My wife wanted get a new stand fan as the current one is a little old and one of the blades broke.
And I happened to receive some email marketing updates from Harvey Norman which I tend to visit on occasion and things were on offer (Or it seems to always be.)
So after lunch, we took a look, shopped around for some fans and found out that most of the stand fans were sold out and we had to go to another store 20 minutes away to get it.
Clearly, that wouldn’t be too fun to do so we just went to a smaller store somewhere nearby and the price was about 30% lower for a stand fan in its category and brand.
I had a criteria given that I wasn’t too keen on lugging all that weight.
As it turned out, what caught my eye was:
- The box, was 60% smaller than every other stand fan boxes, even a kid could carry it out of the mall. Compact!
- It’s weight was about 6.5kg compared to others which was above 9kg (at the same price.) Way lighter than carrying my kid.
- It has an additional speed setting for its price range.
With too many choices and brands to choose from, this fan was a winner… among all other known brands — it was also an unknown brand beating all its literal heavy weight brands.
I guess, they did their research and carved their niche in a hyper competitive market. I have a feeling they will be overtaking the market in this category in 2-3 years.
Not too long ago Huawei wasn’t such a big brand in the smart phone category, I recall buying one of their flagship phones when they were a nobody but had the most RAM in the market an insanely competitive price against the giants like Samsung and Apple.
And before you know it, they started to lead in terms of android phone sales and inspiring copycats which lead to market confusion and dilution.
Wait, I was talking about stand fans right?
Yeah… it looks like a company with a strategy can beat giants by being a niche and providing insane value – without being a big brand, I have a lot of fun watching and supporting such companies grow and expand.
In fact, I consult with many such companies that have carved an edge over giants in the industry, often known as disruptors. Rebel and contrarian companies.