The One Product Tweak That Earned Us $11,956 in 24 Hours

Our e-commerce company, Rugby Bricks, made one adjustment to our best-selling product line. We changed the colour to red.

Daily sales went up by 812% from the previous year.

Virgil Abloh, an American fashion designer who worked with Nike, Louis Vuitton and other household brands, described this phenomenon as the 3% rule: create something new by only changing a process, a product, a perspective, etc. by 3 percent.

In his words:

“The result is advanced, yet still acceptable, satisfying our natural interest in novelty and change while maintaining familiarity.” 

McDonald’s understands this. There are over 80 different flavours of McFlurry’s in the world.

Apple understands this. They’ve released 38 different iPhone models.

Novelty keeps consumers interested and coming back.

Notes: 

This is easy to say when you have product market fit.

Companies that have already established themselves can differentiate or improve their existing products for huge returns.

Not all of us are this lucky.

If you are starting out, here is our in-depth guide to running pre-sales for a new product for those who haven’t found a product market fit.

Why You Don’t Always Need A Unique Product

Peter Thiel, the famed venture capitalist and entrepreneur, said,

“Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation.

The converse is not true.

No matter strong your product is - even if it easily fits into already established habits and anybody who tries it likes it immediately - you must still support it with a strong distribution plan.”

Many companies would be far better off going out and getting customers than trying to build the “best” version of their product in isolation.

Sales and distribution can account for a lot of the heavy lifting a founder needs to grow their business.

If you are avoiding doing the “hard thing”, which for most people is selling because your product isn’t ready yet, you probably need to go out and sell.

Notes: We’re not advocating for shipping lousy products, but we are advocating for action.

Great products and services are important differentiators, but most of the time, you just need to put your offering in front of people to grow your business.

This will allow you to refine what you do for your customer in real-time, ultimately improving your offer.