Graduating To New Competition

That's Joey Chestnut. Every July 4, for eight years, he won the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest. And then, in 2015, new competition arrived. Matt "Megatoad" Stonie ate 62 hot dogs.

"Megatoad" won.

We like to think that Amazon is our "Megatoad". 

Amazon is not our "Megatoad". They (Amazon) have been lying there, in plain sight, for twenty years. Twenty years!!!! They won nearly a decade years ago. That battle is over. We cannot stop 40% of customers from beginning product searches on Amazon, and we cannot stop most of the rest of the prospect audience from beginning their product search on Google. 

Can I show you something?

We ordered a new dining room table. The first table arrived, damaged. Eight weeks lost. We sent the table back. Here's how the second table looked upon arrival:

Imagine what happens when you screw the leg in to that bolt? You have a leg that rests at a 17 degree angle!

Fortunately, we didn't have a leg that rested at a 17 degree angle. Do you know why? Because the legs were missing! 

Another eight weeks of waiting.

Say you purchase a table via an omnichannel strategy at Pottery Barn. Is the table going to look like this table? Highly unlikely. They've got their stuff put together (#pun), they know how to execute.

And yet, I chose this brand over Pottery Barn (because of merchandise selection - hint hint). 

Honestly, how hard can it be for Pottery Barn to run this company into bankruptcy? This company is growing 5x faster than Pottery Barn, at a time when Pottery Barn should stamp it out of existence.

Pottery Barn cannot run this company out of business by integrating channels.

We've graduated to new competition. In case you haven't noticed, online brands are moving offline at epic rates ... you were told you had to be digital, but while you worked on being digital, digital brands quietly moved offline. They execute creative marketing strategies, and creative means "clever" in this instance. When we moved into the digital realm, we didn't do anything clever. We stuck a bent bolt into a faulty table and called it good.

It's time to get creative.