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

How it is a testimony to belief, standards and stubbornness.

If you didn’t read it, you should – especially as the brand, right now, is suffering badly.

Now you may think this is where I say I was wrong …

That I mistook a moment of success for a story of sustainable excellence.

But you’d be wrong … because while the brand is suffering, it’s more to do with values versus ingredients.

You see at some point, the founder – David Tran – asked his son to take a bigger role in the company operations.

While William – and his sister, Tassie – grew up with the company their father founded, William had worked at a management consultancy and as such, thought he could modernize the approach that his father had built his business on.

Was this by investing in better machinery? No.

Was this by buying some of the suppliers they relied upon? No.

Was this by producing new products founded on Sriracha principles? No.

It was by trying to re-negotiate the contracts of their long-term partners and by replacing the ingredients used with cheaper alternatives.

That’s right … rather than make choices that could add to the potential of the business, he chose to exploit what the business already did.

Or said another way, he wanted to squeeze every possible penny of profit he could out of every possible inch of the business.

And the result of this?

Well, their long-term suppliers walked away.
Their product quality fell away.
And their customers walked all the way to their competitors.

So, what’s the point of this?

Well, it’s that we’re deep in the cult of optimsation. The common consensus success is defined by how much you can squeeze out of what you’ve got rather than grow to what you can become. Where standards are deemed as optional when offered the opportunity to make a teeny bit more money by lowering them.

And it’s this bullshit viewpoint that is at the root of so much bad in brands and business..

Of course, you have to manage costs.
Of course, business is hard and challenging.
And of course, you want to be open to new possibilities and opportunities.

But doing it in isolation, delusion or arrogance of any possible implication is bordering on psychotic … just like the fact that despite all the data and research they invest in, less and less companies seem to have a real appreciation or understanding of who their actual customers are, what’s going on in their lives, what they actually need, want and expect from them and what business they’re actually in.

Oh, they will say they do.
And they’ll use numbers to explain or justify choices and decisions.
But too often, there’s an underbelly of arrogance that customers will blindly accept – or take – whatever they want them to have. That they know more than the people they serve, so are free to do whatever they want that serves their own best interests and goals.

So, they start using lower standards of ingredients.
Or they make pack sizes smaller, while keeping prices the same.
Or they remove features and claim they’re doing it for ‘environmental’ reasons.
Or they find underhand ways to increase usage, like widening the bottle nozzle pour.
Or they claim their product is ‘healthy’ simply by changing pack design and/or serving sizes.

Always looking to shortcut or shortchange … justified and underpinned by an attitude that in business, success is awarded to those who can stretch or squeeze their customers and suppliers, regardless of what it destroys or costs.

That’s where we are folks.

That’s where the school of business is increasingly taking us too.

Optimise, Optimise. Optimise.

Nothing … absolutely nothing matters more than the quarterly result. Except maybe the corporate ego, which is why we end up with research done by bots … innovation designed by spreadsheets … marketing created by systems, rules and AI and decisions evaluated by the ability to optimize not liberate.

Or as my friend told me, “optimise yourself to commodification”.

As I’ve said for far too long… the only thing that differentiates business from competitors are the values you hold.

And when you allow them to be sold for a quick, temporary gain, then you don’t become the same as everyone else, you become worse. Because contrary to popular opinion – people don’t choose you simply because of your price, habit or convenience … but because of something the world of business consultant loves to dismiss as an unnecessary cost …

Standards.

Just ask Srircha, or any of the countless household companies/brands who have turned-to consultants to find ‘clever’ ways to boost business, even if it ends up being at the cost of everyone, except the C-Suite and Wall Street.