Shadowing Another Product Manager

Yesterday, I spent my day shadowing Rebekah who is the product manager for accessories (bags, belts, filters and tool accessory kits). I really enjoyed my day with her. It was very informative and I think I am leaning more towards product marketing than brand marketing. We started off down in the Home Depot plannagram room setting up for a pitch to the Home Depot rep that is coming on Tuesday. She explained to me the line of products she was pitching and the different steps and phases she went through to get the line of products ready to go. This certain line of products is already in Canadian Tire stores (Canada's version of Costco) and they are now pitching it to Home Depot and hopefully Target soon.
She then took me on a tour of the labs on the first floor of the building. These were very cool to see. They had air quality testing, product quality testing, sound testing, motor testing, and a few other labs. They also had workshops where non-working prototypes were made. The sales team uses these as a real 3D models that they pitch to buyers to see if they are interested in carrying this new product. They also have workshops that make working models. They make a few working models of each design without molds for testing purposes. The working model then goes to the testing labs and they make sure that its up to spec. Then the model is ready for mass production and steel molds are made and mass production begins in China. It was very cool to see the inner workings of product conception and development.
In the afternoon she gave me the task of some research while she got ready for her pitch to the Home Depot reps. I researched the different tool accessory kits (attachments that connect to the vacuum hose) competing brands were offering and made a PowerPoint slide of them. I included pictures of the kits, their price, a description of what was in them, and their negatives and positives. Rebekah will use this information in the pitch to the company about why launching tool accessory kits will be a profitable idea. They already have one line ready to launch this August but in order to get more funding she must make a presentation including information about the market segment, the margin for growth in the market, and the competing products currently in the market. The company will review her presentation and report and decide whether or not to put a lot of money into launching a line of tool accessory kits.
Overall I had a very interesting and exciting day with Rebekah, probably one of the most enjoyable days I've had while on project. I really wish I had gotten to spend more of my project working with Rebekah and the other product managers because I think that's something that I might want to do after college.