Bringing Jello To Market
Imagine that you're living in the past, 120 years ago and you invent this thing called "Jell-O". It's something that a few people are aware of, but it doesn't have mainstream appeal. You figure out a way of mass producing it, and then set about trying to get it into grocery stores around the United States. You start locally, by going to the grocers in your city.
Imagine how that conversation would go. You explain to him: "It's this gelatin stuff, we sell it in powdered form, in packages, and people mix it with hot water to make this squishy, gooey stuff that you can cut into shapes. It's comes in several different colors."
To which they might ask: "Why are people supposed to do with it?"
"Eat it," you tell them.
Try and picture the look on the purveyor's face after you tell them that. Kind of discouraging, isn't it? That is, if you don't know just how successful Jell-O would eventually become. It's easy to laugh at the shopkeeps that said no to stocking the product now, because we know it caught on. Did Orator Francis Woodward know that 100 years later, Jell-O would be a staple in households across the United States? Of course not. All signs told him he should give up because the odds were stacked against him and his product was, for lack of a better term, "weird". But he stuck to it, and eventually found a way to market the product. And now, here we are.
That's the problem with new product ideas. Regardless of how inherently "good" they are, chances are between slim and nil that anyone's going to make it easy for you.
Imagine how that conversation would go. You explain to him: "It's this gelatin stuff, we sell it in powdered form, in packages, and people mix it with hot water to make this squishy, gooey stuff that you can cut into shapes. It's comes in several different colors."
To which they might ask: "Why are people supposed to do with it?"
"Eat it," you tell them.
Try and picture the look on the purveyor's face after you tell them that. Kind of discouraging, isn't it? That is, if you don't know just how successful Jell-O would eventually become. It's easy to laugh at the shopkeeps that said no to stocking the product now, because we know it caught on. Did Orator Francis Woodward know that 100 years later, Jell-O would be a staple in households across the United States? Of course not. All signs told him he should give up because the odds were stacked against him and his product was, for lack of a better term, "weird". But he stuck to it, and eventually found a way to market the product. And now, here we are.
That's the problem with new product ideas. Regardless of how inherently "good" they are, chances are between slim and nil that anyone's going to make it easy for you.