We don’t just build products. We build brands and businesses.

That’s really what The Product Foundry has always done.

We’ve spent our careers developing products, finding factories, building brands, opening retail channels and building businesses. But the work that excites us most usually starts with a bigger question:

What could this become?

Sometimes it’s a product that could become a brand. Sometimes it’s a brand that could become a much bigger business. And sometimes it’s an existing company with the pieces already there, but not necessarily the people, experience or resources inside the organization to take it where the owner wants to go.

That’s where we come in.

We’re not traditional consultants. We don’t want to study your company, write a report and tell your people what we think they should do.

We want to come in and help do the work.

If we’re there to develop a product, we help develop it. If we’re there to fix sourcing, we work with the factories. If we’re there to build a brand, we get involved in building it. If we’re there to open a new channel, we work alongside your people to help make it happen.

We get into the products and the numbers, the factories and the costs, the competition and the customers. We work with ownership and management to decide what needs to happen, and then we stay involved in making it happen.

For the work you’ve brought us in to do, we become part of your team.

What are you trying to build?

That’s usually the first question.

Maybe you have a successful product but haven’t figured out what the brand can become. Maybe you’re a manufacturer that’s spent years making great products for everybody else’s brands and you’re ready to build something of your own. Maybe the company has stopped growing. Or maybe you see an opportunity that could completely change the business and simply don’t have the right person or resources internally to take ownership of it.

That’s a role we can fill.

We can come into an organization and take responsibility for an initiative alongside the existing team. We can lead it, build it and bring in the additional resources it needs rather than leaving management with another list of recommendations to implement.

We know product development and we know housewares and homewares. We’ve spent decades sourcing and manufacturing around the world, particularly in Asia. We understand costing, packaging, merchandising and retail, and we’ve spent more than 15 years working in the QVC and HSN world.

The important part isn’t simply knowing those things individually. It’s knowing how to put them together and actually get something done.

We’ve been doing this for a long time.

Our experience includes Calvin Klein Home, GreenPan USA, SodaStream, Safety Grip, Schmidt Brothers Cutlery and Fleischer & Wolf, among others.

And we weren’t standing outside those businesses giving advice.

We were involved.

Sometimes that meant creating the brand. Sometimes it meant developing the products and building the sourcing. Other times it meant establishing the U.S. business or figuring out how to bring something new to market — and then doing the work required to make it happen.

GreenPan is a good example. We helped establish GreenPan in the United States and introduced ceramic-coated cookware to the American market when virtually nobody here knew what it was.

SodaStream was different. We saw something that wasn’t really known in America at the time and helped introduce it to the U.S. market.

With Calvin Klein Home, the opportunity was different again: helping take one of the world’s great fashion names and build a meaningful business in the home.

They’re very different stories, but there’s a common thread:

Seeing what something could become and figuring out how to build it.

Where we can help

We don’t have a standard consulting package because companies don’t have standard problems.

And frankly, we don’t think of ourselves as a consulting company in the traditional sense.

A company may need someone to take ownership of a new product category. We can do that.

It may need someone to rebuild sourcing, work directly with factories and improve the economics of the business. We can do that.

It may need help creating or repositioning a brand, developing a retail strategy, opening a new channel or building a QVC and HSN business. Those are roles we can take on as well.

Sometimes it’s a specific project. Sometimes I work directly with ownership or senior management. And sometimes the need is bigger, and The Product Foundry becomes an extension of the company for a period of time.

We bring in the people and resources the assignment requires, work alongside the existing organization and take responsibility for getting the work done.

That’s very different from handing management a recommendation and leaving them to figure out who is going to execute it.

We don’t just advise. We help do the work.

Sometimes the biggest opportunity is already sitting inside the company.

A factory may have developed a technology that nobody has properly commercialized. A brand may have earned enough credibility to move into entirely new categories. A company may have great products but no clear story around them. Or an owner may see a much bigger future for the business but not have the internal resources to go build it.

That’s the kind of thing that gets our attention.

Because sometimes what a company needs isn’t another consultant.

It needs somebody experienced to come in, take hold of the opportunity and help make it real.

We’re also perfectly comfortable saying when we don’t think an idea makes sense. Not every product should become a brand, not every brand belongs in every category, and growth for the sake of growth isn’t much of a strategy.

But when we see something we believe in, we want to get our hands on it and build.

If there’s a bigger business hiding inside what you’ve already built, we’d like to help you build it.

The Product Foundry LLC is an independent company and is not affiliated with or an agent of QVC or HSN. QVC and HSN independently determine which vendors and products they select. Consulting, representation or other services do not guarantee acceptance, placement, airtime or sales.