Everyone loves the idea of launching a new product until reality hits.
Misunderstandings around missed deadlines, broken units or costs that explode right before launch.
That’s why having a clear, grounded understanding of the New Product Introduction (NPI) process is critical.
But this isn’t another fluffy post filled with vague industry jargon.
It's a direct breakdown of the main phases required to bring a new product to market, packed with hard-earned insights and written for founders who actually want to scale.
Without further ado:
Before engineering anything, you need to answer one brutal question:
Does anyone actually want this and are they willing to pay for it?
This is not just a marketing task. This is where you need to discover if your product is worth building at all.
You need to identify the main Key Selling Points (KSPs) that will position yourself in the market here.
Success in a product's business is not about stacking features but striking the perfect feature-to-price ratio instead.
Now, step in our manufacturer's shoes for a second: we can help you engineer and manufacture just about anything. But it's on you to define what actually needs to be made to delight your users (i.e. get them market shares).
You bring the "why", we help with the "how".
If you’ve already built a proof of concept (PoC), shown traction and maybe even raised some early funds, then it’s your job to clearly communicate what needs to be made.
That's where where the Product Requirements Document (PRD) comes in to answer yet another tough question:
Can my manufacturer make the product my users want at the right cost?
This one core document will align your market hypothesis with your manufacturing reality.
It's your north star out on your wild adventure and it defines:
With a clear PRD and some proven market traction (real quantifiable interest, waitlists, LOIs or contracted purchase intent), you are in a strong position to raise capital.
And your pitch is simple:
We've spotted this market opportunity and validated the product can be supplied-to-targets. We just need X time and Y dollars. Deal?
(Need help on getting quotes early, let us know.)
But why raise money here?
Because engineering and industrialization are expensive.
Turning a PoC into a scalable, certifiable product involves engineering, custom tooling, certification labs, firmware, extensive testing & validations and real factories on your side. This is the most capital-intensive part of the journey.
Ready? Let’s shift into execution mode.
Now that you’ve raised the money and clarified what you’re building, it’s (finally) time to give birth to your product.
But before it can run, it’ll have to crawl then walk.
We’re not building for mass production just yet (although the choices you make here must be scalable).
First, you need to make critical technological decisions and prove that the product actually works as defined in your PRD.
Remember that north star document? It’s time to hold your prototype up to it and ask:
Does our tech functions as we said it would at the level we promised?
Enter engineering.
Here, you’ll build the first real versions of the product: early circuit boards with your initial component selection, basic enclosures and a buggy firmware build, finally coming together. And yes, a lot of it will break, misbehave or just feel off.
That’s the point. These units are for learning. They’ll help you:
This initial stage is commonly called EVT or Engineering Validation Testing but don’t get hung up on the acronym.
It just means you're building early prototypes to see if your tech works. Expect ugly fixes, wires sticking out and real '"aha" and "oh no" moments.
Once you’ve validated the core functionality, you can move forward and solidify the build.
Can our tech be integrated in something that looks and feels good?
The next step is about turning your "Frankenstein prototype" into something that looks, feels and behaves like the final product.
This is what the industry calls DVT or Design Validation Testing.
You’re no longer proving whether the technology works at this stage, you’re proving whether the final design can deliver that performance, consistently.
You’ll start locking down:
By the end of this phase, your product should work, look and feel like the real thing.
But don’t get ahead of yourself. You're not done.
Now it’s time to prove that the quality of your product holds up when you're making thousands, not just tens.
By now, your product works. It looks good, feels right, and does what it’s supposed to.
But that was just the rehearsal.
Now it’s time to prove it can survive the real world: in quantity, in transit and in customers’ hands.
You’re not just building products anymore. You’re building trust at scale.
This phase is where most of the invisible but critical work happens. You’re not chasing new features or polishing your design anymore, you’re making sure nothing breaks when you're producing hundreds or thousands of units.
We’re talking about opening mould tooling, certifying your product and testing extensively for reliability, repeatability and manufacturing yield.
This phase is often referred to as PVT or Production Validation Testing and if you do it right, you’ll walk out with a product that can be mass produced with confidence.
The game is to produce a small batch of products in order to answer yet another batch of tough questions:
This is the moment to run stress tests, aging tests, drop tests and any test that simulates what happens when your product hits the real world.
The goal is to get as much data as possible in the shortest timeframe about how your product responds to stress and extrapolate many years of use in only a few weeks or months (note: not all factories apply that level of quality management).
You’ll also finalize your packaging, define your Stock Keeping Units (SKU), do transit testing and lock down your Golden Sample: the one reference unit against which every future unit will be compared.
And once everything is locked in and passes, you can now safely move to MP or Mass Production.
Congrats! You are scaling volumes without scaling issues, money that enters your pocket stays there and fuels further expansion.
But what happens after MP?
You’ve hit mass production. Congrats but don’t relax just yet.
Now the real business scaling game begins:
Your product is in the wild and you’re officially live.
Here’s what smart teams focus on next:
Getting to market is just the start, not the finish line.
We'll cover these topics in future posts so stay tuned.
New Product Introduction isn’t a straight line.
It’s messy, iterative and full of hard choices.
But if you stay grounded, test early and make decisions based on real data, you can build something great and scale it with confidence.
Get clear early on:
Then move fast, validate hard and never skip steps.
It will make the difference between a one-batch product and a real product business.
Need help along the way or a partner who's done this many times before, reach out to hello@sprnv.com.
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