We once spoke to a woman who had invented a specialized eye glasses lens that was helpful to people who suffered from a very rare eye condition. She perfected and patented her invention. She had a limited run made of her lenses because they were very expensive to produce, then she took them around to show them to ophthalmologists who treated this rare condition. The doctors were universally enthusiastic about having the product available for their patients. The ophthalmologists encouraged her to take the lens to manufacturers of eyeglasses lenses to see if they would make them commercially available. She was over the moon with excitement. The lens worked and the ophthalmologists loved it! She thought she had a sure thing. She was wrong. Her lenses were so expensive to produce that none of the lens manufacturers wanted to take them on. The cost of making the lens would cause the retail-selling price to be so high that it would be cost prohibitive for the consumer to purchase. Even though it was a great product, they would not license it because it did not allow for a profit to be made on the manufacturing, wholesale and retail levels of sales. It simply would not be a profitable product. These were obstacles this inventor was not able to overcome. If she had done her diligent research before embarking on this project, she would have seen the potential problems. She could have saved herself the costs of developing, prototyping, and patenting an invention that had no chance of success. You can see from this example that sometimes a really great product will not make it to the marketplace because it does not allow for enough profit.

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