Product complacency is killing you

Last week I wrote about how everything is influenced, and I got into some really interesting conversations about it.

Influence is, of course, important, but people will only recommend what is good. And too many brands have lost focus on what actually makes their product or service good.

Your business is about what you sell.

I understand how that happens. Every business owner starts with the thing they’re selling: their product or their service. Making that as good as possible before they launch and working to continually improve it once they are live.

Then, the more you grow, the more ‘rubbish’ (for a more polite term than what I actually mean) comes along. You need a brand, a growth strategy, and marketing. Maybe you need to employ a team, and perhaps you get lost trying to grow in a few different directions that your competitors are doing well in.

It’s so easy to get caught up in all the extra things that come with a business that you forget your product is supposed to be the star.

As with any show, if the star is good enough, people will come to watch, no matter how poorly it’s advertised. Because people will talk about it.

If the star is bad, no one will come back. And you’ll struggle with getting new customers in if they’ve already been put off.

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The to-do list has gotten too long.

Since I was very young, my Dad has run his own company. And in the 30+ years he’s been an entrepreneur, he’s never put out marketing. He certainly never had a business Instagram account or even a LinkedIn profile. His business (financial advising) thrived because he was simply good at his job, so all his clients referred him. Meaning his business continued to grow.

With more and more businesses being started, I do think that it’s hard to achieve that same success with only word-of-mouth marketing if you were to start out today, but you get the point. His work could stay good, because he kept his focus on offering good advice.

Nike and Lululemon are great examples of brands that have lost sight of their star products.

Previously, both were favoured for product innovation and cutting-edge technology, but their stock prices have been tumbling. Nike has been on a downward trend since 2021, and Lululemon is now seeing its stock price drop to pandemic (2020) levels.

There are countless reasons for their respective declines, but almost all of them point to declining product quality.

Declining product quality aligns with declining share value

A few years ago, I never would’ve bought into the ‘Lulu dupes’ because I bought Lululemon for its quality. For the fact that their leggings always feel so smooth and comfortable on my runs, and still remain squat-proof in the gym years after I purchased them. I may have been paying 3 or 4 times the price for the real deals, but they lasted 3 or 4 times as long. Now, at the start of this year, Lulu launched a new ‘Get low’ legging that, ironically, had to be pulled from online sales because when you did “get low” and squat down, the leggings were transparent. So why would people now pay the (increasing) Lululemon prices for the same quality as the cheaper dupes?

If you’re now only paying for the Lululemon aesthetic, you can get that elsewhere for half the price.

Similarly to Nike, I used to buy their shoes because they were genuinely the best on the market. I knew they’d be comfortable, fit me correctly, and last for a really long time. Now, all of my trainers seem to have holes in the backs after only a few months of use, and their shorts are beginning to ride up due to a decrease in elastane and an increase in poor polyester fabrics.

Both brands have become complacent with their product quality, and customers can see that.

Nike stock has been on a downward trajectory since 2021.

This applies to service-based businesses, too.

I read a great article from Annie Mac (read it here!), about her journey to the elusive passive income (spoiler: she says it’s never passive, but it is scalable). And what I found most interesting was how she broke down all the steps she took to develop her product.

Annie talks through all the customer research, beta tests, and improvements made before rollout. Yes, she talks mainly about how she marketed the hell out of it, but ultimately it worked because it’s an actually good product. That she put the work in for.

That same amount of marketing wouldn’t perform as well for a product that was less thought-out, less developed, or just generally a bit rubbish, because no one who bought it would be raving about it or influencing others to get on board.

There’s a growing rise in service-based businesses creating products to sell to their audience. And with that, there’s a lot of talk about marketing them. But the talk needs to be around making something that is actually good.

Equally, I listened to my favourite podcast hosts, the Shameless girls, on one of my other favourite podcasts, Working Hard with grace Beverly. You can watch that episode here. But when Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald were questioned on how they became so successful, they talk honestly about just making sure they always had a good podcast.

“If you put out good work that you back and you love, everything will be okay in the end. Just keep coming back to that as your North Star”

My favourite podcast hosts, Michelle and Zara, talking on another one of my favourite podcasts, Working Hard.

You need to follow the advice that Annie Mac laid out. And then, you need to follow Michelle and Zaras’ advice to keep doing your best. To have your North Star be the quality you deliver, and consistently maintain high quality. Not allowing yourself to get into the same problems that Nike and Lululemon have run into.

Your product has to be at the centre of your brand. You can have the best storytelling campaign in existence, but if what you’re selling is rubbish, your customers will know. They won’t come back, and they won’t promote you to others. So let’s get back to having good-quality products that can, to some extent, sell themselves.

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