You have a great idea for a product. You have a great designer. You have a manufacturer willing to pump something out for not much money. You’re on your way to gadget riches, right? Wrong.
Dan Costa wrote a cautionary tale for all those looking to produce a consumer electronics product. His focus is magicJack, a company that we wrote about in August 2007, a post that currently has 167 comments, none of them particularly good. Here’s an example from our own comments:
How do you CONTACT these people I can find NO way to send them a message?
MagicJack is basically a VOIP dongle that plugs into your USB port. You then add a telephone and make calls. It costs $40 and then $20 a year. It should be plug and play but, as with everything in life, it often isn’t. Fair enough, you say. Just make a phone call to the support line and you’ve got it solved. Sadly, this is not the case.
MagicJack is one of the reasons we gadget writers are so cynical. We see a great idea but there is something missing either during the review or on delivery. After a while you get a sixth sense about these things but unfortunately I couldn’t see the problems with this device until far along the product life cycle. I didn’t know the company would fail so badly at support and marketing.
