Need More Dough? by Brian Buck
Lessons in negotiating can happen anywhere. Recently, I had a lesson that took place at Williams-Sonoma. As we shopped for kitchen supplies, I noticed that one appliance was clearly missing — the bread maker. Yes, a staple of wedding gifts and housewarming events everywhere was conspicuously absent from the store. Which is ironic, seeing as Williams-Sonoma was the driving force behind the, er, rise of bread makers. How they accomplished that is a great lesson for all negotiators. In the ’90s, Williams-Sonoma was the first to bring a bread maker to market. After much consumer research, they discovered that people really enjoy freshly baked bread, but they were too intimidated to bake it themselves. However, if there were a machine that required home-bakers to simply add water and some ingredients, and it would do the rest — now, that would be a big hit. They launched the first bread maker with a price point of nearly
$300. Then, as Williams-Sonoma does, they put bread makers on display while their in-store kitchens baked loaves of the stuff for every shopper to smell and sample — typically, a winning formula for the retailer. Surprisingly, initial sales were tepid at best, which was a huge disappointment. This product was precisely what consumers wanted, but no one was buying it.
What do you do when something isn’t selling? You make it bigger and sell it for more! (What, were you expecting “cut the price”?) Williams- Sonoma called a market research group whose recommendation was to do absolutely nothing with the existing product. Rather, they should make a bigger one with a few more features and a heftier price tag.
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