I will organize a list of good product examples. A successful brand is built on top of a successful distribution system and successful products that are presented in the best possible way and that delight customers. Here are some products to model after when your goal is to have a long term sustainable successful business.
A lot of these successes innovated within an existing market vs creating an entirely new market. Some like Tabs created a new market for sex chocolate that really didn’t exist before. Others listed were able to patent something to have some defensible IP. They also asked and answered important questions
- How does this go viral or get awareness very inexpensively?
- How am I going to market and position this?
- How is this going to be better than what’s already out there?
- How do I present this in the best possible way?
- How do I scale this?
- Is there a way to create good content around this product that can hit the for you page?
WALABOT - A smart wall scanner, stud detector
Update: As of 1/1/2024 they are doing an estimated 15,500 units in sales or 2.78M in revenue.
If you check out the listing Amazon also shows a rounded estimate of units sold as well which at this time was 7k units sold. So 7k x $179 = $1.25M in revenue over the last 30 days.
WALABOT launched a product in an existing market “stud finders” with an enhanced value proposition of being able to use your smart phone to see better behind walls. They positioned them as premium to existing solutions and as a result could charge premium pricing to the existing offers in the niche which were around $36
Here are the niches that WALABOT appears in
For the “Behind Wall Scanner” niche here they are the primary offerings for this niche which shows that they currently don’t have any real competitors. Also note the search volume growth of 115% over the past 180 days
Their product does very well for virality on tiktok generating millions of views (here)
Takeaways:
- They innovated in an existing market with a better offer vs trying to create an entirely new market
- Because they made a product that was “dumb” into something “smart” with the connectivity of the smartphone they had a unique selling proposition that allowed them to charge a premium price to existing stud finders on the market
- This market was very bid - the stud finder niche has
- The product’s value can be shown within 3 seconds and is something unique which makes it worthy of tiktok virality generating millions of views
Manta Sleep Mask - Amazon focused to sell through sleep mask keywords
Main Takeaways
- They innovated in the sleep mask market - they built/designed a better sleep mask
- They patented their design so they can maintain a high price and take out competitors
Active Dishwasher Cleaner
- Estimated Revenue of $4M/month which means this is a $48M/year business - HUGE
- One listing accounts for more than half of their monthly revenue
- Solved a smell problem and performance problem with dishwashers
- Innovated with excellent packaging to get a high CTR on Amazon platform vs other offers
- Amazon Listing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MV5B75Y
- Amazon Storefront Link
Laundry Turtle - Amazon focused with awareness via TikTok / Instagram Influencers
Main Takeaways
- Product had virality built into it
- Product was patented
- Product sold ~4,400 units last 30 days (1/1/2024) totaling $130k in revenue and on Amazon the rounded estimate of units bought = 2k which at a price point of $30 = $60,000.
- The product makes life easier for people
- Amazon Listing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09M7PJ9J5
- Viral TikTok video with 1.3M views here
Tabs Chocolate - successful D2C first then launched on Amazon later
- Value Prop - Have better sex / more exciting sex with your partner. The best night of your life.
- Mixed natural supplements and powders into chocolate and wrapped it in a nice package
- Product had potential to go viral based off seeing a TikTok video with 8M views & 2M likes for sex chocolate with no company website
- Packaging was huge differentiator
- Excellent sales funnel strategy to get awareness and convert that awareness/attention into customers
- Tabs sold first through their website D2C and then later on Amazon
OTOTO
Unique cookware products. Take common household cookware items and innovate them with excellent attention grabbing designs. The designs are viral and so content goes viral to generate awareness and sales of the products via TikTok. Distribution channel = TikTok. Sales Channel = Amazon and their website.
Looking at their Amazon Storefront here: https://www.amazon.com/s?me=A1FWIW6RVM5XDB&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER
- They have 103 listings. Some don’t have sales estimates. Usually Amazon lists the top selling product at the top of the search results so at the very least they are doing $300k/month analyzing just 32 of their top 103 listings.
- The other thing to note is the quality of their listings is very high. They have excellent attention grabbing main images and excellent A+ content.
- They have a lot of listings so have thrown a lot of there to test. Through this process I am sure they must have figured out a way to increase the likelihood of success for new products before investing a lot into them.
J Pillow - Link
Changing the shape of a sleep pillow - Design improvement to do a better job than existing alternatives
Other things you can do with this. Connect the product to a specific niche it competes within using Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer. Then compare it vs the existing top products within the niche. Understand who the competitors are - larger companies or smaller ones and how much of their total revenue the product makes up.
Crush the Memory
https://get.crushthememory.com/
Working to get traffic to their prelaunch page via twitter and using Launchkit for the pre-launch.
Why not just use a phone to record your thoughts?
Well a phone isn’t great if you are biking or rollerblading and you want something easy to collect your idea or thought. You may also want something more water resistant or potentially waterproof to take around with you wherever. You may also wear the device as a necklace which you would never do with your phone. Having an integrated application is nice as well to capture your thoughts.
A funny thing about this is it’s almost a different wrapper for this device which connects with a phone. The Banana phone.
The Mom Test Book - Link
Product Validation Checklist
Gsheet document for answering questions for product opportunity.