Single Product Companies
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can you conquer the world by selling only one product? Many companies start small, focusing their energies on a single item, with plans to expand into other areas once the business takes off. But not everyone wants to diversify. Some prefer to do one thing and do it well, rather than risk diluting the brand and perhaps also the quality of the goods. In this edition of The Bottom Line, Evan Davis talks to three companies that have stuck with the core product that made them a success in the first place. They'll discuss the benefits of keeping focused, the challenges of staying ahead of the game and explore the perils of relying on just one source of income. Does it make good business sense to put all your eggs in one basket?
Guests:
Vince Gunn, Managing Director, Crocs Europe
Carolyn Komminsk, Head of Creative, Maclaren
Bill Noble, Managing Director, WD40 Company
Producer: Sally Abrahams.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this programme. In this edition of the bottom line, Evan Davis and guests discuss the risks and rewards of being a single product company. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello and welcome to the programme. Today we are going to celebrate the joys of being single. Not in the sense of being unmarried, of course, interesting as a topic that may be, but in the business sense, the merits of being |
| 0:21.9 | a company that sells more or less just one product. Now, the typical life cycle of a successful |
| 0:28.1 | company is that it sells a good product and then diversifies into other lines, or that it |
| 0:32.7 | gets swallowed up into a bigger unit. But we're looking at three less typical companies today, global, |
| 0:39.5 | successful and single. We'll look at the pros and cons of remaining focused and independent. |
| 0:45.1 | Now, this is a topic that takes us into what the boundaries of a company should be, and indeed |
| 0:49.6 | what a company is for. But before we get too metaphysical, let's take a few minutes to meet each of my guests. |
| 0:56.6 | And first of all, Bill Noble, managing director in Europe for WD40. Many of you will know it as the anti-rust lubricating spray in the distinctive blue, yellow and red aerosol cans. |
| 1:10.3 | And Bill, what proportion of our listeners does your research tell you will have heard of WD40? |
| 1:16.6 | In the UK, 87, 88%. |
| 1:19.5 | Really that many? |
| 1:20.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:20.9 | Right. |
| 1:21.5 | In the US, looking at 90 odd, but in Russia and Africa, where we've got lots to do, very little. |
| 1:29.5 | Right. |
| 1:30.0 | Let's go into the history of this product. |
| 1:32.3 | Where did it come from? |
| 1:33.8 | Started in San Diego for the Atlas Space Missile Program. |
| 1:38.6 | The ambical cord connecting the rocket was rusting, and so the chemist created the 40th formula which was WD stands for |
| 1:48.4 | water displacement and it was the product that won the tender and that was 60 odd years ago so it displeased |
| 1:54.7 | water and stopped the thing rusting stopped the rusting correct right X years later there was a |
... |
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