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Change Always Brings Opportunity – Embrace It and Grow Your Business!
If you’re like me, you do a lot of online shopping. Things you can order online today were unthinkable not long ago. Many products that were shipped in large quantities, in pallets or boxes, are now being shipped individually – and not always successfully.
Let me tell you a story. A few years ago I wanted some epoxy paint for my garage floor. My wife (ever the bargain hunter) noticed that Amazon (not a sponsor) had the best price compared to local big-box home improvement stores. At those stores, gallons of paint were shipped in trucks in pallets and offloaded to shelves where they (mostly) appeared undamaged. Sure, a few had a dent or two, but for the most part the paint cans arrived at the point of sale intact.
Enter Amazon and online shopping. Now you can order a gallon of paint – or epoxy paint – online and it can be shipped right to your door! That’s great – except when it isn’t. The online shopping process is a lot like the luggage handling process at the airport. Indeed, some of those companies also are involved in online “fulfillment.” We’ve all seen and experienced our luggage going through a clothes-washer like experience and exiting sometimes the worse for wear.
Imagine how ordinary gallons of epoxy paint would do in that environment. Not well. We received a number of gallon paint cans that were damaged, some nearly empty! I can only imagine that there is out there, somewhere, an Amazon van with an epoxy floor (and maybe some packages still stuck to it). Needless to say, my wife reported this to Amazon, and the cans were replaced. We noted that the later-arriving cans had a plethora of metal clips to secure them during their rough trip to our doorstep – and they arrived intact.
Recently a bottle of shampoo arrived with an odd sticker over the cap – “The Gripper” (R) seal. This product securely prevented the shampoo bottle from opening during its rough-and-tumble trip through Amazon’s fulfillment chain to our doorstep. This was a product that was clearly not necessary or widely necessary just a few years ago – but here it is and likely will be used for many years to come.
The Bottom Line
Change brings opportunity – always keep your eyes open for new products that other new products create a market for – and develop that product! Then reach out to The Patent Baron to protect it. I put a lock on your ideas (R).
