The David Strategy is a blog series that explains who pool and spa retailers can reinvent their business to become a "High Fidelity business," which is key to successfully battling our industry's version of Goliath — big box stores and online retailers. Past posts can be seen here.
Seth Godin wrote a fabulous book (I highly recommend you read it) called "Purple Cow". The premise is simple: You're a purple cow or you're not.
Think about it this way: Cows, after you've seen one, or two or ten, are boring. Now a purple cow, that would be something. With that in mind, "purple cow" describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive, exciting and flat-out unbelievable.
Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff — a lot of brown cows — but you can bet they will not forget a purple cow. And that's why in his book, Seth Godin urges you to put a purple cow into everything you build and everything you do to create something truly noticeable. For pool and spa retailers new and experienced, the purple cow idea offers a fresh perspective that can change the way you view your store.
In the David Strategy, the difference between a brown cow and a purple cow lies in the product selection choices you make or, frankly, don’t make! These choices, in each category, are your best options for your customers. But in far too many cases, pool and spa retailers have a weak product selection and an equally weak recommendation strategy. I believe this is often the result of two forces.
First, the company leaders have not yet made the connection between success for a pool and hot tub business in modern times and finding, selecting and recommending a continuously evolving range of differentiated and remarkable product and service solutions (aka the "Vitality Index”).
Second, products are too often purchased based on vendor relationships and not according to the needs of the business. This results in a multitude of weak brand and product choices for each need, which pushes your company into the Death Zone, and it's not clearly apparent to consumers what the primary recommendation is. As a reminder, the goal for pool and spa retailers is to fall into the PureWow #2 business design I outlined in this post; it indicates a business that sells differentiated products in a remarkable way. By putting your vendor relationships over your product selection, you're making it hard to deliver a consistently remarkable customer experience. And worse, it causes clutter in your store between brands, products and choices that make it confusing for everyone, even your staff.
Here is a powerful but simple idea that can help get you back on track and simplify options for your staff and customers so more focus can be placed on delivering your value proposition. It’s called, “Keep the Cannibals in the Family.”
Pool and hot tub owners choose to patronize to a professional to get the best advice in terms of how to look after their pool or hot tub. This includes water testing, problem-solving and the recommendation of products, systems and services that are best for them. I think the problem is that professionals are feeling beat by market forces and are unclear about their best course of action. (Again, it should be a PureWow #2 Strategy.) These store owners start to believe consumers only want the cheapest offering as opposed to the best value; an understandable thought given the commoditization of everything, including water testing, knowledge, product supply, etc. The David Strategy can help you turn all this on its head to your significant benefit.
If you did the “Red Dot” exercise with your teams (it's at the bottom of this story), it should be very apparent that much of what you stock and promote are “commodities.” Commodities are products that are easily found at cheaper, more convenient retail venues than yours. Shifting your businesses product selections to “remarkably innovative” new products is the first step in separating your business.
For example, it's likely a high proportion of your customers have an iPhone. To the iPhone user, it’s not just an appliance, it is so much more. It’s a statement! Very similar to the passion saltwater pool owners have for their pools. IPhone users CAN’T wait for the next version to come out. Consumers LOVE new and better. Why would it be different for their pool or hot tub? Something most consumers have an equal passion for. The answer is its not different. They would love your best in class recommendation, to explore new ways to elevate their backyard leisure experience to the next level. The conversation goes like this: “Dear Customer, if I could show you a way to take your backyard leisure experience to the next level, would you like to know more? Spend a moment with me and let me show you what I’m using on my pool (hot tub) right now. I think you would love it too!
I believe manufacturers have to take ownership for dampening the professional pool and hot tub pro’s lack of enthusiasm on new products. The introduction of "new" products and technologies that don’t provide real value, or are not thoroughly tested, has dampened retailers' spirit. I call this “green lipstick on a pig” products. Couple this with pros’s getting beaten down on price by internet offerings and big box retailers, and I think it gets us to where we are today. The issue here is that innovation has to be purposeful, differentiated and meaningful to consumers. Far too often, manufacturers are cutting corners, largely on cost, and simply repackaging or tweaking old technologies into new packaging. Successful new products typically are based on an unfulfilled or unrecognized consumer need, true innovation (which is often achieved by weaving emerging technologies), clever marketing and appropriate training.
So the takeaway here is to focus on shifting your business from a “brown cow” offering to a PureWow “purple cow” business offering. This offering provides a continuous flow of new, different and remarkable products for your customer to experience and use which elevates their pool and hot tub backyard leisure experience. Again, think back to your visit to the Bass Pro Sports Store: What is not remarkable in that store? It all starts with the product selections you make and a passion for finding and championing new, better and different products that afford your consumers addictive higher value from patronizing your business.
Once you’ve got your Purple Cow product selections right, you move onto creating purple cow customer experiences — a subject I'll explore in my next blog post.
