How original can you get?
They even used the blue and pink color theme.
I know I promised you’ll learn how to turn $1 into $6 every day.
Tell you what: I won’t try to confuse you. I’ll just give you the facts and let you make up your own mind:
| White Sugar | Delicious. Healthy Lemonade Mix |
|---|---|
|
Benefits:
Nutrition Facts INGREDIENTS: SUGAR |
Benefits:
Nutrition Facts INGREDIENTS: SUGAR, |
Delicious, healthy lemonade mix is produced by Kraft Foods. They buy $1.03 of sugar created by somebody, have somebody else pour it into a cardboard tube with a teaspoon of goodness, and sell to somebody else for $3.00 who sells it to you and me for $5.99.
The lesson: You don’t need a product or service to sell. You only need brass balls. But even those can be somebody else’s. Sweet.
Have you ever done something similar to this? Share your experience: Post your comment below:
Related posts:
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
The moral of the story? Just buy the sugar and mix it with 8 oz. of water and a couple squirts of lemon juice.
Tony,
Maybe the moral is a home-grown solution … or maybe it goes way deeper and is more sinister than you think. Tony or anyone else: what do you think $1 into $6 is all about?
Bill: I think it is about consumers willing to pay whatever it is to satisfy a need, and the chain of profiteers that are getting to service that need. That said, having the balls to pull this off takes money or leverage in more traditional times. Today, using other people’s money is getting more difficult to pull off for your ventures, but there is still private capital available for the right idea. If any of our readers has an idea that could take a $1 and turn it into $6 and satisfy a need, get your business plan together and contact me because I’ve got “unconventional” lenders that would love to hear about it.
Roger, you’re on the right track. The more you stay away from tying up capital as long-term fixed assets (like an auto manufacturing plant) and keep as much of it as working capital (i.e., your current assets less your current liabilities), the more leverage you can create. Technology helps you do that. So do informational products. And so does marketing.
And folks reading this reply to Roger Poulin’s comment just above about other people’s money - OPM - being less readily available and wanting to see business plans, take careful note: Roger is a serious player in finance, selling businesses for $10 million, and conducting national market rollouts of high-tech consumer telecommunications retail stores. In short, he has access to heavy-hitting investors.
buy wholesale and sell it to different country for 3 times the price brilliant
are you trying to say that if you narrow down the amount of different sorts of handling of the product and not adding extra “inappropriate” products, customers are more inclined to purchase it as it is natural as well as appealing? recreating a version of a product by making it better, healthier and more appealing to the eye..
Hi Tailah,
Thanks for your question.
You mention very interesting ways to differentiate a product.
But the post is about having a product in the first place —
which for many people can be a challenge in itself.
The post hides your answer in plain sight:
“The lesson: You don’t need a product or service to sell.”
On a higher level, if you start looking at the nature of
many physical products, you realize how little is produced
by the seller itself. Who produced the lemonade product’s
sugar, additives, cardboard, plastic for the top, and colored
ink printing? Kraft Foods did not do it.
What I see is the basic premise, its not about what the consumer is actually getting, its about the solution they receive.
A consumer doesn’t want sugar and some additives, they want a lemonade drink.
Provide the solution (and I don’t mean the drink!). Understand the problem.
The trick is to understand consumer needs. (or what they think they need!)
Our clients don’t want a cleaner, they want more spare time.
So I sell spare time.
Tony,
This is a fantastic and interesting take on “turning $1 into $6″
and directly connects to a later post discussing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Thanks for your good comment.
Great discussion topic. I like Tony’s post about the perceived need for a product. Find out what the consumer wants, and market towards that need.
My clients don’t want an insurance policy, they want peace of mind (OK, they may be forced to buy their peace of mind because it’s required by law, but you get my point).
It is perception vs reality, and it is what all advertising and marketing is about at the base. Yes, I am a veteran from the offline world of advertising. Can’t wait to see and read more.
Hi Create Your First Website,
Thanks for your comment and glad to have an offline advertiser as a Ripper Marketing subscriber …
Bill
PS: Great landing page on your website.
Positioning………….anything can be positioned to sell if communicated properly. Kraft positioned themselves as an alternative to soda. They communicated their product as a “healthy alternative”. They created the need and filled it at the same time.
Shadow Seller,
Great points in your post: Glad you picked up on positioning and marketing a product or service as an “alternative,” and how that both creates a need and fills it.
Readers: If you want to know what “positioning” is from the masters, I highly suggest getting a copy of the marketing classic, “Positioning: the battle for your mind” by marketers Al Ries and Jack Trout. Back in the 1960s, they helped the Volkswagen Beetle’s introduction to the US with their famous campaign, “Think small.” They’ve also published other interesting books, including, “Marketing Warfare” — determining your marketing strategy (defense, offense, guerilla hit-and-run) depending on your position in the industry.
Shadow Seller, thanks for your post.
Bill
Ok, so the moral of the story is to get others to do the work & u benefit from saving on all the costs involved to create the product?
Kathy,
It’s not getting others to do the work and then save on costs …
If you think of what retailers do — take someone’s else product and merely mark it up and merchandise it — then you get to the essence: you don’t need to have your own product. Kraft buys sugar, adds lemon flavoring to it, pours it into a cardboard tube, brands the sugar as Countrytime Lemonade … and voila: $1 of sugar turns into $6.
Kraft does have to do work: combine other people’s stuff and repackage it — then have the sheer audacity to sell it at a huge markup.
Bill
I believe that is is that easy once you find the need and determine a way to fulfill that need, the true question is how to find the need and also having the proper fulfillment that will satisfy the need, I also agree with the above posts that having the audacity to mark up the product is a step that many will struggle with due to the disbelief of consumer vulnerability!
Great Topic!
Shane
Target market - being parents rather than everyone for a product with more perceived value enables the price to be 6 times higher in the consumers eyes. I love this lesson thank you Bill.
Sugar is a commodity and expected to be cheap. Parents with kids frazzling them all day just looking for some peace and a healthy drink for their kids would be happy to pay $6 for that peace and perceived nutrition?
Oh and the comparative marketing is a nice touch too. ‘less sugar than soda, 40% less than leading sodas’ Great for the parents conscience. Pay more than you would for a can of soda because it is healthy and you can make many more cups of this beverage.
These are great perspectives, Belinda – especially in bringing the parent’s perspective to the whole mess of sugar and sugary drinks – thanks for your unique contribution