How To Make A Product Specification Sheet For Your FBA Product // Step-By-Step Guide
How to create a product spec sheet that ensures you get the exact product you want from your supplier!
If you can imagine a product, a factory can probably build it. China and Vietnam have an extensive network of manufacturers that can produce a wide range of products. But how do you know the supplier makes your product exactly as you want? With a well-written product specification sheet. While it takes several steps to make your idea into a product, one of the first things you must do is create a product specification sheet. Cosmo Sourcing has simplified this process into our simple sourcing, which consists of four steps: Plan, Find, Make, and Ship.
What Is A Product Specification Sheet?
A product specification sheet is a document that details the specifications of your product. It should provide a broad overview and numerous sections detailing the components you want to deliver in a product. A good product sheet is concise yet thorough, containing all the essential information the product needs without unnecessary details. Your manufacturers will receive the product specification sheet and use it as a reference for generating quotes and manufacturing your product. Even before your product is manufactured, a manufacturer must have specifications to provide you with an accurate quote.
A product specification sheet will also be used later when you place your sample order. We use a modified product specification sheet as our sample evaluation form. In the sample evaluation process, which we’ll discuss later, we create a checklist from the product specification sheet and review it line by line to verify each detail in the sample against what was requested.
One thing to keep in mind when creating a product specification sheet is that manufacturers often cut corners. Be mindful of this and consider the details you want to highlight to ensure quality. Please note that there is no supplier who can provide 100% of the product and details perfectly. Therefore, you need to determine what acceptable quality means to you and fill in your product spec sheet accordingly.
Here’s a free Product Specification template!
If you’re unsure what a product sheet should look like, please download our template. Our product spec sheet is a basic template, so you should heavily modify it to suit your product. Regardless, fill in the email, and we’ll send you the template we use for our projects!
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How To Make A Product Specification Sheet
We’ll go over how to make a product spec sheet, but there should be a reasonably well-structured outline for the most part. These are the primary sections required for a standard product specification sheet. This section follows our template and goes more in-depth with instructions for each part. Please follow the link, download the template, and then follow the instructions to complete each section. If you don’t have the template, create a simple outline with each section listed below.
Product Summary
Most people overthink this one, but it helps to keep it simple. Just use a few sentences to a paragraph to describe your product, how the customer will use it, and some other details. You may want two paragraphs for more complex products, but beyond that, you’re just going to bog down the reader. Save the details for later; this needs to give the recipient a general idea of the product.
Product Specifications
These will be your product’s raw statistics: weight, dimensions, colors, materials, estimated order quantity, Target price, IP rights, intended market, etc. This is mostly organized in a bulleted list or a table. This section focuses on the raw statistics of your product.
Bill Of Materials
The Bill of Materials is, again, a bulleted list. For this part, state the exact materials that the manufacturer will use. For some items, simply stating strong Fabric” is fine, but you want to be specific for most, such as stating 60D Nylon as the fabric. You also want to run down every material the manufacturer will use in your product. Most factories specializing in your product will already have everything in-house; however, they may occasionally need to order raw materials.
Reference Photos
Photos are one of the most essential parts of your product specification sheet, as most people will only look at this section. Remember that English is likely their second language if you are product sourcing from China or Vietnam. Photos, however, transcend language and can be understood by almost everyone.
You will need two types of photos. The first is bare photos of the product if it exists. If the product does not exist, sketches or mock-ups are effective alternatives. The second is technical diagrams that show the dimensions of products.
Packaging
Most clients overlook packaging when it comes to products. Yet, packaging is essential to the product experience and branding. Therefore, it is necessary to protect your product during shipping from China to a warehouse and from the warehouse to the customer.
You also need to specify the master carton dimension. The Master Carton is the big box that will carry your smaller items to the States. If you are ordering 1,000 units of a gizmo, it’s wild to ship each item separately from China to the US. Therefore, most people place the units into a larger box, typically containing 50 to 200 units per box.
Product Compliance Standards
To be manufactured and imported into their respective countries, many products must meet specific compliance standards. Determining compliance standards can be challenging; we’ll review that later. Types of Compliance standards to look out for include any regulatory approvals required by a country, which are the buyer's responsibility to obtain, and factory certifications, such as ISO standards, which are the supplier's responsibility.
What Otherwise Should Be In A Product Specification Sheet?
There isn’t a single good template for a product specification sheet, as each product is different and has its own attributes. Nonetheless, here is a list of potential points to cover:
What is the purpose of your product?
What material do you want your product made of
Dimensions
What features do you want it to have
Waterproof
Durability ratings
Compliance standards
What Color(s) should the product be?
Pantone color codes are universally accepted color standards, so be exact if necessary.
What packaging do you want?
What standards must the product meet?
Validation involves determining the necessary compliance standards for a major product or service.
Pictures
Diagrams and graphics
The wording should be concise and straightforward. Pictures are also a great way to show what product you want to be made. You can find pictures of existing products, details, or a prototype you have made. Pictures and other graphics examples are one way to ensure that something doesn’t get lost in translation.
Draft The Product Spec Sheet
At this point, you should take the outline and have a very rough draft. You must go through and edit about three times to get an excellent product spec sheet. This build will help if you continue researching and learning more about your product. For the most part, use our outline, as it covers the basics of most products.
At this point, you should have everything you want in your product; the next step is adding everything your product needs.
Learn As Much As You Can About Your Product
When you learn about your product, focus on how it’s manufactured. The first time you add information, it tends to be what you want from a product, and the next step is learning as much as possible about your product. Fortunately, we live in the information age where all the resources you need are at your fingertips.
Learn About How Your Product Is Manufactured
When creating a product spec sheet, design it with manufacturing in mind. This step ensures that your product is grounded in reality. Many people have fantastic ideas for products that sound great on paper but are difficult to manufacture. You can find YouTube videos of the manufacturing process for many products and get a good idea; for others, you may need to dive deep into industry publications.
Look Up Product Details On Amazon And Alibaba.
This approach starts from the tip, but the easiest way is to find similar products on these or other websites and copy or paste them, more or less. Ensure the product is identical or similar to yours and adjust as needed.
Learn About Product Certifications
When browsing products on websites, you’ll notice that they often display various certifications. The easiest way to start is to review the certifications listed in Amazon’s description. But ultimately, finding the exact certification is a complicated process. We cover these in more detail in our blog about Tariffs and regulations here.
Custom Designs Often Need Custom Tools
Creating a custom product is an excellent way to ensure your product stands out in a crowded marketplace. Many of our clients request custom designs, which we are happy to help them with. That being said, you must understand that customizing times often requires more upfront costs. For many products, a mold needs to be made; for other projects, a computer-generated design is required, both of which involve significant upfront costs. The good news is that most of these costs are one-time costs. The higher the upfront, one-time cost, the more product you need to recoup the cost.
Tooling
Tooling is the process of acquiring the necessary machinery, molds, design files, and other components required to manufacture a product. When vetting factories, ensure they have the necessary equipment; for the most part, they will inform you, but it’s essential to double-check. The best way is to visit in person, but if you cannot, hire an inspection company to do it for you.
Molding
Molding is one of the most common items we work with; we need to create molds for many products. The most common mold is used in the plastic injection molding process. The molding process involves creating a cast that the machinery can inject with a liquid that hardens into a shape. Most molds are made of metal, and a high-quality one can cost several thousand dollars. However, once it is made, you can often use the product spec sheet for years.
CNC, 3D Printing, and more
3D Printing is more complex than people think; a trained individual must design a digital model using specialized software. They then must upload the file to the printer and let it run. CNC works under a similar concept; however, the machine carves the object from existing material, while a 3-D printer creates it from scratch. Designing files and digital models are similar, so expect to pay someone to do this if you need it for your product.
Please Make It So It Can Be Manufactured.
In the previous step, you should have done a significant amount of research on how it’s manufactured. Now, review your details and make any necessary adjustments. You will take off and adjust features most of the time, but you may learn to add or make something you didn’t know was possible. Those times can
Regardless, it is best to remember that the more steps it takes, the more expensive it becomes. For cost-conscious individuals, it is essential to ensure that your product is as easy to manufacture as possible. Ideally, you would also want the product to be made in a single factory with no outsourced parts. This means you must make a product that a single factory can make and understand.
You should review your product sheet again and adjust the desired features to make it a suitable supplier for manufacturing, or add the features you learned during the research.
Pictures
A good product specification sheet includes numerous pictures, illustrations, and diagrams that depict the product's appearance. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. The more pictures you include, the better. If your product or a prototype has already been made, include photos with measuring tapes so the factory can know the dimensions. If you want an exact color, include color swatches so that they have an exact reference. Take photos of the details that you want, such as stitching. Feel free to use a basic imaging program to add arrows and text boxes to the highlight feature.
Finish The Product Spec Sheet
First, you made the product spec sheet with everything you wanted; then, you made it with everything you needed; now, you must have everything.
By now, you should have all the necessary information in the product spec sheet and be able to modify it so that the factory can produce it. Then, it would be helpful to polish it so that it is clean and readable. Keep technical details as they are, but use simple English for the summaries and other parts. Remember that almost all the salespeople and engineers are not native English speakers and often will use translation software to read it.
Frankly, you’ll likely update this several times through the sourcing process. It’s not uncommon for us to make multiple revisions until the final manufacturing stage.
What Format Should a Product Sheet Be in?
Most Product spec sheets are created in Excel or Word, but it is recommended to send them to your potential suppliers as a PDF. The reason is that the supplier does not alter it, so you can ensure there are no formatting changes when emailing. Keep in mind that when you send out a product spec sheet, it will likely be shared via email and printed among staff at the supplier at any time. Include page numbers, a header or footer with your contact info on every page, and a page number.
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