Purple Sheep Project - Guide To Commercial Suicide

Step 1. - Create a great product.

You do this by listening to the market. Truely understanding consumer needs and desires and delivering a solution before anyone else. Do not confuse this step with 'create a product' You have to be 1st and original, otherwise you are an alternative product! You could only compete on price so you will never be a great brand if you compromise during the design phase.

Step 2. - Build Sales and Brand Reputaion.

This will be easy if you followed step 1.

Great products sell by word of mouth. People enjoy using them and enjoy telling their friends. This is an important point as it will aid in our mission to destroy our business.

Step 3. - Cheapen the blend.

Now you know what your customer needs and wants you are safe right?

You have the distribution and the reputation. A wee tweak to the blend of parts and services won't hurt.

Maybe you have built sufficient volume that you can deliver more efficient products via an integrated pipeline. You pay less and deliver the same value. That won't help us on our mission.

We need to substitute those well performing elements for lesser and cheaper bits and bobs. In the long-term we want the consumer experience to be just a little less.

Step 4. - Ignore the competition

While we have been focussing on ripping off our suppliers and our customers some bright spark has copied our business model, but improved the features and the delivery time. They took our offering to the next level and are effectively stealing our market share. Don't worry about this.. It's going to help. For goodness sake do not speak to your customers and ask how you can improve your own offering.

Step 4. - Sit back and wait.

That is all you have to do. More quickly than you built your brand you have destroyed it. Your products are breaking down, when they finally get delivered that is.

Your customers are blogging againts you and spreading the word of what a remarkably pathetic company you have become.