"Warns of Margin Threat as Niche Brands Disrupt Industry" (parte II)

Há um mês a parte I.

Agora, outro texto sobre os nichos e sobre o seu poder em "Niche is the New Black in China’s Luxury Landscape":

"Over the last few years, a quiet but steady shift has been taking place among Chinese luxury shoppers. Big logos are no longer a priority, and in their place, niche high-end labels and boutique products have been reshaping the retail landscape and are now becoming the new signifiers of luxury consumption.
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This swing has been propelled by changes within the market itself, which has become younger and increasingly more sophisticated.
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they’re also looking for authenticity, originality, and a sense of personality. Niche brands often capture all that.”
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“The smaller you are the easier it is to have a one-to-one conversation,” she said. “As a niche brand, you have to be better than the larger brands at placing the consumer first. [Moi ici: Trabalhar para a miudagem versus trabalhar com o Miguel ou Maria] The more consumer-centric the better. The other very important attribute of being niche is the team you build and how their passion translates into a more special experience for the consumer. [And then there is] the power of the consumers themselves. They have become our most important ambassadors. From the day they discover us, they learn and engage until they become part of who we are.”
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“Many of the major brands have started looking similar, and innovation has slowed,” she explained, “while smaller labels are offering something novel and exciting to the market. They have a story to share and are captivating customers with that story or journey. Shoppers want more, and niche brands are able to connect on an intimate level with them.” [Moi ici: Este sublinhado final faz-me lembrar este postal ""-Tu não és meu irmão de sangue!""]

Mateus 13:9

Recordo "Mongo a bater à porta. Tão bom!!!" e:

"O artigo é um exemplo da tendência que enquadramos no fenómeno a que chamamos de Mongo. Os gigantes, emaranhados com o seu umbigo, muito preocupados com a eficiência e os custos, tentando ser tudo para todos, abrem as oportunidades a novos actores."

Agora encontro "When Patients Become Innovators":

"Patients are increasingly able to conceive and develop sophisticated medical devices and services to meet their own needs — often without any help from companies that produce or sell medical products.
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Unlike traditional producers, who start with market research and R&D, free innovation begins with consumers identifying something they need or want that is not available in the marketplace. To address this, they invest their own funds, expertise, and free time to create a solution. Rather than seeking to protect their designs from imitators, as commercial innovators do, we found that more than 90% of consumer innovators make their designs available to everyone for free.
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The ability of patients to develop new medical products to serve their own needs is growing, and we expect the system to become stronger over time for several important reasons. First, the DIY design tools that patient innovators need are becoming cheaper and increasingly capable. People with fairly rudimentary engineering skills can acquire powerful design software that can run on an ordinary personal computer either for free or for very little money. Second, the materials and tools used to build products from DIY designs are also becoming both cheaper and increasingly capable."

Recordo também "Os humanos são todos diferentes":

“There is no perfect product, because there is no perfect patient” and “It’s a good product, but it’s not right for everyone.”

Recordo também esta leitura de 2007:

"In 1970, 5% of global patents were issued to small entrepeneurs, while today the number is around one-third and rising. When P&G realized this, it saw that its old model of purely internal innovation was suboptimal. Why not tap these entrepeneurs and scientists?"

E esta outra de 2011:

"The mass market — which made average products for average people was invented by organizations that needed to keep their factories and systems running efficiently.
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Stop for a second and think about the backwards nature of that sentence.
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The factory came first. It led to the mass market. Not the other way around."

 E deixo-vos com os industrialistas e a sua tendência para a suckiness.

Como aumentar a facturação quando não se pode aumentar a produção por falta de pessoas?

Como relacionar "Falta de mão de obra desespera empresas" e esta série "O que aí vem! (parte II)" e parte I, com "O que são os custos de oportunidade" e estes canários na mina (""Warns of Margin Threat as Niche Brands Disrupt Industry""; ""profecia fácil do "hollowing", ou "radioclubização", de como uma marca forte e genuína se transforma numa carcaça, num aristocrata arruinado, fruto de deixarem os muggles à solta""; ""Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XIII)" e "Será o efeito de Mongo?"

E ainda aquele sublinhado de "Acerca da Micam"?

Cada vez mais sinais de que a ascensão dos nichos, o avanço de Mongo, começa a fazer mossa no modelo paradigmático do século XX, o trabalhar para o interior da caixa da normalidade onde estava a maioria dos clientes: o Normalistão:

Em Mongo, também chamado de Estranhistão, a maioria das pessoas não quer ser tratada como plancton, e há que trabalhar para todo o espectro de clientes/nichos porque há cada vez mais gente fora da caixa da normalidade:

A demografia por um lado, e a fiscalidade e o assalto das gerações mais velhas ao bolso das mais novas por outro (ainda esta semana li "Cerca de 90 mil portugueses emigraram em 2017" - lembram-se disto ser motivo de rasgar de vestes no tempo da troika) vão criar um desafio para as empresas: como aumentar a facturação quando não se pode aumentar a produção por falta de pessoas?

Ou subir na escala de valor, ou mudar de ramo, ou deslocalizar para África.

Continua.

"Warns of Margin Threat as Niche Brands Disrupt Industry"

Isto é um bálsamo para o autor deste blogue porque vem suportar as suas ideias à revelia do mainstream e da tríade. Recordar "profecia fácil do "hollowing", ou "radioclubização", de como uma marca forte e genuína se transforma numa carcaça, num aristocrata arruinado, fruto de deixarem os muggles à solta"

"Shares in Beiersdorf dropped more than 10 percent on Wednesday after the maker of Nivea skin cream warned that its operating margin would fall in 2019 as it invests to compete with niche brands that are disrupting the sector.
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Beiersdorf was the latest consumer goods company to reset profit expectations for 2019 after German rival Henkel and Colgate-Palmolive last month, and following Kraft Heinz's write-down last week.
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the future of mass-market labels was being challenged by the rise of small, disruptive brands as consumers increasingly expect more personalised products and services."

 Basta recordar os artigos relacionados com os marcadores até em baixo. Como não relacionar aquele "expect more personalised products and services" com a metáfora do plankton... a vida está difícil para a suckiness dos gigantes: "Mongo, micro-marcas, plancton, suckiness e emprego"

Trechos retirados de "Nivea Maker Warns of Margin Threat as Niche Brands Disrupt Industry"

Contrarian!

A propósito de "Robôs e outras coisas que vale a pena discutir" e de "“Robôs” eliminam 1,1 milhões de empregos em Portugal até 2030, avisa estudo da CIP" fico com a habitual sensação de quem escreve estes textos e estes relatórios não vive no mesmo mundo que eu.

Esta semana em conversa com empresa metalomecânica senti alguma incomodidade quando abordamos o robô de soldadura. Adquirido como a última coca-cola no meio do deserto tem-se revelado um destruidor de produtividade. O mesmo tema que já tenho apanhado no calçado, quando tentam introduzir robôs.

Há dias citei aqui um texto sobre os robôs e a automação na Toyota, ""Anyone can buy robots" o pior é o resto":

"Only those robots that work really well and are cost-effective still have a chance of keeping their jobs at Toyota under Kawai. He explains: After looking at the robots that weld together the base of the Toyota Land Cruiser, he noticed that the welding seam was too wide and had a few defects. "I shut down the entire robot line and I said: 'We'll do it manually again,'" says Kawai. Unlike the robots, human workers could see where a groove to be welded was one millimeter wide and where it was only half a millimeter wide and could then react flexibly. "The use of welding wire alone has decreased by 10%," he says with pride."

O que encontro sistematicamente, no calçado e na metalomecânica, são empresas que compram robôs a pensar que só precisam de os instalar e, depois, só precisam de tirar as pessoas e a produtividade sobe.

Por exemplo, esquecem-se das matérias-primas... concluía a empresa metalomecânica. Continuamos a comprar o tubo onde sempre o compramos, só que agora com o robô... se um tubo vem ligeiramente ovalizado é logo um problema. O robô faz a soldadura, mas ela fica imperfeita e tem de ser corrigida por um soldador. Resultado, produção mais lenta e mantemos o humano. Se queremos "mais qualidade, mais rigor" no tubo, temos de meter alguém a fazer controlo da qualidade, a usar equipamento de medida mais sofisticado, e eventualmente a comprar matéria-prima mais cara.

O mesmo no calçado. Trabalham com peles. Pele é uma matéria-prima natural, quem garante espessuras dentro de limites exigidos por um robô? Recomendo a leitura de "Os Robots na Industria do Calçado. Muitas vantagens, algumas dificuldades."

Outro factor que é esquecido nas análises, lá de cima e nas outras, é que nós estamos a fugir do século XX, nós estamos a fugir do Normalistão e a embrenharmo-nos em Mongo, o Estranhistão. Recordo:

• Coisa de loucos (Maio de 2018)
• Seru (parte III) (Julho de 2017)
• Não acredito nestas relações simplistas (Julho de 2017)
• Cuidado com a automatização (Abril de 2017)
• Para recordar... (Outubro de 2016) de onde retiro:

"In principle, the production of virtually any component or assembly operation could be robotized and moved to high-wage countries—but only so long as demand is great enough, and design specifications stable enough, to justify huge scale and hundreds of millions, if not billions, in upfront investments." [Moi ici: Mongo mina logo dois dos pressupostos - tamanho da procura e estabilidade. Mongo é terra de tribos e de modas, terra de velocidade e instabilidade. Terra de gente que não quer ser tratada como plancton. Terra de gente que não se sente atraída pela suckiness.]

• Mongo, diversidade e o fim da mass production (Julho de 2016) 
• "mas o essencial é que o mercado de massas desapareceu" (Agosto de 2015) de onde retiro:

"People will be surprised - “[the use of robots] won’t be as disruptive as the hype today would suggest,” he continues.
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“The more a robot can do, the more it will cost – humans should be able to still be less expensive than robots. Plus robots for the foreseeable future will have to specialise, and we humans don’t – we’re more flexible.”

•  Um mesmo processo automatizado é demasiado rígido para Mongo (Abril de 2014) de onde retiro:

"Toyota has found that the race to reduce the human element can end up making processes less efficient."

Por que é que esta corrente de pensamento não é mais divulgada? Vende menos, por ser mais optimista e menos alarmista?

"90 of the 100 top brands had all lost market share"

"A recent report by the consultancy BCG documented a general decline in sales among consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies in the United States during 2017, with mid-sized and large companies losing market share and small companies increasing theirs. Consultancy Catalina also revealed that 90 of the 100 top brands had all lost market share. In dollar terms, small players—defined as those with sales less than $1 billion—grabbed approximately $15 billion in sales from their larger peers between 2012 and 2017."

Mongo não é para gigantes!

Trecho retirado de "What Big Consumer Brands Can Do to Compete in a Digital Economy"

R&D e plancton

Mongo vai ser cada vez mais gigantes-unfriendly, condenados à suckiness:

• por um lado, cada vez mais tribos e mais aguerridas;
• por outro, a crença na quota de mercado como o indicador mais importante.

"In an industry analysis, we found that the consumer packaged goods sector’s biggest R&D spenders saw no appreciable impact on revenue. That’s troubling for companies whose growth has plateaued over the past five years, as new competitors have challenged established brands.
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At the company level, however, the picture is more nuanced: Even though (true to the industry average) companies that spent heavily on R&D — such as P&G and Unilever — saw no measurable impact on sales, some outfits that spent less on R&D showed a significant positive correlation.
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It turns out, as economist E.F. Schumacher wrote, small really can be beautiful. Of course, incremental innovation — reaping healthy returns with small, iterative improvements — isn’t a new idea.
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But conventional management wisdom, based on years of research, still holds that R&D productivity depends on industrial might: Big companies can spend more on innovation, and as a result, they innovate more — and better. In the consumer products world, at least, our analysis suggests that’s not the case.
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Despite P&G’s huge R&D investment — more than $38 billion from 1998 to 2017, compared with Reckitt Benckiser’s $2 billion over the same period — P&G’s outlay has reaped fewer rewards on a key measure: While P&G spent more than 3% of its annual revenue on R&D compared with 1.5% for Reckitt Benckiser, P&G’s sales grew at a compound annual rate of 3.4% while Reckitt Benckiser’s sales grew almost three times faster, at 9% per year.
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How do we explain our findings? One factor may be that P&G and Reckitt Benckiser seem to embody different philosophies of innovation.
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We see the approach favored by big consumer goods companies like P&G and Unilever as analogous to Isaac Newton’s third law: They behave as if for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, they expect big returns from big investments, so they chase blockbusters.
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Contrast that with what we call a Lorenzian approach to R&D investment, which has parallels to the work of MIT mathematician Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory. When examining weather patterns, Lorenz discovered that small actions could have large consequences. A butterfly flapping its wings could lead to the formation of a tornado. Like a weather system that amplifies the impact of a fluttering insect, a complex system of companies, customers, competitors, suppliers, and influencers can amplify or diminish the impact of an innovation. In such a world, big ideas can die, and small ones can thrive, as they do at Reckitt Benckiser.
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The company doesn’t have a big R&D budget nor a staff of laureled scientists. So it opts to spend small but focus on marginal improvements to its best-selling brands. Reckitt Benckiser starts with deep consumer research to determine how its best brands can be improved and how much more consumers would be willing to pay. From a technical point of view, its innovations are incremental. [Moi ici: Desta forma a inovação na P&G aponta para produtos que possam ser vendidos a todos, a preços competitivos, já a inovação na Reckitt Benckiser é capaz de ser mais dirigida para o que permite fazer subir os preços, ou pelo menos estar menos vulnerável à competição pelo preço]

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Reckitt Benckiser’s R&D projects are less risky and far less costly than those of its bigger competitors. But the company sets an ambitious performance target for each one. It expects a certain percentage of its sales each year to come from new products or better versions of existing ones, and its market-facing executives are rewarded financially when the company hits or exceeds those targets. This pay-for-performance incentive, in turn, motivates the company’s personnel to rally behind R&D-improved products and drive them into the marketplace.
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Make more small bets and fewer big ones. If Newtonians are going to continue to spend heavily on R&D (and in many cases, they should), they need to invest better. This means cutting back on big bets offering very questionable potential returns. Instead, they should focus on smaller bets that are based on a deep understanding of (1) consumers’ desires, (2) the significant value a small innovation can add, and (3) the system of retailers and competitors in which the innovation will be introduced."

Aquele "deep understanding" combina bem com uma outra leitura recente, “This Is Marketing” de Seth Godin:

“We’ve gone from all of us being everyone to all of us being no one.
But that’s okay, because the long tail of culture and the media and change doesn’t need everyone any longer. It’s happy with enough.
Which us?
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In “People like us do things like this,” the “us” matters. The more specific, the more connected, the tighter the “us,” the better. [Moi ici: Mas os gigantes precisam de escala, não podem tratar individualmente, por isso a metáfora do plancton]
What the marketer, the leader, and the organizer must do as their first job is simple: define “us.”

Trechos retirados de "The Promise of Targeted Innovation"

O futuro das marcas

Não há 2 pessoas iguais.

O que é que uma pessoa compra quando compra algo?

Compra a coisa ou compra o que a coisa faz por si?

E se compra o que a coisa faz por si, que investimento emocional representa o resultado do que a coisa faz por si?

“People don’t want what you make
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They want what it will do for them. They want the way it will make them feel. And there aren’t that many feelings to choose from.
In essence, most marketers deliver the same feelings. We just do it in different ways, with different services, products, and stories. And we do it for different people in different moments.
If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile. The thing you sell is simply a road to achieve those emotions, and we let everyone down when we focus on the tactics, not the outcomes. Who’s it for and what’s it for are the two questions that guide all of our decisions.”(1)

Imaginem o potencial de diferenciação entre coisas. Depois, imaginem o potencial de diferenciação entre o que as coisas fazem pelas pessoas.

Agora imaginem o trajecto que fizemos desde o auge do século XX e do sucesso das marcas grandes até ao advento de Mongo e da revolta dos que não querem ser tratados como plancton. No entanto, há coisas, nesta fase da minha vida, nas quais pouco invisto emocionalmente e, por isso, sobre as quais não me importo de ser tratado como plancton. Preciso delas e quero pagar o mínimo possível.

Duas variáveis importantes: "a pessoa" e "a fase actual da sua vida".
Há 10 anos dificilmente daria mais de 30 euros por um par de sapatos, hoje posso dar mais de 60 euros por um par de sapatos. Hoje, posso ir a uma prateleira e comprar uma esferográfica, mas prefiro gastar mais do dobro e comprar uma caneta de gel Pilot G-1. Quantas vezes comprei embalagens, cheguei a casa e fui criticado porque não vi na composição que tinham óleo de girassol, ou edulcorantes, ou... e fui ficando mais alertado para o tema.

As pessoas mudam ou podem ser levadas a mudar. Tudo depende das estórias que ouvem e das estórias que querem escrever sobre si próprias.

Quando leio "Amazon’s Merciless Assault on Brands" não posso deixar de concordar com estes trechos:

"Which brings us to what I call brand devolution, a process in which some consumer packaged goods will break loose from the brands that made them seem special and revert to the primordial ooze from whence they came. No more need for a brand story. Just the thing, unfettered, a correction of sorts. A battery is a battery is a battery.
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Will all brands ultimately devolve? Will we return to a world in which every product reverts to its generic self? No, of course not. That’s the good news, especially for people like me, who help products find true purpose via authentic stories. And thus we close with a paradox: In the future, brand will no longer matter — except when it does. If a product’s story is compelling enough to truly differentiate, then that story will continue to resonate. If it doesn’t, it won’t."

E não devemos esquecer que estamos rodeados de marcas que não passam de aristocratas arruinados, carcaças ôcas que ainda vão enganando muita gente.

(1) Trecho retirado de “This Is Marketing” de Seth Godin

Mongo, micro-marcas, plancton, suckiness e emprego

Este texto, "How a creative army of micro producers drive Korean street style and influence fashion’s direction", acredito, é uma boa descrição do que iremos viver com mais frequência e naturalidade à medida que Mongo se instalar:

[bo-se] "the term came to mean any low-quality clothing. In the internet age it has a different meaning: highly customisable clothing ordered online, and made possible by an enterprising micro-brand producer/sewing shop that can handle small orders.
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In outlet malls such as those in the Dongdaemun shopping district of Seoul, shop owners hawk smartly designed, trendy items selected from hundreds of tiny design-and-production shops. These are “brands” only in the sense they want to develop and maintain a reputation among the shop owners who curate their store collections for consumers.
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The shop owners tend to want the edgiest, trendiest, and highest quality clothing they can get.
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The micro-brand producers have tiny operations that cannot handle large orders on the scale of a fast-fashion giant such as H&M. So the supply of a typical design is limited and its production run short, allowing producers to switch to making new items in response to the whims of consumers. This means a design is only available for a fraction of a fashion season
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This system of micro producers making small batches of a design that is only in stores for a matter of weeks gives the clothes a uniqueness and encourages producers to be creative because the industry is so competitive. Anything that looks good and will sell has a chance to shine, however briefly."

Não se chega ao futuro mudando uma variável e mantendo todas as outras constantes. Tudo muda e muda ao mesmo tempo!

Comparem os clientes destas micro-marcas com o plancton dos anos 50, 60, 70, ... e a suckiness dos gigantes.

BTW, agora relacionem tudo isto com o emprego em Mongo.

“We should stop trying to make things so mass appealing”

"“If you’re a marketer or a brand representative, or if you’re trying to build a business, you need to understand that we are talking about feelings most of the time,” said Saint John. “And that’s what we in the 21st century modern world need to figure out: how to connect to our consumers through feelings.”
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In fact, Saint John said that feelings are comparably important to business models and strategies as data and statistics. Instead of relying solely on hard numbers and analyses, she recommended the audience to assess how their customers react to their products and services as these reactions are what would resonate with them and ultimately market the brand.
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A feelings-driven brand also has to move away from trying to appease everyone and making it more personal. She recommended treating the business as if it were a person with its own feelings, behaviors and reactions.
“We should stop trying to make things so mass appealing,” said Saint John. “Make them (the customers) connect to someone in a way that if they were your friend, they would understand.”

Na linha de:

• Aproveitar tudo para fugir do lado racional
• "in the future they’ll be about the heart"
• E porque não somos plankton (parte VII)
• "Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XV)
• Plankton?

Trechos retirados de "Feelings, Not Logic: Insights from Bozoma St. John in Digicon 2018"

Qual é a identidade?

Há anos que escrevo aqui que Mongo, um mundo de tribos apaixonadas, não vai ser fácil para as empresas grandes. Recordo, por exemplo:

• "-Tu não és meu irmão de sangue!"
• Uma novela sobre Mongo (parte X)
• Sou de outra opinião

Uma empresa grande que queira servir a tribo vermelha, vai descobrir que não vai ser bem vista pela tribo azul, e vice-versa. E Mongo não aprecia a simetria: Não é imponentemente que se muda.

Ontem, em linha com isto, descobri este texto "No Matter Your Game, Ultimately This 1 Thing Separates You From The Pack":

""The toughest thing is to have an identity."
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It was an insight with implications and value reaching far beyond a single team, pursuit, or time. His point was this - no matter your assets or the odds, there is something deeply powerful about knowing and consciously seeking to cultivate who you are, an investment that pays dividends in how you show up to do whatever it is you do.
...
The New 21st Century Game Plan: Cultural Clarity
Ever-shifting conditions now characterize every environment in which we work, play, and live, and because they do, adaptability is what we most need. What enables it? While many things certainly come into play, at the heart of any successful team is a strong and clear culture. And at the heart of a robust and vibrant culture is identity, both individual and collective. It sounds simple, but somehow we are missing it.
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A 2017 study found that 70 percent of companies will eventually face the impediment of unengaged employees. In that study, a lack of transparency and unclear goals and roles were identified as culprits. But think further, beyond the stats and the typical commentary. Each of these reasons is a symptom of the larger issue of unclear identity."

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XV)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X, parte XI, parte XII, parte XIII e parte XIV.

“By the end of the twentieth century P&G had scaled up to a behemoth, offering more than three hundred brands and raking in yearly revenue of $37 billion. P&G was one of the world’s corporate superpowers.
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In 2016 analyst firm CB Insights published a graphic showing all the ways unscaled companies were attacking P&G. [Moi ici: Por que não gostamos de ser tratados como plancton] It looks like a swarm of bees taking down a bear. In that rendering P&G no longer appears to be a monolithic scaled-up company that has built up powerful defenses against upstarts; instead, it is depicted as a series of individual products, each vulnerable to small, unscaled, agile, AI-driven, product-focused, entrepreneurial companies.
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CBI called the overall phenomenon the “unbundling of P&G.” It is as clear an indication as any of what big corporations face in an era that favors economies of unscale over economies of scale. Small unscaled companies can challenge every piece of a big company, often with products or services more perfectly targeted to a certain kind of buyer—products that can win against mass-appeal offerings. If unscaled competitors can lure away enough customers, economies of scale will work against the incumbents as fewer units move through expensive, large-scale factories and distribution systems—a cost burden not borne by unscaled companies.
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Over the past hundred years, as the era of scale unfolded, small companies of course continued to exist, and many prospered even as they stayed small. Small business was the US economy’s underlying strength throughout the scaling age. In 2010, according to the US Census, the nation had about 30 million small businesses and only 18,500 companies that employed more than five hundred people.
However, in an era when economies of scale usually prevailed, when a scaled-up company competed directly against a small business, the small business usually lost. Just think of all the small-town Main Street retailers Walmart bulldozed over the past twenty-five years.
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We will see the big-beats-small dynamic reverse as we unscale. Over the next ten to twenty years companies that relied on scale as a competitive advantage will increasingly find themselves defanged. They will be at a disadvantage against focused unscaled businesses. Large corporations won’t disappear, just as small business didn’t disappear in the last era. But the big companies that don’t change their model will see their businesses erode, and some of today’s giants will fall. [Moi ici: Nada podem fazer contra a suckiness, têm de a abandonar]”

Excerto de: Taneja, Hemant, Maney, Kevin. “Unscaled”.

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XIII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X, parte XI e parte XII.

"The problem with GE, it appears, is that it has become a square-peg business in a round-hole world. It’s not that it’s gotten lazy, but that it invested heavily in getting better and better at things people care less and less about. That’s a problem we rarely talk about. We like to believe that success breeds more success, but the truth is that success often breeds failure.
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From a certain point of view, GE did everything right. It continually improved its operations, brought in outside experts to shake things up and transformed its product development process. It also made strategically sensible acquisitions in an industry it knew well. But the whole time it was getting better and better at things customers wanted less and less. That’s how you get disrupted.
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It’s a fairly simple equation. If you don’t explore, you won’t discover. If you don’t discover you won’t invent. And if you don’t invent, you will be disrupted."

Pensar na GE é pensar na Procter & Gamble e numa série de gigantes. De que serve a escala quando as pessoas não querem ser tratadas como plankton?

Trechos retirados de "How GE Got Disrupted"

Como se compete num mundo de Amazons e Zalandos et al? (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Ainda acerca do by-pass ao mundo das Amazons, Zalandos, Continentes, Pingo Doces, FNACs et al.

"many small retailers carry inventories that compensate with quirk or quality for what they lack in breadth. Magpie-like secondhand and vintage stores are especially popular. So are businesses that carry local specialty and handmade items. Longtime retailers reflect the specific--and sometimes peculiar--tastes of their communities..These companies excel in product selection.
...
"We are proud of the weird," [Moi ici: Como isto está em sintonia com a mensagem deste blogue!!!]
...
"His vision has always been to rescue records from people who did not want them and turn them over to people who did," Grauzer says.
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Weber's strategy was more passionate than practical. "He just kept buying records regardless of whether they sold or not," [Moi ici: Isto é um ponto importante, muito importante. Abaixo na tabela tem tudo a ver com o criar uma network]
...
"I guess it doesn't sound like a great business model," says Grauzer. "But it has worked."
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Kneib will custom-make soap in any design from almost any natural ingredient. "They want something that smells like lime or ginger or they want a certain color because it's for a wedding," she says. "We produce what they want."
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Because customers find many products unfamiliar, Papa sends them home with samples before they buy."

Trechos retirados de "These Companies' Inventories Pick Up Where Amazon's Leaves Off"

Como se compete num mundo de Amazons e Zalandos et al? (parte II)

Parte I.

A parte I terminou desta forma:

"Como se compete num mundo de Amazons e Zalandos et al? Criando um mundo alternativo, apostando em Mongo. Em Mongo faz todo o sentido trabalhar um ecossistema, fazer um jogo de longa duração, envolver mais actores.
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O que é que o sector tem feito nos últimos anos? Promover a marca Portugal! Como é que isso pode ser usado?"

Entretanto encontrei um artigo muito, muito bom que ajuda a  começar a responder ao título pergunta do postal, "How Fashion Can Fight Amazon". O artigo é mesmo muito bom e merece uma leitura bem mastigada:

"Yet, despite all these recent achievements, innovations and accolades, there are some adjectives that I can’t ever recall hearing mentioned in the same sentence as Amazon. Conspicuous by their absence in most commentary on the internet giant are words like fun, beautiful and joyous. You’ll very rarely, if ever, hear Amazon described in these terms.
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And that’s no coincidence. Amazon isn’t a fun experience. Friends don’t meet for dinner and then go on an Amazon shopping spree. People don’t take selfies of themselves ordering things on Amazon.
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As for beauty, Amazon is about as aesthetically pleasing as a wood chipper. But, like a wood-chipper, Amazon is purpose-built, not for beauty but for efficiency, expediency and volume.
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And, regardless of its early success, I have yet to hear anyone recount stories about what a “joy” it is to shop using Echo. Nor can I recall anyone giddily running from one room to another pushing their Dash Buttons. The point of these technologies is not to elicit joy but rather to eliminate altogether any consciousness of shopping.
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Amazon is a passionless yet wickedly effective means of consuming. They’ve taken what used to be a sometimes painful, arduous multi-site online buying experience and literally brought it down to one-stop and zero clicks with Alexa. It is the all-you-can-eat buffet of consumerism. It’s the Wikipedia of shopping, which is to say that whatever you’re looking for is probably there but getting it is never what you’d call a memorable experience.
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And so, as "cheap" is to Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Rolex, fun is to Amazon — it’s simply not in the brand’s DNA. Nor was it ever intended to be. Jeff Bezos never set out to create a delightful shopping experience. Amazon is quite simply the shortest distance between wanting and getting."

Se segue este blogue com regularidade já sabe como eu penso: se a Amazon faz isto e é muito boa, fará algum sentido ir torrar dinheiro a competir no mesmo campeonato que ela? Como me posso diferenciar da Amazon? Por que tenho de entrar no negócio da venda, quando sou um produtor?
Voltaremos a isto numa outra parte.

"So, if truly great retail can be considered fine art (which I fully believe it should be) then Amazon is the paint-by-numbers equivalent. It’s fast, easy and simple but about as artistic as Dogs Playing Poker. In other words, Amazon has — to its credit — reduced shopping to a science, but in doing so has also sapped it of its aesthetic, social, kinetic and human joy.
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And it's this one tiny yet glaring chink in Amazon's seemingly impenetrable suit of armour that may just offer their competitors an opportunity to inflict a small wound, or at least save themselves from outright annihilation. Using art to counter Amazon’s science, retailers may just stand a chance of surviving, if not thriving in their shadow."

E aqui começa a minha incomodidade com a parte I. Num mundo de ecossistemas avança-se sozinho com um site, sem trabalhar a estória, sem criar carisma, sem fazer sonhar, sem desenhar e alimentar a experiência:

"Don’t build stores. Build stories..
Ultimately as humans we acquire products but we invest emotionally in stories. The world doesn’t need another concrete commercial real estate box with racks, registers and shelving, or another cold, catalogue-like website. It needs physical and online shopping places that celebrate unique brand stories. It needs enchanted spaces and installations that promote interactions with products. It needs powerful experiences that engage on every sensory level. Great retail must be nothing less than a form of performance art where the cost of admission is a purchase only-too-gladly made.[Moi ici: Por favor voltar a trás e reler com calma uma e outra vez este último sublinhado]
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Don’t conduct commerce. Create community.
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Building a tightly connected community of customers who are galvanised by a common passion, place, idea or interest is the surest way to cultivate a sense of community and an atmosphere of fun. Doing so raises your stores and websites beyond the level of commerce and into the realm of becoming powerful places for communal gathering.
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Don’t sell mass. Sell me.[Moi ici: Meu Deus!!! Como isto é acerca de Mongo, como isto é um problema para os gigantes atolados na sua suckiness e desejosos de nos verem como plancton]
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Mass is the realm of Amazon, which has little interest in personalising products. Personalisation costs time, money and effort — all of which dilute Amazon’s competitive advantages of selection, speed and affordability. So, find a means of personalising and customising products and solutions for your customers. This can be by leveraging clientele data, using technology to offer personalised solutions, or by offering bespoke and customised options, replete with concierge levels of service. Regardless of how you achieve it, it’s essential to leave every customer feeling that your store, your products and your staff were there especially for them.
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Don’t measure sales. Measure experiences."

Vêem algo disto na parte I? Eu vejo uma espécie de Lefties para vender os restos que não se conseguiram despachar.

Continua.

Revolta contra a suckiness

À medida que nos embrenharmos em Mongo, esse universo económico repleto de tribos, assistiremos a um cada vez maior número de organizações e fenómenos como o retratado em "Consumers’ collective action in market system dynamics: A case of beer".

Como Seth Godin explicitou e citei em "We Are All Weird - Um manifesto sobre Mongo":

"The mass market — which made average products for average people — was invented by organizations that needed to keep their factories and systems running efficiently.
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Stop for a second and think about the backwards nature of that sentence.
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The factory came first. It led to the mass market. Not the other way around.
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The typical institution ... just couldn’t afford mass customization, couldn’t afford to make a different product for every user."

Foi o século XX que uniformizou os gostos, e Mongo será o regresso ao estado humano natural, a explosão contínua da variedade de gostos, e a ascensão das tribos ("Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte XI e parte X)).

O horror a ser tratado como plancton descrito no artigo:

"So it was lager beer, right? The provincial breweries copied Carlsberg and Bryggerigruppen, and more and more types of beer disappeared from the market, and there was no innovation at all. (Anders)
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The predominant institutional logic was organized around a belief in standardization and mass produced products. The belief affected forms of production, product variety, and institutionalized taste structures. From this institutionalized condition, DØE was formed to challenge this hegemonic institutional logic. One way the challenge manifested itself was by giving the current institutional condition a face, making a scapegoat of the incumbents’ effect on taste structure:
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I wrote a manifest, where I wrote many good things about beer and why one should drink interesting beers instead of just boring Tuborg ... really disparaging the old breweries there, at that time. (Anders)
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The interviews and archival material demonstrate that the association directed its energy and thrust toward this one common reference point. It was argued that the large breweries relied on the mentality that ‘‘big is beautiful and efficient’’. This critique of incumbents is illustrative of the onset of processes of deinstitutionalization and delegitimization. Several informants allude to the monotonous and standardized condition of the products that prevailed in the market and hence provoked a rally based on the position that the supply restricted the development of a more advanced consumption and taste culture: DØE was, as expressed through the AleMail communication list, a community for ‘‘everybody that is devoted to beer beyond the ordinary ‘down-the-throat’ culture’’"

Mongo já vem desde, pelo menos 2007: "A cauda longa e o planeta Mongo"

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte X)

Se reflectir um pouco. consigo relacionar "Anónimo engenheiro da província, mas à frente" que de certa forma lida com o fenómeno a nível agregado, com postais que mostram sintomas numa forma mais granular:

• "Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte IX) (grande título que roubei de um tweet de Tom Peters)
• Acerca da lealdade às marcas
• E porque não somos plankton (parte VIII)
• Grandes marcas e marcas grandes em Mongo (parte II)
• Um exemplo
• Mongo não é um mundo gigantes-friendly (parte III)
• Leu aqui há vários anos...

Caro Paulo, lembra-se da nossa conversa sobre as ideias de Simondson?

Ao contrário de Simondson, acredito na frase acima. Agora isto não quer dizer que as marcas dos gigantes têm a mesma força que no tempo pré-Mongo. As tribos não são massa e as tribos não são amorfas.

Recomendo vivamente a leitura e pesquisa de "P&G is in trouble" (recordo logo dois postais escritos em Agosto de 2014 na "veranda" de um bungallow na Sierra de la Colebra)

"pensar que continuarão a existir "mass markets""

A propósito de "How can a big firm be like a start-up?" este trecho:

"Successful innovation involves two things: discovering something new; and bringing that thing to the mass market. Young firms are good at discovery and big ones are good at scaling things up. So let the small ones discover, and if you’re a big firm, consolidate or grow those things into a bigger market."

Uma das falhas do artigo é pensar que continuarão a existir "mass markets".

Mongo é um mundo de tribos e de gente weird and proud of it.

E aquilo que interessa às empresas grandes são ofertas que consigam ter impacte nas contas. Produtos bem sucedidos, mas destinados a nichos não têm tradução nas contas globais e obrigam a outro mindset: na produção, no marketing e na comercialização.

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte IX)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII e parte VIII.

Primeiro li "22 Retail Industry Predictions For Brick-And-Mortar Stores In 2018" e senti-me esmagado pela quantidade de informação e a diversidade de vias de actuação. Ainda esta semana animei uma sessão onde um grupo tentava calçar os sapatos dos seus clientes-lojistas e quase nada disto apareceu.

Depois, fui correr uns 6 km em cerca de 40 minutos. Tomei um duche e comecei a ler "Beyond process - How to get better, faster as “exceptions” become the rule":

"Over the past several decades, the business world has relentlessly pursued efficiency-driven business process reengineering, seeking to integrate, standardize, and automate tasks in ways that can reduce costs, increase speed, and deliver more predictable outcomes. As the landscape shifts, perhaps it’s time for organizations to expand their focus beyond business process reengineering to pursue business practice redesign, helping frontline workgroups to learn faster and accelerate performance improvement, especially in environments that are shaped by increasing uncertainty and unexpected events.
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Organizations that don’t get on an exponential trajectory may fall behind and become increasingly marginalized as the world advances at a faster rate. It could be the difference between plodding along, working harder and harder to get equivalent improvements in performance, versus improving performance at a rate that mirrors the surrounding rate of change. Existing approaches to performance improvement are falling short, and companies are already feeling the effects of mounting performance pressures.
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On the demand side, customers have more power and choice than ever before and are less willing to settle for the standardized products that long drove the success of large institutions.[Moi ici: Suckiness! Rings a bell?]  Platforms have expanded the range of available choices and made it easier to get information about them, and customers can express their feelings about companies globally and instantaneously. So can investors. At the same time, many customers are becoming more demanding, expecting different and more nuanced products and services that are tailored to their specific needs and preferences. [Moi ici: As tribos assimétricas de Taleb] On-demand services have further raised expectations for speed, convenience, and customization as basic requirements.
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On the supply side, businesses face intensifying competition as new platforms, connectivity, and other advances reduce the barriers to entry in many sectors.
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A challenge for large companies—or companies that aspire to be large—is that scalable effciency is often no longer effective. While the model yielded results in a relatively stable environment and may continue to improve productivity over time, it has created an environment that is often hostile to learning, where it is harder, and takes longer, to achieve higher levels of performance improvement."

Por todo o lado este reconhecimento de como Mongo é un-friendly para os gigantes e para os eficientistas.

"Giants invariably descend into suckiness" (parte VIII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI e parte VII.

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Esta é uma frase que muito aprecio.

"Like many former stalwarts of a now-crumbling print industry, the greeting card market has seen better days.
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Hallmark, once the Q-Tip or Band-Aid of greeting cards, closed its distribution center in Enfield, Connecticut, in 2015, and has downsized its full-time staff by more than 50% in the past few years, with continuing news of store closures. And the digital startup Paperless Post, which previously offered both printed and digital cards, recently decided that paperless was indeed the way to go."

Suckiness...

"The shaky prospect of going into any print-based business makes it all the more unlikely that the graphic designer and illustrator Anna Bond, who founded the paper goods business Rifle Paper Co. in 2009 with her husband, Nathan, out of their garage apartment in Winter Park, Florida, should find such great success nearly 100 years after Hallmark was founded.
Rifle reported $21.4 million in company revenue in 2016, and bested that figure with $22.3 million in 2017, with more than 90 product offerings that extend well beyond the stationery and greeting cards for which the company is best known. Here’s how Bond, a 33-year-old Floridian who until 2012 lived in an apartment above her in-laws’ garage, built a multimillion-dollar empire—and proved that print isn’t dead yet."

Recordar na parte VII:

 "But you likely need to trade out your mass-marketing business model for a niche, premium, and specialty model and scale strategies for a superconsumer strategy."

 Trechos retirados de "How One Designer Built A $22M Company–Selling Paper"