A Faster Horse: Thoughts On Customer Knowledge

Posted by Jason Markow on Aug 16, 2010 in Marketing | 0 comments

Conventional wisdom warns not to build a product without first having a customer.  This is a school of thought I struggle with when I see events unfold as they did in the picture above.  On Friday I attended ASR, the largest convention in the action sports industry, with Joey Santley and his brand new, recycled foam, surfboard.

To tweak Henry Ford’s famous line, “If I had asked the customer what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse”, If Joey would have asked his customer what they wanted, they would not have the slightest clue where to begin.

Some Necessary Backstory

The surfboard manufacturing industry has been in shambles since 2005 when Clark Foam, supplier of over 90% of all surfboard blanks (what they shape surfboards out of), abruptly shut their doors pressured by their legal council for environmental reasons.  Since that time, manufactures have been forced to shift to alternative production methods.

Joey’s Answer

The ‘backstory’ provided above make it deceptively easy to trace a line to the conclusion of creating a more eco-friendly product, but the reality is a bit different.  For many years manufactures avoided any form of recycled material because it simply didn’t work.  It was either too heavy, too ugly, or too expensive to work with.

Joey, and the Green Foam crew developed a method that created a recycled product that is virtually indistinguishable from brand new one.   Customers, and ultimately manufactures, were not screaming for an eco-friendly option because they did not think it was possible.

The Gamble

Joey’s story is the perfect example that:

- The customer is NOT always right. (Mainly because they are not fully informed.)

- It is possible to create a product BEFORE building a database of customers. (You just have to take the gamble that all the ASSUMPTIONS you are making will fall into place.