While we think many of you will find a peek behind the curtain interesting, the reality is that for some of you your eyes will gloss over as this as either not interesting, too long, or both! I’ll try to keep this brief and I’m burying the answer to the second question inside this post to keep you with me. Ha!

We are pretty open about what we are working on with everyone. This is great because we get awesome feedback from the community. Almost every product we’ve released finished different than it started because of your feedback. Sometimes it sucks for us because our customers don’t always realize how long it takes to develop a product we can put our name on. It can appear we are screwing around or just being a tease.

It can take quite a while to bring a concept to life. Sometimes it can happen in as little as three months and for others it can take more than two years to bring to market. We love to involve the community but what’s the right time to do so? Typically, most people expect to see a product on the market within a few months from when they first hear about it, if not immediately.

To make matters worse, when we engage the community it can add a month or more to the timeline. Hard to believe! We’ve found ourselves with a bit of a values conflict and we need to know what you think (one of our values).

Is it better to be open about product development and seek your input but release the part later or is it better to keep it under wraps and bust it out as quickly as we can?

This might surprise you, but dealing with backlash from (what appear to be) delays in getting a product to market can be a bigger factor in when and what we communicate than any advantage it might give another company to understand what we are up to!

We will write a part II of this blog where I will breakdown a few development timelines so you can better see why it takes 6-12+ months to get the average product to market. We can’t REDEFINE if we do the same as everyone else.

So, when will we have our TIP available for purchase? We are doing everything possible to make this happen by the end of the year. In the meantime, check out PART 1 and PART 2 of our design blogs and keep an eye out for a fresh blog just about our new turbo inlet pipe in the next few weeks.

Let us know in the comments if you’d like to see more blogs about the business side of the Honda Aftermarket. Until next time..

REDEFINE the Aftermarket

Rich