The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

They were very successful – having made Thailand the most profitable market in the World for their particular brand.

Anyway, part of the project involved a workshop and part of that workshop was about identifying new variants for their product.

So far, so good.

Until I realized they weren’t looking at this to expand who could become a customer of theirs, but how to get existing customers to buy more of what they make.

Even that was OK, until it became apparent they believed their product was so loved, their customers would continually fill their shopping baskets with 3 or 4 different versions of the same product because they just liked the ability to consume it in more places at more times.

In short, they believed the more versions of their product they made, the more volume of products their customers would buy.

Every time.

Forget that people have a finite amount of money.
Forget that people have other bills, items, people to look after.
They believed, if you made it … people would just blindly buy.

It’s the same blinkered approach that some sales organizations have.

Where they believe if one salesman brings in a million dollars of revenue a year, hiring 11 more will mean they achieve 12 million dollars of revenue.

It’s both blinkered thinking and wishful thinking.

Or – as my father used to say – “the expansion of logic without logic”.

I say this because it feels companies are viewing the subscription model in a similar way.

Once upon a time, subscriptions were seen as the exciting new thing for business.

A new way to charge for your products and services … regardless that ‘direct debit’ payments had been around for years.

There were 3 key reasons why repositioning cost as a subscription was so appealing:

1 It lowered the barrier to entry, so it could appeal to more/new customers.
2 They knew that while customers ‘could’ cancel at any time, data showed most wouldn’t.
3 It could, in theory, allow them to charge more per month than their old annual fee.

And they were right, it proved to be a revelation … until it wasn’t.

Right now, everything is seemingly a subscription model.

Food.
Clothes.
Streaming.
Gym and health.
Car purchasing.

But the one that really is making me laugh, are phone apps.

It’s almost impossible to download anything without it being a subscription service.

And that would be OK, except the prices they want to charge are getting out of control.

I recently downloaded a recipe app that wanted $14.99 A WEEK. A FUCKING WEEK.

$60 a month just so I could send it healthy recipes I see on social media and have them all in one, easy-to-access place.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Sure, it had some features that would make it more convenient than just putting it into a saved folder on instagram … but it sure-as-shit isn’t worth me paying more than it costs me for Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify PUT TOGETHER.

I appreciate everyone thinks their product is the best product.

I acknowledge it takes a lot of hard work and money to make a new product.

But the removal of any ‘human reality context’ – ie: how much money do people actually have available to spend, and the hierarchy of importance they place on the things they spend – is not just stupid, it destroys the potential of good ideas.

Of course, part of the reason for this is because of how tech investment works.

Basically investors want big returns, very fast … so this pushes developers to build economic models based on a ‘perfect scenario’ situations.

For perfect scenario, read: not real life.

So they show things like:

The economic value of the health industry.
The impact of social media on diet choices.
The rise of health-focused products and services.

And before you know it, they’ve extrapolated all this ‘data’ to come up with a price point of $60 per month and said it not only offers good value, but will generate huge returns on the investment in collapsed time.

Except …

+ All this is theory because they haven’t talked to anyone who would actually use it.

+ And they absolutely haven’t understood it costs a lot of money to be healthy and so an additional $60 subscription for the average person is a cost too far … especially when things they use ALL THE TIME – like Netflix [which they already think is too expensive] – is a quarter of that cost FOR THE MONTH.

I get no one likes to hear problems.

I appreciate anyone can find faults if they really want to.

But being ‘objective’ is not about killing ideas – when done right – it’s about enabling them to thrive, which is why I hope business stops looking at audiences in ‘the zoo’ and starts respecting them in ‘the jungle’ … because not only will it mean good ideas stand more chance of becoming good business, it also means people will have more access to things that could actually help them, without it destroying them in other ways.

As perfectly expressed by Clint, the founder of Corteiz …