Evan Carmichael explores whether ideas or marketing matters more for success, arguing both are essential. Joy Mangano's mop sold 18,000 units in 20 minutes on QVC and generated $200 million in sales, showing how relentless execution and smart marketing can transform an ordinary product into a massive business.
from M. Abhishek Anand. I hope I pronounce that okay. Does the idea really matter or the way you market it?
Hey, that's a great question. I think the idea matters, but more importantly, it's kind of the relentless execution, starting with what is the value proposition and then going to market with it. And again, with the digital age, you can get stuff out there in weeks. That used to take years. A good example actually of the shift in terms of marketing, I do— you probably saw the film Joy, uh, J-Law, and, uh, it was Joy Manganiya. Uh, in terms of what happened there was what was a mop company, uh, used their life savings. Actually, 70% of our customers use their life savings to fund their businesses. Um, but there was a pivotal moment when it just was not moving. I don't know, it was like on QVC where we just couldn't get any sales, where she, she was going to get dropped as a product on that channel. And she persuaded them to give her the opportunity to pitch her own product. And like within the next 20 minutes, they sold 18,000 mops. So does the product matter? The idea? It was a great idea, but the sales and marketing was awesome. And you know, you can market your product better than anybody else. And the internet is a channel and YouTube and, you know, Vines gives you a unique opportunity to market your product perfectly. So that lady, after 10 years, has sold $200 million worth of mops. And you probably wouldn't think there's a lot of innovation in the world of mops. But boy, oh boy, a hat tip and a salute to Joy.
It's a lot of mops. Yeah. You know, for me, this is— it's both, right? You need the idea and you need the marketing. If you are marketing a bad idea, it's not going to take off, right? Especially in this era where word of mouth is so fast and people people can talk about how bad your product is, the best marketing in the world won't save a terrible product. Uh, the idea is also important because if you have crappy marketing, then it's not going to take off either. So you need both. I think also, um, as Stephen talked about, the execution, the, the creation of the product, because a lot of people have an idea but they don't actually then create that product or create that service and just sits there. Well, one day I'm going to do this, one day I'm going to start, and they never actually start. And so the execution of actually creating the product or creating the service and then marketing it is both, right? It's not just one or the other. You need to have both if you're going to have success as an entrepreneur.
Yeah, interestingly, you know, in terms of today, I don't think it's just where you have the idea, but I'd say now if you've got first mover advantage, you can create a marketplace. Uh, sometimes maybe 10, 15 years ago, if you had first mover advantage, you'd find your idea was too early for the marketplace, and then one of the big guys would steal the idea and scale up, and you'd sit there thinking, I had that idea, and they built a business out of it. Today, I think through the digital age, you can get an idea to market really quickly, and you can scale it up, evolve it, improve it, uh, and build a really scalable, successful business.
