More Salsa’s speed: Does anyone remember Shasta diet cola?

I am sad but not too surprised by your findings. Salsa is not its founder’s company any more. But I like your analogy so much, I’d extend it to an even earlier era than the New Coke ’80s, — try the 1880s. The Original Coca-Cola of the the 19th century and its competitors could at least contain actual cocaine. Was anyone ever addicted to Salsa? Set that aside, a lot else about the Coke analogy holds up really well.

The original product was a regional favorite when it was served mixed to order at the point of sale by a savvy, trusted local vendor who had a choice of several syrups to sell, who could be skilled at making a wide variety of medicines, at any number of locations, for any paying customer — at a pharmacy, a soda fountain, from the back of a wagon, even at the local tavern.

Today, Chris Casey is the Mixologist (put that on your business card!) and if he is persuaded to buy, can serve his customers a complementary or even competing product as part of the service Salsa provides. But you and many other middle business persons like you need to become true believers before somebody in the big city (Atlanta, for Coke; a larger share of Washington DC and the digital capitals, for Salsa Labs) will be persuaded to buy.

Salsa’s product had to be tweaked before it could be brought to succeed at that scale, and its business model had to be blown up, utterly. But Salsa needs an emerging global power to become its marketing champion. Coke had the U.S. Army in Europe, who seeded their first international bottling companies. That’s like Salsa looking to Google, Amazon, or Alibaba — hardly — not even the DNC or nominee Hillary Clinton are there for Salsa at that scale. I will argue if that is a reasonable expectation for Salsa, ever. Too bad, they had their devotees.