FAPIC, we refer to the 8P model. It’s a holistic
framework to guide business problem solving and/or
changes. The model optimises project team
capability and interaction so new products can be
developed faster at lower costs, and offers a clearly
defined, strategic approach to meet productivity
needs, through the lenses of People, Portfolio,
Problem, Project, Product, Packaging, Process and
Profit.
To be first means taking risks, and wouldn’t you
rather be the one who succeeds? Ask us about how
our 8P Model applies to you, today.
Juraj is a Principal Consultant of FAPIC who has
extensive experience in end to end portfolio and
process optimisation specializing in FMCG,
product, and packaging development with
extensive experience in research and development.
He has worked in a wide variety of environments,
overseeing large-scale projects and developing
talent. For eighteen years, he has travelled the
globe, guiding and helping startups and
established companies to expand and grow their
presence, from pipeline development to product
strategy.