Product Discovery: The Beginning of Good Product Development
If you have kids or were a kid at some point in your life, you are probably familiar with Play-Doh. That colorful molding clay that you can turn into everything from snakes to pretend hamburgers to amorphous blobs of all the colors mixed together (that’s eventually where it ends up, we all know it).
But it didn’t start out as entertainment for kids. In fact, a soap manufacturer invented it to clean coal residue from wallpaper. Back when most homes were heated by coal and suffered from soot residue, they used this molding clay to clean off the residue from the wallpaper. But as new types of vinyl wallpapers were introduced that were easier to clean with soap and sponges, and as more houses were heated with natural gas, the need for putty wallpaper cleaning diminished.
Kutol Products, the maker of the putty, was in a real bind and was facing bankruptcy. Until they discovered another use for their product. Kids had been using it to make crafts and Kay Zufall, a nursery school teacher, found that her students loved it. So the company pivoted, removed the soap from the putty, added colors, and began making Play-Doh.
