The topic of today is about brand/product distribution, an often neglected but nevertheless crucial element for the success of your business.
Bruce Lee, the cultural icon, acted in 20 films by the time he was 18. However his acting career really took off 13 years later, in 1971, in his first real leading role in the Big Boss, which catapulted him to stardom. His iconic figure was essentially created in just 2 years, between 1971 and 1973 when he teamed up with Golden Harvest, a dominating production and distribution company based in Hong Kong.
Microsoft’s dominance in the software industry is essentially attributed to the deal with IBM in 1980 which awarded Microsoft a contract to provide the DOS operating system in the IBM PC computers. Due to that partnership, Microsoft benefited from a massively distributed product to market (and sell) its software.
Procter & Gamble’s success is largely due to securing partnerships with the biggest distributors in each market they operate in (and having big advertising budgets that encourage consumers to buy the products). That allows P&G to have a massive distribution channel for all their products and ensure they reach millions of potential consumers.
As you can tell, the common factor between a superstar actor, the leading software giant, and the leading consumer good company is having a huge distribution channel that allows them to distribute their brand/products to millions of people (media distribution, product distribution or channel distribution). The prerequisite to this is obviously having a great product. But, in almost all the cases, having a great product alone does not guarantee success.
You can apply the same strategy to your own business. While it is important to focus on creating outstanding products, it is also equally important to think of your distribution strategy.
Can you think of a potential company with whom you can partner to distribute your product?
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This is little more than common sense.
Common sense is that anything, be it a business or individual, becomes successful after attaining a certain critical mass, i.e. a exceeding a certain threshold, be it a revenue or a number of fans or audience.
Thus scalability is the key. Just the same way anything that becomes pop. that is popular, reaches and appeals to big masses.
Scalability is the strategic characteristic and distribution is the implementation or realization of that characteristic.