Winners

Nearly a decade ago I wrote extensively about the concept of Winners / Contenders / Others. Through the years, the concept evolved a bit ... then during COVID none of it mattered because sales were up 50% and nobody cared about merchandise. Last year that began to change as some items sat on ships outside of Long Beach. This year, all of a sudden people care about what they sell ... again. 

Time is a flat circle.

Allow me to show you the number of items that were Winners for a company, items that were also Winners the prior year.

• 289 three years ago, then 252 two years ago, then 232 one year ago, then 232 as of today.

And here are total Winners for each of the past four years.

• 375 three years ago, then 315 two years ago, then 331 one year ago, then 282 as of today.

Subtract the difference, and we can see how well the company did at Developing Winners.

• 86 three years ago, then 63 two years ago, then 99 one year ago, then 50 as of today.

Yeah, there it is ... a real product development issue in the past year ... the lowest total of the past four years.

This is happening for two reasons.

1. Some of you had product availability issues.
2. Many of you didn't care about merchandise during/after the COVID-bump.

Merchandise ... and new merchandise ... is about to become a big deal again, just like it was in 2012-2013 when I wrote extensively about Merchandise Forensics. As I mentioned earlier in the post, time is a flat circle.

P.S.:  Yeah, I know - here come the unsubs ... people grumbling that I'm not giving them tips to be successful with TikTok advertising. What you sell matters, folks. And if your merchandising/product team messes that up, you get blamed for it. So if you want to unsub because of that, go ahead. But just think for a few moments about how your business thrives ... and think for a moment that maybe your efforts are being stifled because of external factors related to merchandise/product.