A.J. Khubani is the president and CEO of one of the most consistently successful companies in the direct-response television industry: TELEbrands has produced hit product after hit product, moving tens of millions of units from the television screen and the retail marketplace. As is evident from his line of products, Khubani values quality, not quantity. TELEbrands doesn’t advertise a large number of products- just great ones. How has he consistently identified some of the best selling inventions on television in the last decades? And could your product be one of the next ones? Khubani had some great insight and advice about what it means to be an inventor.
“We market inventions that are going to be hits – if the product isn’t going to sell millions or tens of millions of units, it isn’t the right one for us. So although we only sell a few products, those products are powerful,” Khubani explained.
TELEbrands relies on product ideas developed from within and sought from outside: he estimates that the split between products conceived in-house and found from independent inventors is fifty-fifty. 
“The concept for ‘Shoes Under’ was conceived here and developed. We also came up with the idea for Ped Egg, our best selling product. But I hear new ideas from independent inventors all the time. Last week I heard over seventy ideas and we choose to work with nine.” Khubani admits that’s not a normal percentage. 
“I see about a dozen products on average each week. Roughly 90% of those we test-market fail. The odds are we don’t like it. We choose very few ideas. There’s a lot of failure involved in this profession, in this industry. Does that mean the inventor is a failure? Of course not. If they’re truly inventors, they’ll take our guidance and critique and keep inventing,” said Khubani.
TELEbrands seeks inventions that have mass appeal, solve a common problem, and have the “WOW” factor.
“We want someone to watch an ad for one of our products and ask, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Because our medium for advertisement is television, the product needs to be visually appealing and able to be demonstrated. We want that moment, the moment where the consumer is grabbed.”
Do products that are pitched before Khubani have to be patented? No (but it’s better).
“If there’s even a seed of a good idea, we’ll look at it,” Khubani offered. And it’s that attitude that has made him so wildly successful: he looks for potential new products high and low. Get encouraged!
Visit Tele-Brands website: www.telebrands.com
Stephen Key is a successful award-winning inventor who has licensed
over 20 products in the past 30 years. Along with business partner
Andrew Krauss, Stephen runs inventRight,
a company dedicated to educating inventors about selling their ideas
and the skills needed to succeed. You can listen to the weekly radio show on inventing. Get In The News, list your invention to have media outlets find you for news stories.
