Product managers know that if we want to sell more of their product, we need to find ways to make the product more appealing to our customers. These days, that can be very difficult to do. One of the biggest problems that we are facing is that things change so quickly that it can be very hard to keep a product “current”. The features that we put into a product are great at the time; however, time moves on and all of sudden our customers are expecting better and more features. It turns out that when you are making cars, this can be especially difficult because of how long it takes to design and product cars. However, some car product managers think that they may have found a way to solve this problem.

Keeping Cars From Going Out Of Date

Product managers who work for the global car companies are looking to give the global auto manufacturers a major tech upgrade. In order to do this, these product managers are going to have to hire thousands of software engineers and collaborate with the companies that make computer chips to develop semiconductors for their vehicles. The goal of the product managers is to deliver a new generation of technology-packed models that can be updated throughout their life cycle using downloadable software and with customizable features unique to each company’s different brands.

Over at the maker of the Jeep automobiles the product managers have a goal of generating US$22 billion of annual revenue by the end of the decade through selling software-led offerings and subscriptions related to the cars they make. The product managers at Jeep believe that software is the core of their product. There is no way they are going to consider that the software part of their product can be totally subcontracted to somebody else because it is that important to them. The product managers at Jeep realize that they can’t do this all by themselves. Instead, they are planning on leverage partnerships with BMW and Alphabet’s Waymo for autonomous driving offerings, and with the chipmaker Foxconn to make their next generation car’s so-called smart cockpits which is a revamp of the car’s dashboard designed for an ultra-connected vehicle.

The product managers at Jeep are the latest car company to reveal their revenue targets and revenue projections related to their future connected-car ambitions. What all of this means is that the battle with Silicon Valley is intensifying over what the future of the automobile will be. This market space is a crowded place with other car companies such as Ford and General Motors also moving quickly to develop future vehicles that come with built-in connectivity and downloadable features that can be beamed down to the car directly. The product manager’s goal is to make cars more like other consumer electronics today.

Software Drives The Future Of Cars

The product managers at Tesla have long led the industry on vehicle software and other tech features, integrating downloadable updates, similar to software upgrades on smartphones, as early as ten years ago. Product managers at other car companies have long tried to match Tesla’s capabilities, but they have only recently started to debut such features on their own vehicles. Another problem that the other product managers have been dealing with has been struggling to attract and retain the talent needed to develop the software expertise in house. They have found that they are often relying on tech partners to develop in-car apps and technologies.

The product managers at Jeep know that partnerships will be core to their tech strategy but they want to control more of the software value chain. In order to meet their goal, the product managers are planning on increasing the number of software engineers they employ to around 4,000 in two years, up from 1,500 today. They also plan to triple the number of cars that can generate revenue from software to 30 million in ten years. Over-the-air updates in many existing car models already allow users to download the latest version of a car’s navigation software, or even choose from entertainment or driving apps. In the future, on-demand services provided by product managers could include the ability to buy insurance based on a vehicle’s current use, or the option to add additional horsepower to a car’s electric motor ahead of a road trip that would take it through rough terrain.

The Jeep product managers want to be able to offer Jeep owners an off-grid trail navigation feature that will allow their drivers to connect with each other individually or in convoys, even if there is no network coverage. The product managers also want to use artificial intelligence to develop a more customizable media interface. The goal would be to allow the car to predict what a driver might need in terms of navigation and comfort. The reason that the product managers have become so interested in the software that goes into their cars is because many car makers are now betting that growth and profits will come less from building and selling cars and more from features such as connected car services and apps. Although software has been a part of gas-powered cars for years, the new shift to electric vehicles is starting to put computing at the heart of the car.

What All Of This Means For You

The world of cars is in the process of undergoing a major change. Car product managers used to compete based on a common set of car characteristics such as how fast a car could go, how many miles to the gallon it got, and what colors it came in. However, now that consumers have grown used to being able to transform their consumer electronics via over the air software updates that can make old phones into new phones, they are starting to want the same thing from their cars. This means that product managers are going to have to find ways to make automobiles become more like mobile phones.

Car product managers understand that they are going to have to hire a lot of software engineers in order to move their products into the future. They want to make it so that customers will have the ability to upgrade their cars over the air after they purchase them. The product managers at Jeep want to eventually be able to sell software subscriptions along with their cars. Product managers at all of the major car companies are trying to do the same thing. Tesla product managers have been able to do these things for a long time. The Jeep product managers plan on meeting their goals by hiring more engineers and producing more cars. Jeep product managers want to be able to offer their customers features long after they’ve purchased their car.

Car product managers are starting to investigate how they can change their long term relationship with their customers. They want to be able to use software to allow the cars that get purchased to be upgraded just like people do with their mobile phones. If they can create the ability to do this, then they may be able to keep selling new features to their customers long after their initial purchase. Software is going to change the world and car product managers want to be part of that world!

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: How often do you think that people will be willing to allow their car’s software to be updated?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The post Car Product Managers Look To Software To Boost Their Revenue appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

Is there any app that is hotter than TicTok? I mean go just about anywhere these days and you’ll find kids and adults with their noses buried in their mobile phones watching short videos that have been made for the TicTok platform. This would be a great product manager job to have. However, there is starting to be a problem. Along with TicTok’s success has come a wrath of brand new competitors. The TicTok product managers have to start to consider how they are going to react to a changing market.

TicTok Takes Over

Product managers know that right now the sun is setting on Facebook, then is it possible that TikTok could be coming to an end also? How much longer can its short-form video hold its consumers’ fickle attention? It was just a few years ago that TikTok was an app for kids, with videos of pets or talented children dancing. Cut to today and it seems like everyone is using it, no matter their age. This growth has come at the expense of its competition, such that just about every social-media company is now pouring money into trying to create copycat products.

TikTok’s founding genius was that it capitalized on consumers’ short attention with a seemingly infinite collection of music-backed videos under 60 seconds algorithmically tailored to users’ interests. Those still bored in under a minute have the ability to simply swipe until something else catches their eye. In its latest installment of what is the longest-running survey of digital media consumer behavior in America, it was found that found 82% of polled U.S. adults now use social media, unchanged from last year. What this means for product managers is that, unlike most other sectors in tech like food delivery, ride-hailing or dating, social media apps are competing for the same users, not new ones.

Product managers may choose to view this as being a game that TikTok is currently winning. Back in 2019, a survey showed that 70% of 10-year-old girls with smartphones in the U.S. were using TikTok. Today, a survey shows TikTok is the third-most used social media app across users of all ages, topping Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn. This means that roughly 36% of the U.S. population over the age of 12 polled is using TikTok as of this year, behind only Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, and up from 11% usage two years ago. Over that period, the percentage of people who are using Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest has declined.

TicTok Starts To Deal With Competition

Product managers at other social media platforms are not standing by. They have started to take steps to deal with the threat posed by TicTok. Both Facebook and Instagram now have the short-form video platform Reels. Last year Pinterest added Watch, where users can scroll through short videos and pictures. Snapchat also launched short-form video product Spotlight in late 2020. Last year, YouTube launched Shorts, offering a platform for videos under 60 seconds. And even Twitter said it was in the process of testing out an updated “Explore” tab that follows a TikTok-like scrolling format that seems to favor short-form video tweets. TikTok’s short-form video concept is even entering into television with Netflix’s Fast Laughs service, a feature launched first on its mobile app last year that serves up short clips from Netflix shows.

TikTok product managers seem to be working to address some of their shortcomings from both an advertiser and user perspective. Earlier this year, the platform worked to enhance its ability to both target and measure its value proposition to advertisers by enabling first and third-party cookies on top of its existing tools. It also recently launched a new 50% revenue share feature with creators on ads next to its most popular videos. The revenue share concept is an idea that has long been used to help incentivize creators on YouTube, and is one Meta has been exploring on its Reels service. The TikTok product managers are also expanding from their short-form underpinnings. Less than a year after they raised the maximum length of a video to three minutes, TikTok said early this year that it is extending that length to 10 minutes. It could be that advertisers will come, wherever the users are. Web data shows that traffic to TikTok’s ads site was up nearly 200% in the first quarter of this year. Users of TikTok’s Android app spent an average of more than an hour and 22 minutes a day on the service in March. This is important for product managers because it is more than for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, or YouTube.

Offering an advertising business atop its user-generated content means that TikTok faces a lot of the same controversy that has plagued Meta’s apps. The big question, as it the case with all social media apps, is what it does with its users’ data. TicTok is banned in India over perceived security risks. It has also faced investigations in the U.S. from lawmakers over its algorithms, which can push users down potentially unhealthy paths. Internally, TikTok’s rapid rise has required a grueling grind in its offices. An investigation revealed a U.S. office culture that is described as being both demanding and secretive, with several former employees describing their 85 hours of meetings a week in addition to their regular work. There have also been many instances of culture clash between the U.S. operation and its Beijing-based parent company.

What All Of This Means For You

The world of social media is always changing. There seem to be new players showing up just about every day. One such new player is the TicTok platform. This social media tool that allows its users to both post and view short form videos has grown rapidly over a very short time. This growth is always impressive, but as product managers realize, with growth comes more competition. What this means for TicTok is that not only do they have to come up with ways to manage their growth, but they also have to find ways to deal with all of their new competition.

TicTok has burst on the social media scene. Its arrival has taken traffic away from other social media platforms. TicTok’s design was created to capture user’s interest. Since the use of social media apps is not increasing, TicTok is stealing users away from other apps – TicTok’s growth has come at the expense of other social media apps. Product managers at other social media apps have responded to the arrival of TicTok by creating their own short-form video features. TicTok product managers are making it easier to sell advertising on their platform and they are lengthening the videos that users can post. TicTok is struggling with the same issues that other social media platforms deal with in terms of what they do with user data. Creating a healthy work environment and getting different parts of the company to work together has been a challenge.

There is no question that TicTok is a very popular social media app. Just like the apps that came before it, TicTok has captured the attention of countless users. The TicTok product managers have to make some decisions about how they will go about finding ways to capitalize on the advertising opportunities that their popularity has presented them with. They also have to make sure that their approach to short videos continues to capture user’s attention even as multiple competitors show up. This can be done, but it’s going to take a great deal of work on the part of the TicTok product managers.

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: Should TicTok allow longer videos or will this take away from why people are tuning in?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Product managers know that if we want to sell more of their product, we need to find ways to make the product more appealing to our customers. These days, that can be very difficult to do. One of the biggest problems that we are facing is that things change so quickly that it can be very hard to keep a product “current”. The features that we put into a product are great at the time; however, time moves on and all of sudden our customers are expecting better and more features. It turns out that when you are making cars, this can be especially difficult because of how long it takes to design and product cars. However, some car product managers think that they may have found a way to solve this problem.

The post TicTok Product Managers Search For Ways To Stay Relevant appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

How great would it be to be a product manager who was responsible for a very popular high priced exercise bike? This is the position that the Peloton product managers found themselves in just before the pandemic hit. I’m pretty sure that they must have had many meetings where they were trying to find ways to get people to quit gyms and instead buy a Peloton exercise bike to use at home. Then the pandemic hit and that is exactly what happened! The Peloton product managers were beside themselves – this was fantastic and it was going to go on forever. However, it didn’t.

Going From Hot To Not

The Peloton product managers have a problem on their hands right now. They are in the process of building a million-square-foot factory that it they will never use. The once-hot stationary bike maker is in the process of selling the facility, which was initially set to cost $400 million, as it races to downsize a manufacturing operation expanded by product managers who believed Covid-driven demand would outlive the pandemic. These miscalculation about demand and the shift in the market have been so costly that Peloton which was a company worth nearly $50 billion about a year ago has laid off thousands of people, had to borrow $750 million to head off a cash crunch and is exploring a sale of a minority stake of the firm.

Back in late 2020 with homebound consumers clamoring for its bikes Peloton’s product managers dismissed the idea that the company was growing too much based on a demand spike that could prove temporary. Overbuilding its supply-chain capacity was a term that never came up. The Peloton product managers felt like there was such a massive opportunity that they needed to invest heavily in the supply chain for years and years to maintain it. What they didn’t see was the market “normalizing” as the nation came out of Covid. This is not just a Peloton problem. Many companies faced the same question during the recent pandemic: how best to handle a surge in demand for their products? Procter & Gamble Co. decided to not to permanently expand its toilet-paper factories. This is something that would have taken years to come online. Clorox Co. added to its capacity through contract manufacturers. To fill government orders for Covid-19 masks, Honeywell International Inc. and 3M Co. added shifts to existing factories or retrofitted their facilities.

Most of the leaders of those businesses realized that the sudden demand could be something that was short-lived and they hedged their manufacturing investments. However, the product managers at Peloton chose to build permanent production capacity, believing that demand for its products would remain elevated for years. They also believed that they could avoid ocean shipping logjams by operating U.S. sites. They struck a US$420 million deal to buy Precor, a manufacturer of commercial exercise equipment who had two U.S. factories. They then announced plans for the creation of an Ohio factory. Both of these actions were a major strategy shift for a brand that until then had largely relied on third-party manufacturers in Asia.

Bad Assumptions

Though millions more customers now subscribe to Peloton’s online workout classes than before the pandemic, sales of their equipment have fallen 40% from a year ago. Even without the still-being-built Ohio factory, Peloton is in the process of laying off hundreds of workers and is saddled with a glut of unsold inventory. Peloton sales surged in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, then fell back to earth as consumers returned to gyms. The falloff in demand was foreseeable. Peloton’s original bike, which initially sold for $2,245, now costs $1,445 after price cuts. The company raised the price of its connected workout subscription, which syncs with Peloton classes, to $44 a month, from $39 a month. Home stationary bikes from other manufacturers can cost anywhere from less than $1,000 to several thousand dollars.

Headed into the pandemic, Peloton was a company that was losing money but notching steady growth. The U.S. outbreak of Covid-19 back in early 2020 sent Peloton’s sales surging almost instantly. Initially subscriber growth more than doubled from the previous quarter and revenue for the company’s bikes and treadmills nearly tripled from the year before. Peloton was profitable for the first time. What the Peloton product managers didn’t realize is that the good times were to be short-lived. As demand soared throughout the year and a second Covid wave arrived and derailed Americans’ hopes of a quick return to normalcy, Peloton quickly became overwhelmed by a crush of orders for its bikes, which was exacerbated by massive port delays in Asia, where Peloton machines were being built. Behind the scenes, Peloton was in chaos. Customer-service operations were overwhelmed as people who were paying thousands for their machines and then faced monthslong waits and repeated, last-minute delays.

That summer, with Covid vaccines widely available and gyms starting to reopen, Peloton lowered the price of its bike by about 20%, though the product managers said the cut didn’t reflect weaker sales. The experts say that routinely companies get caught in this, building too much and then having to write off inventory and do fire sales. The pandemic, with its drastic demand spikes, exacerbated that phenomenon. Product managers see an increase in demand and become overly enthusiastic, and that’s the critical mistake.

What All Of This Means For You

The Peloton product managers were flying high. Their company which sells expensive exercise bikes and subscriptions to online exercise programs had been steadily growing when the pandemic hit. All of a sudden, with gyms being closed, their sales took off like a rocket. The product managers believed that they would be selling large quantities of their bikes forever. It turns out that they were wrong.

The Peloton product managers were building a bike production facility in Ohio; however, when their market slowed down they decided to sell the facility and lay off workers. The Peloton product managers believed that the buying behavior that they were seeing during the pandemic would continue long after the pandemic was over. The product managers chose to build U.S. manufacturing facilities in order to avoid delays associated with shipping bikes from overseas. As the pandemic eased, Peloton sales slipped. The product managers ended up having to reduce the price of their bikes. The pandemic had caused sales to surge and product backlogs to occur. However, after the pandemic eased gyms reopened and sales slipped.

The Peloton product managers got caught up in the excitement of the pandemic. The pandemic caused customers to change their buying behavior while everyone was locked in their homes. The Peloton product managers incorrectly assumed that everyone’s behavior during the pandemic was the way that things were going to be going forward. When the pandemic eased up, people went back to the gyms and stopped buying expensive exercise bikes. The lesson here for all of us is to be careful when we try to predict the future. We need to make sure that we can handle things no matter which way they turn out.

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: How could the Peloton product managers prepared for the end of the pandemic better?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Is there any app that is hotter than TicTok? I mean go just about anywhere these days and you’ll find kids and adults with their noses buried in their mobile phones watching short videos that have been made for the TicTok platform. This would be a great product manager job to have. However, there is starting to be a problem. Along with TicTok’s success has come a wrath of brand new competitors. The TicTok product managers have to start to consider how they are going to react to a changing market.

The post What Went Wrong For The Peloton Product Managers? appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

Who do you sell your product to? Is there a possibility that your product is being used by older customers? If this is the case, what you have done to make it easy for them to use your product? If the answer is “nothing”, then you are like many other product managers who have not taken the time to study their customers and customize their products for their unique needs. Perhaps this is something that you need to start doing.

Older Customers

Product managers know that older customers have long complained that products designed for them are clunky and unattractive. However, now product managers are starting to listen to their complaints. As the customer population of people 65 and over grows, so does their spending power in the marketplace and product managers are taking notice. More product managers are offering walkers, canes and other products that deftly assist the elderly – and are stylish at the same time.

The boomer generation is the first to be able to wield its considerable spending power to reject bad designs. These aging product buyers are using consumer choice to drive the change. I think that we can all agree that products such as walkers and canes have been slow to evolve aesthetically over the past century as product managers focused largely on products for their young, mobile peers. The result is that they have largely ignored the desires of the elderly. But a shift in the way design thinking is being taught in schools as well as the slow death of the “superstar, egocentric product manager” has meant the needs and desires of older people are now starting to be considered by product managers.

Research-and-design methods that teach people to how to understand the end-user experience seemed quite niche 10 or so years ago. However, now, they’re a part of most good design courses. When product managers ask older people what they want from products, the answer is often very simple: to not look like something a frail, invalid person would use. The request for a cool-looking walker or a well-designed long-term-care facility goes deeper than customer vanity. Product managers have to address the damaging imagery of aging: old-fashioned mobility and medical devices can turn a customer into an object of pity. When you bring a sense of design and beauty and aesthetics to this type of product, people will talk about them, and people will talk to you – it becomes a way to connect. Older consumers have power in numbers: in 2018, there were 52 million Americans over the age of 65, a figure that will nearly double to 95 million by 2060. It is estimated that Americans over 55 will account for half of all domestic consumer-spending growth from 2008 to 2030.

Product Managers Respond To A Changing Market

Customers over age 55 say their favorite retail brand no longer understands them or what they need. This feeling of alienation along with a rise in internet literacy among seniors is pushing this demographic to seek out and spend their money with brands that cater to their aesthetic needs. The idea that older customers are more brand loyal is an outdated view. Another big change is that end users are now primarily making the purchases. Previously, it had been either children or caregivers who did most of the buying. When they made a purchase, they simply chose whatever was on offer in mobility stores. This meant ease and good looks weren’t always prime considerations.

Product managers at a number of new firms are trying to determine what products and services they want to develop. Some of the ideas being considered include a service that allows older people to share their pain-management techniques and a social network that facilitates deeper daily interaction with 10 or so friends. Product managers are also looking into a co-living space for people who don’t want to reside in a “cruise ship on land”: retirement homes with hundreds of residents and a fully preplanned social calendar of activities. Product managers need to understand that what ends up getting created for older people isn’t really what they want: it’s somebody else’s idea of what they ought to want.

Other product managers are considering ideas such as products and experiences for older adults including an e-commerce company for things like bedpans, guardrails and ramps. The product managers realize that it’s their responsibility and opportunity to build products, services and technologies for older adults. Product managers realize that the real work is yet to be done, but it is being done, and it’s being done because there is this new generation of product managers who are using head and heart to make a difference.

What All Of This Means For You

As product managers, we want our products to be popular. We want more and more customers to find our products and purchase them. I think that not enough of us spend time thinking about just exactly who our customers are. What we may be missing is that our customer base is probably getting older. This means that we need to start to think about how our products are going to appeal to older customers. We may also want to think about how we can make changes to our product to make them more attractive to older customers.

One of the biggest complaints from older customers is that products that are designed for them are clunky and unattractive. Since there are so many older customers, they are starting to use their buying power to change what products are being offered to them. What older customers want are products that don’t make them look like older customers. Older customers are not brand loyal and more and more of them are going online and finding the products that they want. Product managers are starting to come up with innovative ideas to meet the needs of older customers. Product managers want to find ways to make a different in the lives of their older customers.

The market potential of meeting the needs of older customers is huge. However, product managers need to understand that in the past we have not done a good job of serving this market. The products that they have been presented with have not appealed to them or really met their needs. Things are changing and product managers now understand that older customers have a unique set of needs. If we can adapt our products to meet their needs, then success will be ours!

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: What’s the best way for a product manager to find out if their product meets the needs of older customers?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How great would it be to be a product manager who was responsible for a very popular high priced exercise bike? This is the position that the Peloton product managers found themselves in just before the pandemic hit. I’m pretty sure that they must have had many meetings where they were trying to find ways to get people to quit gyms and instead buy a Peloton exercise bike to use at home. Then the pandemic hit and that is exactly what happened! The Peloton product managers were beside themselves – this was fantastic and it was going to go on forever. However, it didn’t.

The post Product Managers Discover Older Customers appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

As product managers, we are generally fairly focused on what we need to do to make our product become a success. As markets and products change and evolve, it can be very difficult for us to lift our heads up and realize that things are now different and so we need to start to do different things. However, some auto product managers are starting to realize this. In the past they had focused on what they needed to do to make their auto product more attractive to customers. Now they are starting to understand that it may be the software that goes into their auto product that will capture customers. How can they start to create the software that their products will need?

Software Drives Cars

Product managers at car companies are looking to give global auto manufacturers a major tech upgrade. Their plan is to hire thousands of software engineers and collaborate with chip companies on developing semiconductors for vehicles. The plan is to deliver a new generation of technology-packed models that can be updated throughout their life cycle using downloadable software and provide them with customizable features unique to each of the brands.

These product managers have big dreams. The product managers at car manufacturer Stellantis who owns multiple brands including Jeep, Chrysler and Peugeot are hoping for US$22.57 billion of annual revenue by the end of the decade. They plan on making this additional revenue by selling software-led offerings and subscriptions related to the cars they make. The product managers believe that software is core. In order to be successful, the product managers believe that there is no way they are going to allow this to be totally subcontracted to somebody else.

The product managers at Stellantis plan to leverage partnerships with BMW and Alphabet’s Waymo for autonomous driving offerings, and with chip maker Foxconn for making so-called smart cockpits. This is basically a revamp of a car’s dashboard designed for an ultra-connected vehicle. Stellantis product managers are the latest to reveal targets and revenue projections related to their connected-car ambitions as the battle between Silicon Valley product managers intensifies over the future of the automobile. Product managers at other car companies, such as Ford Motor and General Motors, are also moving quickly to develop new vehicles that come with built-in connectivity and downloadable features that can be easily beamed down to the car directly, making them more like other consumer electronics today.

Next Steps For Auto Software

Product managers at Tesla have long led the industry on vehicle software and other tech features, integrating downloadable updates, similar to software upgrades on smartphones, as early as 2012. Product managers in the rest of the automotive industry have long tried to match Tesla’s capabilities, but have only recently started to debut such features on their own vehicles. Product managers have also struggled to attract and retain the talent needed to develop the software expertise in house, often relying on tech partners to develop in-car apps and technologies.

Product managers realize that partnerships will still be core to their tech strategy but they want to control more of the software value chain. Over-the-air updates in many current car models already allow users to download the latest version of a car’s navigation software, or choose from entertainment or driving apps. In the future, new on-demand services could include the ability to buy insurance based on how a vehicle is being used, or the option to add built-in horsepower to an electric motor ahead of a road trip through rough terrain.

Many product managers are betting that growth and profits will come less from building and selling cars and more from features such as connected car services and apps. Although some software has been running in gas-powered cars for years, the shift to electric vehicles is putting software at the heart of each car. Stellantis product managers have announced plans to spend more than $35.5 billion to release an array of new plug-in models, joining a number of other car makers in laying out how they intend to compete in the industry’s intensifying EV race.

What All Of This Means For You

The world of cars is undergoing a fundamental change. This world used to be ruled by the number of cylinders that a car had and how big its tires were. With the arrival of all electric cars, the role that software plays in what a car can do has grown almost overnight. What this means for auto product managers is that they now need to start to make some changes as they adapt to a new world in which software has become the key component of any car design.

Product managers are starting to staff for the creation of electric cars. They are also acquiring the chips that will be needed to provide features such as over-the-air downloading of software updates for their cars. Product managers at Stellantis are willing to make an investment into creating more software for their cars. Product managers plan on making their cars self-driving and equipping them with smart cockpits. Product managers at Tesla have been leading the way in adding software to electric cars. Partnerships are going to be important in developing the over-the-air services that will be provided to tomorrow’s electric cars. Software in cars may be a key source of revenue when it comes to auto sales in the future.

Now is an exciting time to be an auto product manager. The products are undergoing a fundamental shift in how they are manufactured. It is becoming clear that in the future software is going to be a key component of each car that is sold. What this means for product managers is that no longer will the sale of a car be the end of their relationship with their customer. Instead, the ability to download new software over-the-air means that buying a car is only the start of their relationship with their customers. Now all we need to do is to find out how to maximize this new type of relationship!

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: How often do you think customers are going to be willing to download new software for their car?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Who do you sell your product to? Is there a possibility that your product is being used by older customers? If this is the case, what you have done to make it easy for them to use your product? If the answer is “nothing”, then you are like many other product managers who have not taken the time to study their customers and customize their products for their unique needs. Perhaps this is something that you need to start doing.

The post Auto Product Managers Believe Software Holds The Key To Future Success appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

The goal of every product manager is to create a popular product that our customers want to purchase. However, there is a bit of a problem with this plan. If our product becomes too popular, there will be other companies that start to make copies of our products. They may try to place their products in front of our customers by getting retailers to carry their products. This can cause all sorts of problems for product managers. How should we handle situations like this?

The Problem With Fake Shoes

Product managers at Birkenstock, the shoe manufacturer whose popular sandals have spawned many copycats, is now starting to pressure retailers to stop selling similar styles from other brands. Some of these retailers, including Zappos.com and Nordstrom, have stopped carrying some of the styles. These copycat brands are sold by Freedom Moses, Mephisto, Naot and Viking Sandals. As you can well imagine, those firms are not happy about this. They refer to what is going on as being competitive bullying. They claim that they have not infringed on any design patents. Due to pressure from Birkenstock, Nordstrom and Zappos recently canceled orders for Mephisto’s Harmony and Hester sandals that the company has sold for more than two decades. The order was cancelled because the shoes look too similar to Birkenstock’s Arizona style.

The product managers at Birkenstock believe that retailers are making the decision about what to sell on their own. The Birkenstock product managers have an obligation to protect their brand and plan on making it available only to retailers who maintain its integrity. The Birkenstock product managers are trying to eliminate duplication. The product managers always try to be thoughtful about shoes that closely resemble their iconic style, especially when they know that their customers love the original.

Birkenstock is not the only shoe company that is trying to protect its brand. Companies from Chanel to Nike go to great lengths to protect their brands from copycats. Several years ago Nike stopped selling directly to Amazon because of the copycat problem, and Chanel has sued luxury consignment retailer The RealReal over alleged counterfeits. Ten years ago Christian Louboutin sued Yves Saint Laurent over a monochromatic red shoe that Louboutin said violated its trademarked red soles. The result of this lawsuit was that a federal appeals court ruled that Louboutin’s soles are protected; however, only if the entire shoe isn’t red.

Solving The Counterfeit Problem

The Birkenstock product managers have trademarked their footbeds, and they hold several design patents on newer styles. Nevertheless, it might be difficult for them to police look-alikes. The reason that this might be hard is because there have been so many copycats out there for years, it could be hard for Birkenstock’s product managers to show that they have been using some of these designs exclusively. However, the Birkenstock product managers have been successful in defending their trademarks.

The Birkenstock product got a reboot in recent years, after fashion houses such as Celine and Givenchy put their twist on their comfy sandals. Birkenstock product managers have churned out new versions, including blinged-out styles in collaborations with designers such as the shoemaker Manolo Blahnik. The Birkenstock product managers make a range of sandals from rubberlike beach shoes that sell for US$50 to its core leather sandals, which average around $130. Alternatively, their designer collaborations are pricier. Currently a Manolo Blahnik velvet Birkenstock sandal with a crystal buckle is priced at $810. The challenge is that the look-alikes have a range of prices too, from around $40 to several hundred dollars. Some knock-off versions of Mephisto’s Hester sandal sell for $169.

The Birkenstock product managers have also tried to police online sales. They stopped selling directly to Amazon. Recently Birkenstock will no longer allow third parties to sell its products on Amazon’s marketplace. The Birkenstock product managers prohibit the sale of its products by any authorized retailer on any third-party marketplace in the U.S., including Amazon. The problem was that the product managers found that Amazon was not taking decisive enough action against product counterfeiting and other trademark infringements. Two years ago Birkenstock’s product managers sent an email to retailers warning about styles that “piggyback” or “feed off” Birkenstock’s success such as Freedom Moses and Viking Sandals. The message was that they will only move forward with those retail partners who value their partnership.

What All Of This Means For You

Every product manager wants their product to be a success. However, I think that we all realize that with success comes a set of unique problems. If our product is a success, then there will undoubtedly be copycat products created. The problem is that these copycat products will take sales away from us. Product managers at the popular shoe manufacturer Birkenstock are currently dealing with this problem.

Birkenstock makes sandals that have spawned many look-alike copies. They have started to exert pressure on firms that are selling the copycat products to get them to stop selling them. The Birkenstock product managers don’t believe that they are pressuring anyone. The problem with copycat shoes is a big deal. Other shoe manufactures such as Nike and Chanel have had to take steps to protect their brands. In order to protect their brand, the Birkenstock product managers have trademarked their brand. However, the copycats have existed for so long that it may be difficult to get them to stop. The Birkenstock brand got a boost recently when major design labels started to feature it. They have also paired with other designers to create custom footwear. The Birkenstock product managers are also trying to police online sales of their product. They will not allow it to be sold on Amazon because they don’t feel that Amazon does a good job of taking actions against counterfeits.

The Birkenstock product managers have a significant challenge. They have popular products that people do want to buy. However, they also have a large copycat market that they have to find ways to prevent from stealing their sales. They have been trying to choke off the retail outlets for the copycat brands and reduce their online presence. We’re going to have to see if they can walk all over their copycat competition.

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: What changes to their product could Birkenstock product managers make to reduce copycats?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As product managers, we are generally fairly focused on what we need to do to make our product become a success. As markets and products change and evolve, it can be very difficult for us to lift our heads up and realize that things are now different and so we need to start to do different things. However, some auto product managers are starting to realize this. In the past they had focused on what they needed to do to make their auto product more attractive to customers. Now they are starting to understand that it may be the software that goes into their auto product that will capture customers. How can they start to create the software that their products will need?

The post How Can Product Managers Stop Copycat Products? appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

If you are like most people, you have started to get used to being able to log on to your computer and order up just about anything. What’s even better, is that what you have ordered seems to show up very quickly. What a lot of us don’t spend much time thinking about is where all of this stuff is coming from. Sure, we’ve all see those pictures of the immense Amazon warehouses where books, TVs, and shoes are quickly picked and packed. However, what about ice cream? For that matter what about milk? There are certain items that we like to order that have to stay cold or even frozen before we buy them. Where do they get stored?

Where To Keep Things Cold?

Product managers are getting ready to make a big bet on the hot market for cold storage. Product managers are preparing to spend $500 million to build 10 to 15 refrigerated warehouses across the U.S. over the next three to five years, with the average facility spanning roughly 300,000 square feet. Right now a 302,400-square-foot warehouse located in Texas is being built. Product managers will need to get companies to finance the venture and others to work on the design of the sites and other aspects of the project.

The industrial real-estate business has been booming in recent years, driven by a surge in e-commerce shopping that has pushed both retailers and logistics companies to seek new spaces close to population centers for rapid delivery to stores and homes. Product managers have realized that the refrigerated arena marks a real opportunity because many cold-storage facilities are aging and traditionally have been built near product production sites rather than close to cities where the products are delivered to. Product managers believe that compared to the rest of retail, any grocery is still under-penetrated from an e-commerce perspective.

Demand for local, fresh food is a very durable trend that necessitates facilities being located within that four-hour drive of growing metro areas, and product managers think that those metros that are growing fastest are undersupplied, so they hope to deliver additional cold storage to those areas. The pandemic-era surge in online grocery shopping and home deliveries fueled strong demand for food storage, with the two refrigerated market leaders Lineage Logistics and Americold Realty Trust are either building or aiming to break ground on millions of square feet of space over the next year. In order to handle meat, produce and other perishables product managers at Lineage have rapidly expanded its footprint in recent years, increasing its current storage capacity to 2.5 billion cubic feet currently from about 2.1 billion last year.

Next Steps In Cold Storage

Product managers at other specialist technology companies are starting to build highly automated sites known as micro-fulfillment centers, in smaller spaces in cities. In New York City product managers at Fabric have opened a 39,000-square-foot facility that uses the company’s robotics. Slowing online sales after the pandemic waned have cast doubt on the staying power of pandemic e-commerce trends.

Product managers are starting to target established supermarket chains and logistics operators as tenants for their cold storage facilities. These types of customers won’t operate the warehouses, as Americold and Lineage do, but will lease them to tenants. The product managers are talking with potential tenants for their first facility and working to bring in one to three occupants per site. The reason that product managers have become excited about cold storage units is because these leases are very sticky. Their tenants tend to get into these buildings, and they don’t leave because of all of the infrastructure and the investment that it takes for them to get setup in these buildings.

The product manager’s ultimate goal is to give retailers and third-party logistics companies a more modern, high-tech offering that will make their operations more efficient. Development for the new cold storage facilities will start in the southeastern U.S., then move up to the Northeast and over to the West Coast near key distribution hubs.

What All Of This Means For You

Product managers are always on the outlook for new product ideas. The arrival of the pandemic created a surge in online ordering by consumers. They ordered just about everything that they could. What this meant is that ordering of food products and other items that needed to be kept cold also increased. The problem that retailers ran into was that the distance between where the cold items were being stored and where their customers were located was too great. A new solution was needed.

What product managers believe is that cold product retailers need more cold storage facilities. Product managers are going to build new facilities to meet the evolving needs of retailers. The goal is to create new cold storage facilities that are closer to where customers are located. Product managers believe that some of the fastest growing metro markets are underserved. The goal is to be able to get goods from a cold storage facility to a customer in under four hours. Micro-fulfillment centers are being built in large cities in order to meet the increasing demand for cold goods. Product managers are starting to target established supermarket chains and logistics operators as tenants for their cold storage facilities. Once they start to rent a cold storage facility, they generally tend to stay for a long time. The product manager’s goal is to create modern efficient ways to deliver cold goods.

In order to be a successful product manager, we need to be able to find new product opportunities. The increase in customer demands for home delivery of cold groceries has identified a weakness in the market – there is no local place to store all of the cold goods. Product managers believe that by building new cold storage facilities close to large metro areas they can provide grocery retailers with the cold storage space that they need. Next time that you order groceries online, let’s see if the cold products are still cold when they arrive!

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: How can product managers get existing grocery stores to rent their new cold storage facilities?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The goal of every product manager is to create a popular product that our customers want to purchase. However, there is a bit of a problem with this plan. If our product becomes too popular, there will be other companies that start to make copies of our products. They may try to place their products in front of our customers by getting retailers to carry their products. This can cause all sorts of problems for product managers. How should we handle situations like this?

The post Product Managers Prepare For Cold Storage appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

As product managers, we all want to be responsible for products that our customers really, really want. That’s why being a lingerie product manager sounds like a very good job. You make a product that has the ability to transform your customer and because of that they will seek you out. However, lately, changes in how lingerie is made is starting to have a negative impact on the bottom line of this product. No matter how magical they may be, if they cost too much nobody will buy them. What is a product manager to do?

The Cost Of Lingerie

Product managers had sold the Natalia Underwire Bra for $68 at department stores and specialty boutiques since it was introduced in 2016. However, this year, the maker of the bra, the lingerie company Journelle, raised the price to $98. The result of this significant price boost was that some retailers stopped carrying it. The reason that they stopped was because they knew they wouldn’t be able to sell it at the higher price. The Journelle product managers had to push through the price increase anyway to offset rising costs, which in some cases have doubled since 2019.

I think that we all realize that when it comes to our products, price hikes aren’t arbitrary. They are deliberate decisions by product managers as they contend with a complicated set of factors. In the world of lingerie there are an unusually large number of inflationary forces that are converging on bras. In the case of the bra that is made by Journelle’s, the product can have as many as 27 components. We need to understand that the Natalia bra may be an extreme case; however, it shows the stress manufacturers are facing as they navigate rising costs rippling through their global supply chain. Inflation has recently hit a four-decade high, although some economists said there are starting to be signs that the price increases are starting to peak. Once these higher prices get baked into products, they can be hard to reverse. Product managers have to realize that many price increases may be here to stay.

Product managers need to understand that things change. Some lingerie brands were able to benefit from the shift to more comfortable bras during the pandemic. In the world of lingerie, wirefree and bralettes have fewer components so they are less expensive to make. Product managers discovered that as more women left the house for both work and social events, they started to gravitate to more structured styles. Product managers at another lingerie maker, Lively, raised their price of its bras to $45 from $35 a year ago. This was the first increase since the company was founded. Product managers at Victoria’s Secret have said that $110 million of supply-chain costs have weighed on their profits in the holiday quarter. The product managers have raised prices on some items.

Dealing With Price Increases

Product managers need to understand that the reality is that the whole world is facing the same pressures on inflation, in raw materials, in transport, in people, in freight. The surge in costs for the lingerie industry comes as bra sales have rebounded from the depths of the pandemic, when many women stopped wearing the undergarments while sheltering at home. Bra sales totaled US$10.2 billion in 2021, a 36% increase over 2020. The average price for an underwire bra is currently $17. This is up 13% compared with a year ago. The increase is broadly similar to inflation that has occurred in other types of women’s apparel.

An important point that product managers have to be aware of is that the rising price of bras might be less noticeable to shoppers than items they purchase regularly like groceries or gas. Lingerie customers often feel as though they are going to pay whatever they have to pay to get one that is comfortable. In part because of that mentality, the product managers at Journelle are not expecting a big drop in sales of the Natalia product. The Journelle product managers didn’t want to sacrifice Natalia’s quality because of the rising price. This product has only 16 components and no molded cups and it is made almost entirely of lace.

To offset some of their pricing pressures, the product managers at Journelle are changing the way that they do business. They have pulled out of Asia and now source most bra components from Europe. Molded cups come from Tunisian factories. Italy provides the metal rings, wires and boning. Even though production in Europe can be more expensive than in Asia, the Journelle product managers believe that they are saving money by reducing shipping costs, which have also skyrocketed. The product managers realize that they can control energy costs more than they can control shipping costs.

What All Of This Means For You

The goal of any product manager is to create products that our customers will want to buy. In order to make this happen, we have to be sure to price our products in a way that they are affordable for our customers and they make a profit for our company. In the lingerie business, they are currently experiencing a sharp rise in the cost of getting their products into stores. The result of this is that they are having to raise the cost of their product. How should product managers handle a situation like this?

The lingerie product managers at Journelle have had to make a significant price increase in their product because of rising costs. The result of this price boost was that a number of the channels for their product have said that they will no longer carry it. Product managers realize that rising costs are rippling through their global supply chain. Once a product’s price goes up, it can be very hard to lower it over time. The pandemic caused women to change the types of lingerie that they were buying. The whole world is facing the same pressures on inflation, in raw materials, in transport, in people, in freight. The cost of bras is going up just as the demand for this product is also going up. Lingerie may be a special product: customers may not notice the price increase as much as they search for the perfect product. Lingerie product managers are shifting production to Europe from Asia in order to reduce their shipping costs.

The good news for lingerie product managers is that they are responsible for a product that their customers want. They need to be careful with their price because if it goes up too much, they can have a variety of channels start to refuse to sell their product. However, changes in the world cause product managers to have to make changes to their prices. If they can do this carefully, they may be able to cover their costs and keep their customers.

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: Do you think product managers should tell customers why prices are going up>

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you are like most people, you have started to get used to being able to log on to your computer and order up just about anything. What’s even better, is that what you have ordered seems to show up very quickly. What a lot of us don’t spend much time thinking about is where all of this stuff is coming from. Sure, we’ve all see those pictures of the immense Amazon warehouses where books, TVs, and shoes are quickly picked and packed. However, what about ice cream? For that matter what about milk? There are certain items that we like to order that have to stay cold or even frozen before we buy them. Where do they get stored?

The post Lingerie Product Managers Deal With Too Much Exposure appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

How do you feel about using your computer? If you are like most of us, you can accomplish most things: sending email, attending a Zoom meeting, making a doctor’s appointment, etc. However, doing many of these things can be a challenge for older computer users. They can do them, they just need somebody who knows how to do it to show them how to perform different tasks. As the number of senior computer users continues to grow, this is opening a brand-new market that product managers are trying to determine how best to fill.

Tech Creates New Product Opportunities

Product managers realize that some tech savvy is required for the activities of daily living. This can include such things as connecting with friends via Zoom, shopping online, using smart TVs and setting up doctors’ appointments. As a result of this, product managers at more and more independent and assisted-living communities are adding personal tech support to their list of amenities. Providing full-time tech concierges on the premises at high-end communities such as the Watermark at Napa Valley in California, Inspīr Carnegie Hill in New York City, and Atria Newport Beach in California help residents with their everyday tech needs.

Product managers have realized that the need for personalized tech support in senior-living communities has been increasing as residents acquire ever-growing numbers of personal digital devices. In a survey it was found that 83% of adults 55 and over own a smartphone, 66% own laptops and 58% own tablets. People are moving into retirement communities with five to seven devices. Product managers realize that older adults often aren’t as facile with the devices as younger generations are. According to a survey more than half of Americans over age 65 and two-thirds of adults over age 75 have little confidence in their ability to set up and use their digital devices.

The need for new products became apparent when during the pandemic lockdowns, those devices became residents’ lifelines to the outside world. The staff in most senior communities could hardly keep up with requests for assistance with smartphones, tablets, Zoom, FaceTime and telehealth visits. Community volunteers who had helped out in the past were no longer allowed to enter the buildings due to visiting restrictions. As a result, all staff members, including maintenance workers and drivers who knew how to use a cellphone, became conscripted to help residents get online. That experience, on top of the rising use of smart devices in general by residents of high-end retirement homes, has led product managers to formalize and expand their tech-support programs.

Solving The Tech Support Gap

Many senior communities have on-site computer classes already. The idea of providing a tech concierge is new. In addition to leading classes for residents once a week, product managers have realized that tech concierges can schedule one-on-one visits. Most of the requests will be for help with password management, application downloads, setting up accounts with services including Zoom, Uber and Instacart, and logging into streaming services such as Netflix. Things can get more detailed when requests are made to set up receivers to connect hearing aids to televisions, help purchase iPads, and set up a digital newspaper subscription that enabled customers to get news in larger type.

Product managers understand that full-time tech concierge service without fees is a rarity. Most senior-living communities now offer some form of fee-based tech training and support. While industrywide pricing data isn’t available, typical fees charged are $12.50 to $25 for 15-minute sessions. In many communities, if there is no full-time person provided, frequently an IT employee or other staff member will step in to troubleshoot residents’ tech problems. Quick fixes of this sort are often provided for free. In some communities, local volunteers and other residents may offer tech support at no charge.

Product managers see an opportunity in senior communities that outsource tech support. Residents of the upscale Vi at La Jolla Village in San Diego get virtual assistance through Candoo Tech, whose concierges are trained to work with older adults. The senior housing site pays half of an undisclosed annual fee for residents, for which they get two 90-minute, one-on-one learning sessions, unlimited 30-minute help sessions, and one group class per month. Additional computer sessions or longer help sessions are available to residents for an additional discounted price.

What All Of This Means For You

Product managers are always looking for new opportunities to create products that their customers will want. Lately they have come to realize that as more and more people are becoming older and moving into senior care facilities, the need for assistance with all of their high-tech devices is growing. The complexity of these devices along with the sheer number of them that more and more people have has created a market that is not currently being served. Product managers believe that they can solve this problem.

In order to be attractive to older people who may consider moving there, more and more senior living facilities are starting to offer full-time tech concierges. More and more seniors have cell phone, tablets, and computers. However, fewer and fewer of them feel confident in setting them up and maintaining them. The pandemic revealed the need for support staff as electronic devices become the primary way that people were able to stay in touch with each other. Many senior living facilities offer computer classes to their residents. They can also offer one-on-one support. Full-time tech concierge service can be a big money maker. Some senior care facilities are outsourcing their tech support.

Providing tech support to senior residents of care facilities can be a big business. Product managers need to make sure that they have a good understanding of just exactly the type of support that this customer is going to need. They will also have to work out what kind of pricing plan will work with their customer’s ability to pay. If they can create the correct type of product, then they may have created a must have product that everyone will be willing to buy.

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: Do you think charging for classes would be a good idea for senior customers?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As product managers, we all want to be responsible for products that our customers really, really want. That’s why being a lingerie product manager sounds like a very good job. You make a product that has the ability to transform your customer and because of that they will seek you out. However, lately, changes in how lingerie is made is starting to have a negative impact on the bottom line of this product. No matter how magical they may be, if they cost too much nobody will buy them. What is a product manager to do?

The post Tech For Seniors Creates New Opportunities For Product Managers appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

So just exactly how much time do you spend each day thinking about shaving? If you are like the majority of people, probably very little. What’s even worse, from a shaving product manager’s point-of-view is that we probably spend even less time thinking about the equipment that we use to shave with. Over at Schick their product managers want us to start spending some more time thinking about how we are going about this whole shaving thing. They think that they might have come up with a winning idea.

What Is A Sustainable Razer?

The product managers who are responsible for Schick’s new disposable razor for men and women have made and packaged it to appeal to its sustainability conscious customers. How are they planning on going about doing this? It turns out that the razor’s handle is made of 70% renewable bamboo and 30% other materials. The packaging is partly recyclable, with the paper used in its design certified as being recycled material. This product is the Schick product manager’s first effort at giving consumers an environmentally friendly option for a disposable razor.

The product managers believe that it is a matter of recognizing trends and taking the time to develop their product in a way that they feel that consumers are likely to adopt. The product managers have set a series of goals to become more sustainable by 2030, with targets including making 100% of its plastic packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable. These product managers are also in a crowd of consumer-goods product managers who are trying to make existing products more appealing to their environmentally minded shoppers. An example of this happened over at Unilever PLC last year where their product managers said that they wanted to introduce carbon-footprint details for all their products. At the same time other companies are starting to use carbon-neutral products to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

The Schick product managers realize that in order to build consumer trust, their brand has to demonstrate transparency and authenticity. Providing evidence of responsibly sourced materials, reducing their amount of packaging, and removing any toxic or environmentally damaging ingredients are high on the list of desired product characteristics for today’s educated consumer. Still, there are challenges for product managers, including determining whether and when their consumers will be willing to bear any extra costs. 63% of global consumers have made modest changes to their behavior in order to become more sustainable. However, 66% said they are not willing to pay more for sustainable products or services.

Do Consumers Care About Sustainable Razers?

Product managers need to realize that disposable products might seem like unlikely candidates to have a halo of sustainability. Product managers have to focus on encouraging consumers to use long-lasting products, as opposed to creating more disposable items. The amount of money that brands Schick are going to put into marketing the sustainable products could instead be spent to educate people on the benefits of refillable systems.

The Schick product managers believe that their disposable razor is for environmentally conscious consumers who aren’t willing to make a commitment to a more expensive, longer-lasting product or prefer to use disposable razors when they travel. The thinking is that it gives customers an option and gives them a choice. It enables them really to not sacrifice on that experience that they’re used to. The best feature of this product is that it is a very low-effort way for customers to do something more environmentally conscious.

Product managers at bigger consumer goods conglomerates tend to move more slowly than startups. However, they are paying attention and finding ways to innovate. Right now there’s no brand today that has an entirely single-use plastic footprint whose product managers aren’t thinking about the implications for long-term strategy around getting into recycled plastic and reusable products. It is a major concern for everyone.

What All Of This Means For You

If there is one thing that most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, it’s how we shave. However, perhaps we should. The product managers over at Schick have decided that if they go to the effort of making an environmentally sensitive razer, they just might be able to get a new set of customers to buy it. The question is just exactly how are they going to go about doing this?

The Schick product managers have created a new disposable razor for men and women that has a handle that is made of 70% renewable bamboo and 30% other materials. Its packaging is partly recyclable. There is currently a crowd of consumer-goods product managers who are trying to make existing products more appealing to their environmentally minded shoppers. The product managers know that their brand has to demonstrate transparency and authenticity. They have to determine if customers are willing to pay to be sustainable. The alternative is that the product managers could be helping their customers to understand how products could be refilled. The goal is to give their customers options. Moving in this direction is something that everyone is doing.

The Schick product managers are right to have started to create a disposable product that is made out of recycled products. Their customers are concerned about creating more pollution and they may be drawn to this new product. The challenge that the product managers are going to have is to find a way to get their customers to agree that being sustainable is worth the extra cost. If they can accomplish this, then they just might have a winner on their hands…

– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: How can the Schick product managers convince customers to buy disposable razors instead of refillable razors?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How do you feel about using your computer? If you are like most of us, you can accomplish most things: sending email, attending a Zoom meeting, making a doctor’s appointment, etc. However, doing many of these things can be a challenge for older computer users. They can do them, they just need somebody who knows how to do it to show them how to perform different tasks. As the number of senior computer users continues to grow, this is opening a brand-new market that product managers are trying to determine how best to fill.

The post Can Sustainability Win More Razor Customers? appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.