The industry that I operate in pisses me off. On one end you have all the high-end competition who are so good at feeding you bullshit that you don’t realize that you are paying a premium for a brand name. And on the other end you have the low-cost competition, a bunch of mongrels that bank solely on the fact that the majority of the masses can’t afford the “high-quality” of the luxurious brands. One end of the spectrum makes you believe that you should aspire to the ideals they represent and the other remind you that you still haven’t gotten the promotion you were promised.
Both treat you like shit.
My industry, like many industries, has fooled you into thinking that quality and price are correlated: when one goes up, it must mean that the other is up there too. The punch line to their joke is that this is simply not true. There are very few differences in the quantum leaps between the low-end and the high-end, the difference is how they spin their respective messages to you.
Here is how you throw an industry under the bus: burn the damn house down.
What my company found out is that high-end product is not much more expensive than the “cheap” products, in terms of unit manufacturing cost. So, we decided to sell high-end products at a price that is not much higher than low-end products.
“But you’ve got to make a profit somehow, that’s why they are so expensive.”
Actually, when you are smart about which overhead costs are necessary, it becomes easy to reach solvency and still undercut the competition. The “premium” brands will now have to respond to the fact that their spin of what defines quality has been nothing but egotistical shenanigans. The “cheap” brands will now have to figure out how they can up the level of their game just to match what I offer to their customers.
Like in the Wizard of Oz, business takes an interesting twist when a company breaks rank and pulls back the curtain to reveal the fact that it’s all really just smoke and mirrors.
Now you have to be prepared for the entrenched organizations that bank on tricking their audience in order to extract cash to do everything in their power to bring you down. And in all likelihood, they may eventually bring you down (i.e.: they buy your company and disband it). But it doesn’t matter, because the market now knows the truth, they’ve seen my competition with their pants pulled down just long enough to see what’s really going on.
So what do you do if you are like me and like to see things burn but don’t know where to get started?
I’m glad you asked. Here’s my suggestion:
Pick an industry, any industry, where correlation between costs and price become disproportionately related as you move up in product quality. This means that companies are making more in unit profit for selling higher priced items because they manipulated you into thinking that there is something “extra” special. Here’s an example:
ABC Company sells widgets in 4 categories: Basic, Professional, Super Rad, and Premium. As you move up from Basic to Premium, you get more features and upgrades. Below is a list of how much it costs to make a widget, how much they charge and what their gross profit margin is:
Item | Cost to Make | Price | Gross Profit Margin |
Basic | $20 | $40 | 50% |
Professional | $25 | $60 | 54% |
Super Rad | $30 | $80 | 62% |
Premium | $35 | $100 | 65% |
See how the company makes more money off of you for selling Premium compared with Basic or Professional? Want to pull back the curtain? Start offering a Premium quality product at a Professional price level. Marketing will be easy, just show on your website that everything is similar between your widgets and those of ABC Company and explain to your customers that the reason why you are doing is simply because ABC Company has been lying to them and you think that’s wrong. Say hello to the sound of stolen market share, customer loyalty and an opportunity to cash in on honesty. Is it me or is it drafty in here?
That, my friend, is how you throw an industry under the bus.
Happy burning,
The Phantom CEO
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