Heroes
The KitchenAid Stand Mixer is iconic. This classic design was introduced in 1937. And KitchenAid just sold that for the next 12 years before they introduced their next product, the pressurized dishwasher. And they sold the stand mixer in white for 18 years before introducing the first colors.
The Patagonia Snap Tee Fleece was their hero product of the 90’s. You couldn’t walk through a college campus in the 90’s without running into dozens of these. They traded out the color and the ribbon linings creating hundreds of variations. I had at least a four at that time.
The classic Ugg boot was ubiquitous. Whether San Diego or Boston, Chicago or Birmingham, these boots were on the feet of women.
All these hero products took years before they exploded into the mass market. But they pulled their companies along as they grew. So that brings me to my points.
- Hero products take work and time to develop, bring to market and reach their full TAM.
- Hero products get more productive with scale as costs decrease with scale and customer acquisition gets cheaper with awareness.
- Hero products bring in new customers.
- Hero products pull the company along. The company can organize its growth and investments around the hero product as opposed to trying to predict and support hundreds of products with unknown demand.
If you are lucky to have a hero product, are you focusing enough on it? Resist the temptation of the new to honestly answer whether your time and capital will drive more incremental cash flow from more focus on the hero product or more focus on the new.
If you don’t have a hero product, you likely have something that could be your hero product. Between your data and your gut, what could that product be? What would happen to sales, contribution profit and cash flow if you could turn that product into a hero driving a quarter or half your sales?