Make 'Em Talk Jump-start sales the simple way—with endorsements.
By Don Debelak
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Daniel Henry, 37, has what most would consider a perfectproduct: a kit that can fix damaged CDs in less than one minute.Wipe Out!, Henry's CD repair kit, costs $14.99 and works on 40CDs, saving consumers anywhere from $12.95 for new music CDs to$100 for high-end computer programs. Since CDs are made from aplastic that's easily scratched, Wipe Out! seemed primed totake off in the market. But overnight success didn't developwhen the product was introduced in 1996.
Henry's Esprit Development Corp., based in Long Beach,California, was finally able to push its sales over $400,000 in1999. The turnaround: Henry lifted sales with a private-labelagreement with Radio-Shack, as well as a presence in major retailoutlets like Borders Books, Sam Goody and Tower Records. This year,the company is finally gaining the momentum Henry originallyexpected. What turned the company into a budding success? Ravingtestimonials in dozens of magazines declaring Wipe Out! astechnology's latest miracle product.
The Struggle Towards Marketing His Invention
In 1989, Henry was riding in the car when one of hisfriend's CDs suddenly started skipping. The friend was about totoss the CD when Henry, then an optical shop employee, offered tofix it. Successfully polishing that scratched CD with optical gear,Henry came upon the idea for a quick and easy repair kit forCDs.
He spent the next several years developing an easy-to-usechemical formula and, after receiving his patent in 1997, Henryteamed up with four partners-James Black, Paul Dragos, MarcGuest and David Story-to introduce the product to themarket.
But sales started with a big thud for two major reasons. Thefirst: The public didn't know CDs were reparable. Unlikerecords, music isn't recorded on the surface of a CD; instead,the digital data is protected by a clear layer, the part of the CDthat actually gets scratched. The laser that actually reads thedigital data can't read through scratches. But if you removethe scratch, the CD is a good as new. Unfortunately for Henry, manybelieved, and still do, that they distort the digital data whenthey scratch a disc and simply throw it away. Consequently, retailstores didn't see a demand from consumers for CD repairproducts.
The second obstacle: There were already CD repair products onthe market sold by companies that had full product lines, so it waseasier for stores to buy from their current suppliers. Anotherproblem with the competing products was that, according to Henry,"people who used them didn't get the results theywanted." People didn't believe Henry's product workedbetter so they didn't try it out.
Henry faced a difficult mission: to show his chemical kit wasunique, when all the consumer saw was a bottle that looked the sameas any other. And he had to show people just how well his productworks without the benefit of a demonstration.
Pitching His Way to Success
Henry and his partners first overcame their tough breaks bysecuring the URL www.cdrepair.com. This site helped Henry pick upforeign distributors and generate direct orders from consumerssearching the Web.
Then, in 1997, after the launching of the Web site, Henry andhis team started sending samples out to various magazine editorsand columnists asking them to try the product. The first key wasfinding the right people to approach. The partners picked upmagazines related to either electronics or music and looked up thenames of editors or columnists who regularly reviewed new products.(Other good sources for names of editors are reference books, suchas Gale Directory of Publications and BroadcastMedia [GALE Group] or the Standard Periodical Directory [OxbridgeCommunications], available at most libraries.) Then they called theappropriate contact to see whether they were interested in testinga sample.
At first, Henry found pitching to editors was as tough asselling to retailers. "No one wanted to be the first to writeabout the product," he says. But, after the first articleabout Wipe Out! was published, stories appeared in SmartComputing and PC World, as well as Yahoo! and TheDallas Morning News.
"The magazine testimonials meant everything to us,"says Henry. "They told people our product actually worked andhelped us convince retailers our product was actually better thanwhat they were selling. It helped us get into the stores."Henry also used the testimonials as backup when his team exhibitedat the 1998, 1999 and 2000 Consumer Electronic Shows.
These simple, low-cost approaches provided Henry with aninvaluable solution to his obstacles. From the publicity, hereceived the essentials for an inventor's success: credibilityand believability among users and retailers.
The Power of Testimonies
If your product isn't one that's likely to getendorsements from magazines, try getting testimonials directly fromcustomers. Some companies give products to industry experts oruniversity researchers free in return for reports or testimonialson the use of the product. Sporting goods companies often callattention to their products by giving them away to pro athletes inreturn for the free publicity.
The secret of using solid testimonials is to provide enoughinformation to make the report meaningful to the customer. I onceworked with a new product that increased the life of cutting tools.We started with customers' reports that tool life increased by25 to 80 percent. But that information alone was too vague toimpress our prospects. Prospects started paying attention when westarted publicizing more details, including the type of materialbeing machined, the speed of the product and the amount of materialremoved. Prospects suddenly had a reference point they couldunderstand.
The same principle applies to consumer products. A claim that afood processor cuts cooking time by 20 percent isn't thatmeaningful. A mother of four reporting that the food processor cutsthe time of chopping vegetables for beef stew by 70 percent is muchmore meaningful.
Don Debelak is a new-business marketing consultant and theauthor of Bringing Your Product to Market(John Wiley& Sons). Send him your invention questions at dondebelak@uswest.net.
