Product Restyling: What Is It and What Is It For?

Product restyling is a process in which aesthetic or visible elements are modified without affecting the product’s core functionality and main objectives.

It is important to distinguish the concept of product restyling from the concept of product transformation.

The goal of many companies or new startups is to apply technology or to reinvent existing products by changing their operating system in order to achieve better results without increasing costs. This approach leads to clear competitive advantages for positioning new products in the market.

These processes of transforming existing products can be achieved through reinvention and reverse engineering, or through restyling cycles. Where is the line?

Restyling: The process of product restyling usually has redesign objectives aimed at improving product ergonomics, sustainability criteria, and aesthetic differentiation. If achieving these goals does not involve altering essential elements that affect the product’s functionality, it is considered a product restyling. On the other hand, if the innovation process impacts parts and components that enable the product’s operation, we are dealing with a product reengineering process.

Key Definitions of Product Restyling

Ergonomic Changes: Redesign of the product’s outer layer, referring to its interfaces. This never involves changes to critical components that affect functionality.

Sustainability: Involves superficial changes that ensure the mechanical strength of the products. It is a design optimization at a surface level that allows for the use of alternative, more sustainable materials.

Aesthetics: Involves changes to the product’s outer layer and all possible geometries, as long as they do not affect essential elements required for the product’s functionality.

Advantages of Restyling Existing Products

Costs: Allows companies to introduce renewed products to the market with a more modern and user-friendly appearance, without incurring high transformation costs in the industrialization process.

Modernization: Enables the launch of improved aesthetic proposals to the market without compromising the accumulated experience in the product’s operational cycle, thus avoiding the economic risks involved.

Speed: Allows for the introduction of renewed and differentiated proposals to the market without the need to incur the high costs of a deep innovation process on an already useful product.

Adjustments: Enables improvements to be made based on user experience without the long timelines typically associated with product reengineering processes.

Differentiation: Enables the development of new business models based on products already validated in the market, with proven acceptance, without exactly copying those existing, market-approved solutions.

Drawbacks or Limitations of Restyling Existing Products

Technology: Limits the integration of new technologies that could enhance the product’s functionality or reduce its industrial manufacturing costs.

Intellectual Property: In very rare cases, product restyling can be protected through utility patents or innovation. Since it typically involves aesthetic and minor changes, the widespread availability of existing products represents clear prior art that prevents the filing of new patents.

Product restyling can be a very effective strategy for validating new business models and gaining experience in the sales processes of a product. At Let’s Prototype, we have worked with both large and small companies that base their commercial strategies on the restyling of existing products that are already fully validated in the market. If you would like us to evaluate the potential of a product restyling process, we’d be happy to hear from you.

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