On making and selling something people want: unsweetened yogurt and beyond

The key for start-up business success, many have probably heard is “making something people want”. That’s also the slogan of Y Combinator. But what about the sales? Selling something people want?

Most crucial aspect here is understanding what people want. Is this a puzzle or a mystery? Are we missing some information or we have it in excess?

This morning I headed out to buy groceries for breakfast. I usually like to mix natural unsweetened yogurt with oatflakes, plus some cinnamon and fruits. One would think that in a big supermarket like Max Value you can find a simple product like that, but what I saw was just a big empty space where my yogurt should have been:

Choose any yogurt, except the sold out one (unsweetened natural type). / 02 May 2018 @ Max Value Bangkok

And it is not the only day where I have seen this scene. You can always find numerous brands and flavours of yogurt, all pumped up with excessive unhealthy amounts of sugar, GMO-origin corn starch and whatever not. But the healthy and simple unsweetened one — that’s much harder to get.

The situation is even worse in smaller shops: in nearby Tesco Express and 7-eleven shops they never sell this simple product, which is in high demand.

Sadly, it’s not just unsweetened yogurt, which shops don’t want to sell. Finding healthy unsweetened bread can be equally frustrating experience. Or fruit jam, where fruit content is at least over 60%. Last week, twice, I returned empty-handed from the groceries.

It makes me wonder, why, at the age of information, where there are plenty of metrics and dashboards to observe every move of the customer, finding the simple and healthy neccessities is so challenging.

Who were in the focus group interviews when Walmart was designing “ice-cream”, which never melts? Or “yogurts”, which contain more corn than milk? Or claimingly “good for you” bread, which is containing 28% of added sugars?

People want simple and healthy products, without any excessive add-ons. Yogurts, which are actually made of milk, salty bread, non-corn-starch-pumped fruit jams and ice-creams that actually melt.