What Are Your Fins?

Over the festive period a cooking innovation tickled my new product antennae.

Always keen to see how a self-styled disruptor promotes themselves, the pot as seen above on the right is positioned as far superior - in one respect an astonishing 80% so - to the old school option on the left.

To the extent that they pitch it, rather inevitably, as a Le Creuset killer.

If you take aim at someone, why not the most differentiated major player?

Given the established luxury brand they chose, that's quite the Enemy Building.

As most reports put it, they "threaten to topple Le Creuset's 'cast-iron' grip on the cooking market".

There's an old adage that no-one buys efficiency.

[I've put one such recent tweet thread alluding to this at the the foot.]

I can see why the press has parroted the launch pr. Yet my experience is that the reasons they lap it up and what compels those treasured first purchasers are seldom the same.

Efficiency is indeed often too abstract. Are thermodynamics really the path to a breakthrough? Is faster heat distribution really such a factor? Does the resultant energy cost saving really push purchase?

Each may well apply.

Time will tell, but when those that buy first do so, they'll tell themselves - and their friends and family - that it's because it's better all round.

A subjective view which'll encompass the rocket science for sure. But just as likely, the fact that it is the new shiny thing. The different thinker. The shaker-upper. As the inventor says, somewhat incredulously;

"Respectfully, we don’t think we are competing with legacy brands. For context, our innovation design bears similarity to how Apple disrupted Nokia and Blackberry with their iPhone touchscreen innovation."

It could be that someone at this FireUp Cookware startup has segmented their target market. Not in the traditional way, but on the likelihood of who buys first.

Who Everett Rogers' general Diffusion of Innovation term of Early Adopters was in part coined for. What Frank Bass termed Innovators. How Geoffrey Moore evolved the Technology Adoption Curve label Enthusiasts and Visionaries.

So it could just be, for instance, they've decided their ideal first customers are anyone that bought an iPhone to replace a Nokia or Blackberry. Bit sweeping, but it's a vibe, I guess.

They'll know how many Le Creuset pots shift each year. They'll know how many round their price point sell too. They'll have an idea why they get bought, particularly given the products' long life.

And they'll have matched this with production and distribution plans.

For a volume that returns on investment. Providing a noble profit. Which is sustainable.

Yet I can't shake off the knowledge that finding those first paying punters is too often not understood to be a totally different pursuit.

There are those that buy the latest of whatever kitchen marvel. The science-minded sparked by anything gliding such "fins" from biomimicry to rocketmimicry. And those who simply think the 'jet engines to cookware leap' is too cool to miss.

There's even this graph among their website promos;

Given that the claimed efficiency leads to numbers you could be fooled into thinking you lead on them. Yet your early birds won't be motivated by them. Not as much as the glamour of being a rocket scientist.

That's what I think you ought lead on to begin with. Later buyers will be moved by the figures. Those vital first cohort, much less so.

It's the same in your B2B new product world. Have you made that distinction?

There is very limited evidence to suggest that people are motivated by efficiency. But it's always the pitch from tech companies.

— Tom Goodwin (@tomfgoodwin) May 29, 2024