The Best Time to Launch a Product is Never and Now
The Business of Food
by Jennifer Barney
The Best Time to Launch a Product is Never and Now
2-min read
When is the right time to launch your brand? The answer is never and now. Never, because your product offering will never be perfect so waiting for perfect means never launching. And now because to optimize your product to perfection requires real in-market testing.
When I launched Barney Butter in 2006, Rex and I had 4 kids in grades 1,2,3 and 5. I already knew it was a great hostess gift and teacher gift but when our pool lady and kid’s tennis coach preferred I pay in Barney Butter than cash I said that’s it, I’m putting this in a store. We didn’t have a lot of time to contemplate if we had the perfect offering. I did what was necessary to sell it in and adapted from there.
I did tons of demos (in-store sampling – which will return post-Covid!) and listened to what people said. I quickly realized my product wasn’t for everyone (one lady in Berkeley came up to my station and started yelling “poison!”) It was for a very specific audience who wanted a premium nut butter that had the familiar taste and texture they grew up loving in conventional peanut butters. While sampling, people commented on the label, the name, the ingredients, the taste… all of it, and I adapted from there for my specific audience.
I zoned in on busy moms with LOHAS values (lifestyle of health and sustainability) who recognized almonds as a better nut for their family, or had a peanut allergic kid who spit out sunflower seed butter. I didn’t have money for focus groups so all my kids’ friends were my taste testers. Our house was kid central for every 6 – 10-year-old in the neighborhood. I kept all the competitor products in stock as well as Barney Butter. Kids have zero filter so all I had to do was observe. If kids ate it, I knew moms would buy it.
I see it all the time where founders keep their innovations hidden, working in dark basements awaiting a big reveal. They spend all their money on expensive packaging and branding before selling one unit.
Here’s my advice on starting out – be scrappy and nimble. Buy the least amount of materials you can and make the tiniest runs because something will change. Doesn’t matter what the volume discount is, it’s wasteful to throw inventory away and distracting to have to move old versions of products. Get your products to market in a small test, and plan to iterate often.
All my best,
Jennifer
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I'd love to hear from you - get in touch at jennifer@3rdandbroadway.com