A consumer products company in the upper Midwest received 1,847 unsolicited invention submissions in 2025. They reviewed 1,847 of them. They progressed 41 to a second round. They signed 4. That hit rate (about 0.2 percent) holds across most companies that publish a...
A category buyer at a top-five US mass retailer reviews 1,200 to 1,800 new products a year and selects 40 to 80 for testing. That ratio (about 3 to 5 percent acceptance) sets the bar for any inventor whose product reaches a retail buyer meeting. The inventors who get...
A licensing scout in the housewares category confirmed last month what experienced product development firms have long known: she can name the inventor on three of every twelve pitches she reviews. The other nine arrive as faceless products from anonymous senders. The...
Industry licensing scouts at the major housewares trade shows now schedule pitch reviews in 8-minute windows. Eight minutes per inventor, 50 inventor meetings across two days, then a 30-day decision window after the show. Inside that 8 minutes, the buyer has to absorb...
A licensing manager at a mid-size housewares company gets 40 to 80 unsolicited invention submissions a month. She gives each one about 12 seconds before deciding whether to read further or move on. That number, which Enhance Innovations in Champlin, Minnesota has...
About 90% of independent inventors never recoup their development costs. The reasons are not mysterious. Since 2010, the Enhance Innovations team has worked with first-time inventors out of an office in Champlin, Minnesota, and watched the same five mistakes repeat....
INPEX, the largest invention trade show in the United States, hosts about 1,000 inventor exhibitors per year. Of those, fewer than 60 walk away with a licensing deal in the 12 months following the show. The other 940 take home contacts, feedback, and a sharper sense...
There are 11.6 million people working in US manufacturing across more than 250,000 shops, and over 90% of those shops are small or mid-size operations looking for the right product to make. Your invention sits somewhere on a list of work they would consider taking....
US universities filed over 26,000 invention disclosures in 2023 and signed more than 8,400 license agreements, according to AUTM’s annual survey. Most of those licenses went to companies and startups outside the university. If you have a product idea and need...
The U.S. federal government runs at least 14 distinct programs that fund, support, or advise independent inventors. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program alone awards $4 billion per year to small businesses developing inventions in qualifying...
