Archive
Impact Driver or Impact Wrench? Confused Names Keep Products on the Shelf
End-user confusion about drills and drivers is rampant – although the model in this stock photo looks more bored than confused.
Consider an example from the realm of the home store where tool makers have created a wilderness of product, category and project names that stand in the way of revenue and market share growth.
No tool category is more confused than drills and drivers. And over the past few years manufacturers have added to the confusion with the impact driver. The impact driver is a superb, compact tool that use small bursts of torque to deliver turning power around the screw, bolt or nut. Read more…
Avoid Shelf Potatoes: Do It Right the First Time
Avoid Shelf Potatoes by succeeding the first time. This is critical both with retailers and inside your company. Consumers are more forgiving.
So, the most important Shelf Potato lesson is that AVOIDING them in the first place is your best way to success.
How can products avoid becoming potatoes? Learn from the lessons here. Know when you need communication to drive a product and either supply that communication or don’t proceed with introduction. Use research (and honest introspection) to detect problems ahead of time. Negotiate carefully with retailers to ensure the right placement. And, avoid putting a product at mass retail before you’re ready. Quite often, retail merchandisers will love a product but not be the best judges of the challenges it will face on the shelf. Read more…
Even Cars Can Be Shelf Potatoes. Consider Volkswagon’s Eurovan
Eurovan vacation in Eastern Washington
The Eurovan excites passion among those who own them or would like to own them. We Eurovan owners wave to each other on the road and stop to talk in the parking lot. I’ve even had an owner leave me a note asking me to help him find a roof rack setup like the one on ours. BUT, in 2003 VW cancelled the product in the US.
And that leads us to today’s installment of ShelfPotato Diaries. Why did a car that excites this passion eventually fail? It seems their rationale for cancellation included two primary reasons: Read more…
Eight (8) Reasons Products Sit on the Retail Shelf
Grills like this were on the shelf for nearly 20 years before communication made a breakthrough
Grills nearly identical to George Foreman’s lingered on store shelves for nearly 20 years. Then, the Foreman infomercial blew the doors off driving over $100M in sales in two years. And we learned that while the Grill delivered tremendous value to consumers, no one had known of those benefits or believed it would deliver them.
Not all Shelf Potatoes have potential like the Foreman Grill. Some sit on the shelf because they should. Contributor Ben Smith has noted that the Microsoft Kin was released with massive communication, failed to show unique value, then lingered on the shelf only to be cancelled leaving a black spot on Microsoft’s reputation. Read more…
Welcome Ben Smith
Ben Smith, co-author of the RetailLeverage.com blog, is going to be commenting on the topic of Shelf Potatoes. Ben has a superb background dealing with the retail channel from the manufacturer side. He has also been deeply involved with creating advertising to solve retail problems.
His twitter feed can be found at @RetailLeverage and there’s great related content at RetailLeverage.com
The Shelf Potato 