My guess is that most JP industry CEOs dream of finding at least one product that is so successful that it is transformational from a company sales and profit standpoint. So, how do you develop blockbuster products that generate tens of millions in sales for years and years and elevate your brand to the "must-have" category in the eyes of both retailers and consumers? You can get some clues by looking at some of the most noteworthy industry product success stories. There are many to choose from but I selected a few with which I am most familiar. What you will see is that there are 4 interesting things that these examples have in common:

·         They solved a previously unsolved significant parenting problem. 

·         They are protected by patents or other competitive barriers such as high cost of entry. 

·         They were not necessarily "overnight successes". 

·         They were not ideas generated by market research.

 Avent Bottle 

This was one of those classic tipping point stories of a product that travelled under the radar for years before catching on. The parent company had the good fortune of generating healthy revenues from a non-juvenile division that enabled the owners to stick with this product for a number of money-losing years until word of mouth took hold. The Avent bottle was one of the first to claim that it could reduce colic and extensive advertising and PR efforts in support of this feature triggered positive word of mouth that helped catapult the product to international success. This was also a story of a husband-wife team with a mix of talents that blended beautifully together. The husband was an outstanding, quality-conscious, patent-savvy engineer and the wife a highly experienced marketer. Their idea of market research was simply to create a product that they themselves would want to use. Restricting distribution of their product to specialty stores also helped enhance the cachet of this premium made-in-the-UK product line. 

Boppy Pillow

It also took a while for the Boppy Pillow to become a phenomenon. The product was initially created by a mom to satisfy a request from her daughter’s daycare center for something to help prop up babies. However, its ultimate success came from serving a completely different purpose than even the inventor was aware of. With the increased popularity of breastfeeding, there was a growing need for something that would allow moms to prop up their babies in a position comfortable for both mom and baby. The Boppy Pillow filled that need and was protected by a strong patent. Yet, in spite of winning a JPMA show new product award when first introduced around 1990, the founder faced significant financial difficultiesearly on and needed aid from an SBA microloan to carry on. A PR breakthrough occurred in 1998 when the product appeared in an episode of Friends. Spurred on by that publicity, 12 years after being introduced it was named by American Baby as the #1 baby product and is still a leading "must-have" product today.  

Take & Toss Cups

Forgive me for including one of my own creations, but I think it’s fair to classify this product and the line of related spinoff products it inspired as a true industry success story. First introduced in 2002, it is still a strong multimillion dollar product line ten years later. This was a case of applying a production technology from another industry to juvenile products. Gladware had been introduced in the housewares industry using thin wall injection molding for containers where traditional injection molding had previously been used. The result was a significantly lower cost per piece and the introduction of the concept of "semi-disposability". We felt that by applying this technology to training cups, we could create a product with considerable appeal to parents because of both higher value and the added convenience of not having to worry about losing or throwing away cups. While the idea was not patentable, the cost of tooling and equipment for this type of manufacturing was so high that it acted as a barrier to competitive entry long enough for us to get the product well-established. The long, stressful lead time for us was the time from the initial idea to actually getting it on the market with a level of performance that met our standards. As I recall, this was about 3 years. Fortunately, the risk paid off and the product was successful almost immediately because of the appeal of the price proposition.  

Breakthrough products like these can be the key to achieving the kind of financial success we all would like to have in our businesses. There are many ways to create them but what at least these examples indicate, is that you don’t necessarily need a huge marketing and product development staff and budget to create winners. What you do need is a "better mousetrap" idea that you can protect and the patience and financial wherewithal to stick with it until it catches on.

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