StarBUG
Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time out of the office giving talks and meeting with people – customers, suppliers, potential partners, investors – both listening and talking about BUG and our mission. Somewhere along the line someone compared what we’re doing to Starbucks…
They said that when they were growing up they had "plain ol’ coffee" and maybe an espresso once a year or so at a restaurant. Nothing more and everything was fine. There was no "problem" or perceived pain with that state of affairs. Then along came Starbucks and, bam!, they had all these choices to make. And make them they/we did. Some basic research turned up this, and a brief, informal survey of the baristas around here confirmed that each one needs to understand 100+ different combinations of coffee, tea, milk, soy, flavorings, quanitities, etc. (this is further suggested here). Starbucks has catered to something we innately desire – choice and control.
Choice and control. We all like it. In fact, more and more we’re spending our $$ with vendors who give it to us. Witness the success of Toyota’s Scion. It was a huge draw at the latest Auto Show in NYC (just ask my son who I could not drag away). Given the building blocks of beverage or automobile making we will take more over less every time (with some guidance for getting it right the first time). And I think this applies to everything. Literally. I think ten years from now we will live in a world where today’s one-size-fits-all restrictions will be unrecognizable. Just like a Google-less world is hard to imagine now.
BUG is fundamentally about choice and control. In our case we’re focusing on electronics because we think there is a huge untapped market waiting to be explored. Others are focusing on different areas – check out the open source footwear!
The Starbucks analogy was spot on.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I have this feel that younger people may like choices. But as age sets in, one prefer it Less and less. Hell, i keep thinking that the informed customer is the exception, not the norm. And only a informed customer have the ability to pick his way through a sea of choices…