One — A new product strategy

“One” is a simple go-to market strategy where brands reduce choice by offering only one variation of a product or by selecting products for consumers.

The average consumer makes around 35,000 conscious decisions per day. Some brands are removing pain out of too much choice by simply providing consumers with a single variation of a product. In essence, these brands are saying “we have taken all the heavy lifting out of the selection process for you, and whittled it down to the ultimate product on your behalf”.

Below are some great examples of brands who have executed a brilliant one-product strategy:

1. Casper Mattress: Casper Mattress offer one type of mattress, with the only variation being size. They have configured the perfect mattress, so consumers don’t need go to a store and understand and test out all the variations.
2. Burger and Lobster: Burger and Lobster’s menu is limited to either a burger or a lobster. This is a great alternative to big menus and having to find the chef’s speciality.
3. Birchbox: A subscription-based beauty product service, which chooses five beauty treatments and sends them to subscribers in a monthly box. Consumers don’t need to spend time discovering treatments — if they like any of the items they are able to re-order more.
4. Stitch Fix: Another subscription-based service, which focuses on fashion and works on a pay-as-you-go model. Stitch Fix curates 5 items for consumers. It then uses AI to optimise the next box based on what a consumer has kept and returned.
5. MUBI: It can take up to 40 minutes to find something to watch, so Mubi has built a VOD platform that curates one film a day. Users can simply come home, switch on their TV and watch the film selected for them.

There are many more examples of a using a one product strategy to create a great business model. Looking at the examples above, we can identify only 2 business models around providing a one product strategy:

1. One product: Provide only one product and offer no alternative. Brands identify the ultimate variation that ideally caters for at least 60% of the market. They then focus on providing excellent fulfilment and delivery services together with excellent pre and post customer support. If there is any product variation, it is usually only size.
2. Pre-selected products: Pick the products for a customer. There are two ways of doing this
3. Everyone gets the same products
4. Each customer gets a unique combination of products

Both need effort in the selection process. The best way to achieve this is to invest heavily in data science so selections can be optimised until the perfect selection is found 98% of the time.

Choosing a one product strategy for your business means finding the perfect product at the right price point. Once the product market fit is spot on, the focus needs to be on clear and effective marketing messages. These should be supported to by a delightful customer journey throughout the whole purchasing lifecycle, from awareness through to retention.

The brands who get the one product strategy right have an extremely loyal following of customer advocates. These brands rely heavily on existing customers to act as influencers and drive sales.