VF Corp bought Supreme for $2.1 billion last week.
Nerdy Nuts has gone from $4k to $500k per month in sales.
The new PlayStation 5 keeps shutting down the Walmart site and is going for over $1k on eBay.
What do all of these success stories have in common? They’ve connected product, brand, marketing, and sales around limited supply and community to drive their growth strategy. You can put these same concepts to work in your business, even if you’re a service business. Let’s dig a little deeper into all three examples to spot each company’s recipe for growth and discover what you can steal.
A Supreme Business Model
Supreme started as a skate shop in New York long before becoming a billion-dollar brand. James Jebbia built a community for New York skaters, identified what would fly in skate culture, and then came the retail empire we know today. Jebbia mastered the connection between product, brand, community, and urgency. Supreme keeps customers engaged with wild brand partnerships and limited supply at every step. Scarcity has kept Supreme relevant with a fickle crowd across several decades.
The brand power and community surrounding Supreme drive the $2.1 billion valuation, not the products it sells. You can point to Supreme if anyone asks you the ROI of branding. Whether they can keep that rabid desire and bullet-proof brand under VF Corp remains to be seen.
Growth Lessons From Supreme:
- Start with community
- Keep supply limited
- Partner with the right brands
- Keep customers guessing
- Protect your brand at all costs
This Growth Is Nuts
Craig Mount and Erika Peterson bought a used nut grinder for $870 and started hitting the local farmer’s market to see what people liked. They watched customers taste their handmade peanut butter and used the feedback to tweak the product. By the end of their first summer, Nerdy Nuts had a lively local following and knew what people wanted. With their product dialed, Mount and Peterson took things online and started testing promotion channels.
Early efforts were promising. Nerdy Nuts sniffed some success through media mentions on Fox Business and saw potential in using influencers to spark awareness. However, they found the Instagram influencers they partnered with to provide a lot more hassle than results. It was when they paired limited drops of unexpected flavors with TikTok influencers that things exploded. They sold 5,947 jars of peanut butter in their first promotion. That success lead them to shift completely to a limited drop model.
Nerdy Nuts is now doing over $500k in sales each month and they only sell via limited drops on Sundays (where they sell out each week). This is a prime example of using the right marketing and sales channel to ignite growth once you’ve nailed the product. Their willingness to test ideas, cut what doesn’t work, and then double down on the right things is something we should all note.
Growth Lessons From Nerdy Nuts:
- Put your product in front of customers immediately
- Get the product right before you spend money on marketing
- Offer something different than the market leaders
- Use scarcity to keep demand high
- Marketing works best when it isn’t boring
- Find the right influencers, on the right platform
Sony Ain’t Playin’
Gamers spend money and love hype. The new PlayStation 5 is both expensive and sufficiently hyped. You know you’ve done something right if Walmart’s website can’t keep up with the traffic you’re bringing. The folks at Sony started teasing how limited the supply of the PS5 would be in early 2020. Fast forward to today and you see what a brilliant marketing strategy it was.
Sony took their time putting together a killer product (the PS4 was launched in 2013) and then mapped out a savvy marketing and sales strategy to drive demand. Gamers who have landed a PS5 feel special and ones who haven’t will keep demand high well into 2021 and beyond. There are legitimate projections that the PS5 console will become the best-selling console of all time by selling more than 200 million units.
Growth Lessons From The PS5:
- Get the product right
- Tease it before you release it
- Pick your launch timing wisely
- Put your retail partners in a position to benefit from demand
- Use premium pricing to reinforce the perception of quality
- Limit supply to generate hype and urgency
- Make sure people with big audiences get the product
How To Use These Growth Strategies In Your Business
If you sell products, focus on developing a community, refine your product to be exactly what they want, and keep things fresh by limiting the supply. People want to feel special. Getting one of the limited editions feels special.
If you sell to clients, develop a community full of the clients you want, limit the number of clients you’ll take on, and raise your prices. You’ll deliver a better experience and stronger results for fewer people while making more money.
Whether you’re in the CPG or service game, a great first step is to get The Recipe for growth.
