marketing techniques

> My patent design is towards men's underwear.
> How do I conduct a survey online that is
> directed to men. Also what ways can I get
> men's retail stores to let me conduct the
> surveys?

Hi Desmond,

I haven't had any experience yet with formal surveys, apart from informally surveying people on how they do surveys. :)

One approach is simply to ask people -- that is, show them a prototype of your product (or show them a picture) and ask them if they would pay money to buy it. (Don't just ask them if they like it, but if they would *buy* it, if they would *pay* to get it, which is what you want to know.)

This is a very simple approach, I'm sure there are more sophisticated approaches you can take too, but you'd be surprised how many people use this very simple approach of just asking everyone around them for their views.... And I believe that just doing something as simple as that will probably help to give you a useful insight into what many people think....

As for approaching a manufacturer, you might want to see if there's some sort of Inventors' Society or something like that in your city. If there is one, they might have good information on approaching manufacturers with your design patent. If you do this, you'd most likely have to contact manufacturers yourself and "sell" them on your idea. I've investigated this a little bit myself, but the product a friend and I were working on (a technology product) never reached a sufficiently advanced stage to take it to that level....

The other approach might be to try manufacturing it yourself, however you need some capital to do that....

Hope that helps at least a little.... :)

Dien Rice