The passing of brand names and the market moves on

Lately, those of us with longer experience in the world of CE and electronics have seen many venerable name brands fail and disappear of worse. As with many things, it was change itself and the stress it causes that was and remains the key cause. Legacy issues, lack of capital, rapid business shifts all are realities in this venue and there are indeed times when all good efforts will be overwhelmed. However, we also constantly see a certain lack of clear eyesight on the markets, or plans on how to get to our consumers, users and partners. Of course, innovating is hard and so much is needed to create great products and services and that is paramount. On the other hand, if that is done in a vacuum or without coordination with the rest of the total product lifetime cycle then real barriers to success arrive. I am talking about thinking of going to market. One of the key unifying themes behind these troubles is change, and either lack of understanding or worse lack of action about what was happening to their customers and their markets. There are a lot of great products no one really buys, but in general it is because they are only for a very few despite the hopes and plans of the makers. There are a lot of great products that did not sell because they were way to early or way too late. And of course there are mostly a lot of products or services with big holes in their offer competitively that are sold in a maelstrom of excuses, and underperform and cost money and reputation and resource. Before you go to market, get some facts, measure you plans against it and then go hell bent.