Sometimes the product innovation is the distribution | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes the product innovation is the distribution

interconnected.org

123 pointssurprisetalk31 comments

Some other recent related examples I've seen of changing the format to differentiate:

Guacamole squeeze bottle: Typically guacamole at supermarkets come in tubs, but one company put it into a squeeze bottle which lets it last longer and use it to squirt on your tacos easier. Normally I would compare prices / taste but the format trumps all of those other factors. https://www.instacart.com/products/21844889-yucatan-guacamol...?

Flour: I typically see flour sold by multiple companies in these small paper bags that you would throw away after you put it into a real container. Wondra put theirs in a shaker bottle, making it easier to use when you want to thicken up a sauce while cooking. Now their brand is shown and maintained when other wise it would just be yet another flour company: https://www.instacart.com/products/16409225-gold-medal-wondr...?

Interesting that there is demand for this, I couldn't imagine using either one. Maybe it's a small niche, but with very profitable margins.

> after you put it into a real container

What? Who recontainers flour?

I always pour flour from the paper bag into my giant plastic container. I haven't in almost half a year though.

You guys are talking about all purpose (wheat) flour, right?

We do, easy way to avoid bugs getting in there.

Guess it's related to the fact we don't bake that often, a 2kg (4.5 lbs) bag of flour can last us a month.

And do you in practice seen bugs in your flour? How often?

Because i too consume flour at a similar rate to yours, I don’t recontainer my flour and never in my life seen bugs in flour.

Yes, not terribly often but enough that the simple act of putting it in an airtight container is worth it.

Yes or more correctly, my wife and I used to until we started putting all such goods (flour, oats, rice) in sealed glass containers.

Perhaps you might not have been looking close enough. If you are not blasting through flour very quickly and you leave it in a bag, even clipped, you can get weevils and mites. This is not new. Ask elderly home cooks that you know. Putting it in sealed containers or jars, however, it can keep for a good while.

Extra protein?

Huh, I guess the likelihood of this depends on where you live. I have had this happen only once in my entire life, and a 1kg bag of flour can last me several months! (I rarely bake cook with flour)

True. It's apparently one of the most common pests in Norwegian households and in the Scandinavian countries, but not that common elsewhere[1]. Seems it might be related to our climate, with cold winters but warm indoor temperatures.

[1]: https://www.pestium.no/skadedyr-i-naeringsmidler/hvor-kommer...

Interestingly it happened to me a lot in France but never in Sweden. So it cannot be just about temperature

Everyone who has ever had to deal with food moths or weevils so many people I would guess. I also put it through the freezer before.

Air tight container is a game changer when it comes to properly storing dry goods for a long time.

I do, because I find the bag to be messy. No matter how careful I am, it's impossible to open, take flour out, and close it without spilling a fine mist of flour around it.

With a container (I recommend Anchor Hocking's aluminium containers that have a rubber seal and a metal latch), I never have any issues. Open, carefully scoop out, close. Easier to wipe down, too. And the latch keeps stuff sealed even if the container falls over or is moved around. Easier to stack in a cupboard, too.

I also use this type of container for rice, grains, spices, pasta, etc.

I do, to maintain freshness and to keep the kitchen neat. A single bag of flour can last me over a year.

Also the bags sold in the US are so flimsy that they almost always leak flour everywhere just by sitting still.

We have a handful of containers in our house for such purposes. Flour and cat food are the first two that come to mind, and using them is exclusively a better experience than leaving these products in their original container.

That said, they often sit unused because we forget to actually do the transfer!

I remember a few years ago when we started to see sour cream in similar squeeze bottles and what a revelation it felt like. No more watery separation or dried out clumps, and no need for something to scoop it out with. Now a number of brands package it this way, and it’s the kind you see in our refrigerator most often

I found this wonderful page on the author's website:

https://interconnected.org/home/2020/09/24/unoffice_hours

>For the past month or so, as an experiment, I’ve been opening my calendar each week for video calls with whoever books a time. It’s been amazing. Wednesday is now my favourite day.

>I loved those open conversations over coffee in the Before Times. There’s an ostensible reason to connect, so you talk about work, or compare notes about an idea, or whatever.

>But then the unexpected emerges. There are things in your head that you only know are there when you say them.

Upvoting this because it made me think about SaaS and its relationship with open- and fair-source.

Often a change in distribution v. closed-source can be its own moat.

Can you expand and maybe give an example of what you are saying?

Sure. If there's a market that has only closed-source incumbents, providing an open- or fair-source alternative, i.e. changing the distribution model, can be an innovation unto itself.

I wrote about the relationship here if you want to read more about what I mean: https://keygen.sh/blog/licensing-is-packaging/

One could argue that Nike using influencer marketing with Michael Jordan was one of these hacks as well (at least at that time). Apple's 1984 ads and the marketing made them more valuable and that is step 1 of distribution.

The Gas app by Nikita also had this new distribution channel through Instagram etc.

These are actually the real secrets of business. If you do know one of them you are for sure not sharing them on Youtube.

That is not distribution.

The last example definitely is. They used instagrams notification of follow-backs to do mass simultaneous follow-backs of another platform as an install call to action to increase the chances of their geospatially clustered users having social interactions in-app.

What’s with the annoying cursors ?

kinda related: would love to see somebody to innovate in the book distribution space.

How so?

(Not me, but I'm curious, and who knows, maybe someone else here can.)

good question. i'll let you know if i can figure it out with https://bookhead.net

Don’t sleep on any of the boxes in the business model canvas!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Model_Canvas

The most important thing I think that activity teaches you is that business is a huge multidimensional space, and you can always find a quiet region within which there’s probably some profitable point. So much startup advice is basically how to structure a walk through this space.

Indeed, other times the customer relationships, or the packaging, sometimes it is even about technology, but not so often .) Having attended and then participated in the masters program in Technological Entrepreneurship @ Sofia University, this all seems now so apparent. But you can only really grasp it when you have a business activity, otherwise it is sounds like common sense talk.

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