Robert McMath – a marketing professional – intended to accumulate a reference library of consumer products.

The course of action was

Starting in the 1960s he started to purchase and preserve a sample of every new item he could find. The collection soon outgrew his office and he moved it into a converted granary, where it continued to grow rapidly.

The results

What McMath did not take into account was that most products fail – so that his collection was overwhelmingly made up of products that did not survive the test of the marketplace.

The lesson learned

The insight that ‘most products fail’ proved to be the making of McMath’s career. The collection itself – now owned and operated by GfK Custom Research North America – is now regularly visited by consumer product manufacturing executives eager to avoid mistakes they or their competitors have made in the past.

Source: The Guardian, 16 June 2012

OTHER BRILLIANT FAILURES

The Museum of Failed Products

Robert McMath - a marketing professional - intended to accumulate a reference library of consumer products. The course of action was Starting in the 1960s he started to purchase and preserve a sample of every [...]

The Norwegian Linie Aquavit

The course of action: The concept of Linie Aquavit happened by accident in the 1800s. Aquavit (pronounced 'AH-keh'veet' and sometimes spelled "akvavit") is a potato-based liquor, flavored with caraway. Jørgen Lysholm owned a Aquavit distillery in [...]

Why failure is an option..

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