Hello,
no you can buy them from places like "barcodes mania" so you don't need to register for GS1 which is a high cost! I've used the above service and haven't had any issues with getting products registered on the Amazon Seller account. If you want any other help feel free to drop me a message. Cheers, Alex

Hello, good question. It really depends on how accurately the prototype needs to be. The first thing you need to check is that you've taken into account the design guidelines for producing something for CNC. There are a few things to consider for this, namely no overhangs, considering what type of bit they'll be using. The CNC place should give you feedback on this, there's also a few online resources for checking your design - pretty sure there is a good guide here: https://geomiq.com/cnc-design-guide/ The next thing you need to think about is producing the engineering drawings, this basically acts as a contract laying out in numbers what dimensions the supplier must achieve. Finally make sure you try and pay via a platform like alibaba that covers you for any dodgy companies that take your deposit and don't come through with the goods - speaking from past experience! :) If you want to schedule a call I would be happy to help set up your engineering drawing and help you get the best price using these online platforms. Cheers, Alex

Finding a niche is a weird, haphazard activity that sometimes happens totally non-linearly! I use a tool called Magnet2 from Helium10. It's a search volume tool that looks at common keywords searched for on Amazon. This way you can look up something like "organiser" and then it will spit out loads of niche ideas like "make up organiser" "shoe organiser" "car organiser" and it gives you how many people are searching for that thing per month! It's really amazing and has helped me launch successful products on amazon because you have the confidence that people are definitely searching and buying for that product niche before you get started. Hope that helps! Alex

thanks for your question, the first thing before diving into physical product development is to make sure that your idea's core value is actually unique and there isn't already an existing product that can serve a similar purpose already in the marketplace. I say this because I have over 12 years of experience designing physical products for scale, however I still look to alibaba and existing OEM suppliers (original equipment suppliers) to see if a similar product exists so I can use or modify that to get to market quicker. This is a case of being really analytical about your product idea, is it really unique and actually doesn't exist in any form? If so then it's a good idea to go through the different elements that would make or break the idea like size of market, expected cost of the product (or cogs), expected time to market or development time etc. It's a big challenge creating a physical product but something that's really rewarding when you nail it. Hope that helps, Alex