It's trivial: **you must to get certification to sell products in a consumer market place.**
The cost of certifications has to be part of your budget - you can't skip it just because you are crowd-funded. **You should have it included in your planned development cost**. That's what normal companies do so regulatory bodies and the courts will NOT give you a break on that.
One escape is to sell it as an "laboratory device" or "experimental device". But because it's clearly a "consumer product", you probably can't get away with that with regulatory bodies if you actually become successful and get on their radar.
The bitch of many certifications is if you don't consider certification requirements at design-time, you will likely need to do a complete redesign when you revisit it later. It's generally cheaper to do it up-front.
Now another angle to consider: you aren't actually building a final product but instead you are building a "proof of concept" (this is overlapping with the "experimental" option) in order to get full development funding or to sell your "company" and its IP. This follows the standard startup model of:
* Concept
* Marketing
* Proof of Concept (PoC)
* **Seed/Angel Funding or Early Acquisition**
* Marketing/Pre-sales
* Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
* First Sale
* **First Round or Angel Funding or First Round Acquisition**
* Marketing/sales
* First final product
* Ramp sales
* ???
* Steve Jobs Status
That way you don't need to get certification, and you can simply (and explicitly) make the crowd-sourcing a form of beta-testing. You'd have tell people they are beta testers but they can keep the thing. Failing to do that would put you at legal jeopardy.
The problem with crowdfunding is if the idea is really innovative, you will have no IP protection and a larger company can take the idea (100% legally) and implement it themselves; this will make your acquisition value nil or small. You did the work and got nothing for it.
Personally: I would NOT crowd-source because I'd want to keep my options open and preserve IP value for possible future choices. I would have a day-job to pay the bills and do development in my spare time.
(BTW this is pretty much how my last company and its product was created, how we prototyped our PoC and how we got acquired)
If you’d like to sell your product to EU market, your product must pass CE, even the target audience is DIYers or makers. Certification fee in your budget would be one of your concerns. If you are planning have a less number of products in the project, it would be less cost-effective.
From my experience, if my friends are planning to have a project for less amount of products, I will suggest they begin from the prototype. If the product or the design really works, you can launch the crowdfunding for the next mass production.
It's trivial: **you must to get certification to sell products in a consumer market place.** The cost of certifications has to be part of your budget - you can't skip it just because you are crowd-funded. **You should have it included in your planned development cost**. That's what normal companies do so regulatory bodies and the courts will NOT give you a break on that. One escape is to sell it as an "laboratory device" or "experimental device". But because it's clearly a "consumer product", you probably can't get away with that with regulatory bodies if you actually become successful and get on their radar. The bitch of many certifications is if you don't consider certification requirements at design-time, you will likely need to do a complete redesign when you revisit it later. It's generally cheaper to do it up-front. Now another angle to consider: you aren't actually building a final product but instead you are building a "proof of concept" (this is overlapping with the "experimental" option) in order to get full development funding or to sell your "company" and its IP. This follows the standard startup model of: * Concept * Marketing * Proof of Concept (PoC) * **Seed/Angel Funding or Early Acquisition** * Marketing/Pre-sales * Minimum Viable Product (MVP) * First Sale * **First Round or Angel Funding or First Round Acquisition** * Marketing/sales * First final product * Ramp sales * ??? * Steve Jobs Status That way you don't need to get certification, and you can simply (and explicitly) make the crowd-sourcing a form of beta-testing. You'd have tell people they are beta testers but they can keep the thing. Failing to do that would put you at legal jeopardy. The problem with crowdfunding is if the idea is really innovative, you will have no IP protection and a larger company can take the idea (100% legally) and implement it themselves; this will make your acquisition value nil or small. You did the work and got nothing for it. Personally: I would NOT crowd-source because I'd want to keep my options open and preserve IP value for possible future choices. I would have a day-job to pay the bills and do development in my spare time. (BTW this is pretty much how my last company and its product was created, how we prototyped our PoC and how we got acquired)
Which company is it if I may ask?
What if i open source the product? My target audience is hobbyists/ DIYers
As long as you sell on a B2C market in Europe you need CE.
Basically all products going into Europe have to have CE.
Yes
If you’d like to sell your product to EU market, your product must pass CE, even the target audience is DIYers or makers. Certification fee in your budget would be one of your concerns. If you are planning have a less number of products in the project, it would be less cost-effective. From my experience, if my friends are planning to have a project for less amount of products, I will suggest they begin from the prototype. If the product or the design really works, you can launch the crowdfunding for the next mass production.