Wealth-Coaching

This topic of figuring out how to successfully sell a commodity has always intrigued me. As a marketing guy, businesses owners are constantly asking me to work miracles for them when they have no way of differentiating their product or service from their competition other than the old no imagination default… "low price".

Look, if low price is the only way you can find to compete it usually means you’re destined for the business graveyard because there will always be someone who comes along and will sell it for less, like Wal-Mart for example.

And as you know, Wal-Mart has unmercifully sent many a small business to the graveyard.

I recently read Dave Taylor’s interview with John Fischer, head of StickerGiant and how they have learned to profit by selling a commodity item. It inspired me to write about another commoditized industry where one business has recently impressed me.

I recently married off my youngest daughter, Ashley. We forced her to wait until she was 18. This girl has wanted to get married since kindergarten, but that’s a different story. Anyway, the wedding reception was on a Saturday night and on the following Wednesday I received a "greeting card" in the mail.

The card was from my second oldest daughter, Leslie. What was shocking about the card was the picture on the front of it was of me and Leslie… taken at the wedding!

Having once been in the printing business I was stunned that I could have received a customized printed card so quickly after the wedding. Plus, having the old printer paradigm of, "its as cheap to print five hundred cards as it is to print one", I figured my daughter must have invested her entire life savings to pull this off.

Then to top things off, the message on the inside of the card was a customized message from her. She was being sweet and thanked me for the great job I had done at the wedding.

I called her and thanked her for the card and asked her about the details surrounding this card.

As it turns out her fiance, who is currently dodging suicide bombers in Iraq, has an uncle that started CardCafe.com, a business that has taken the commoditization out of the greeting card industry.

And what further enhances the appeal for me is that not only can you customize your card with a personal photo and message that they will print for you; but they will stuff the card in an envelope for you… lick the flap and seal it for you… address it for you… put the sticky stamp on it for you… and then they drop it in the mail for you!!!!

I was flabbergasted!

The coup de grace of the whole process is that they do this for the same price as many greeting cards in the rack at the grocery store… less than three bucks!

Ok, maybe everyone doesn’t hate those digital goofy e-cards as much as me and no one probably hates sending Christmas Cards as much as I do. So maybe you won’t be as impressed with this business idea as I was.

But they’ve taken everything I hate about sending greeting cards out of the process for me, namely the stuffing, addressing, licking, stamping and running to the post office.

So by using new digital technology they are able to offer something the Wal-Marts of the world will never offer… service and a unique selling proposition, a reason to buy from them other than price. And you know what?

For me I’m willing to pay more for it for 3 reasons.

1. Once I hear about someones new baby, or upcoming birthday or whatever might constitute a good reason to send a greeting card, I now have to remember to take time out of my rather hectic schedule and go get one.

2. With CardCafe.com I get to send it instantly, no remembering required because 99 out of 100 times I’m going to forget to get it!

3. I’d much rather have the convience of sitting in front of my computer and instantly sending a personalized greeting card rather than run to Wal-Mart and fight the traffic and jostle in the aisles with the rest of humanity just to search through a stack of inane canned greeting cards just to save fifty cents.

The bottom line is you can successfully compete selling a commodity, if you can figure out how to not make it a commodity! Which just requires a little imagination!

This year I’ll be sending out a few Christmas Cards. My friends and family will be surprised to find out I’m still alive!