Overlooked niches often hide among collectors, enthusiasts, and underserved buyers. One of the most interesting parts of marketing physical products is discovering who actually buys. Often not who you predicted. Or at least not ONLY. Through experimentation, odd patterns emerge. Like the customer with a closet full of premium pillows who still wants to try one more. The barbecue collector who buys every new smoker and grill just to experience it once. Or the guitar player who owns a wall of...
1 day ago • 1 min read
The latest spicy food trend is all about heightened experience + fire. Walk through the snack aisle or fast-food menu lately and you’ll notice something happening. Everything is getting hotter: Hot honey is slathered on pizza, fried chicken, and even roasted veggies. Snack brands are launching ramen-inspired spicy flavors and cayenne-kicked chips. Fast-food chains are partnering up with viral spice brands and shows like Hot Ones to create menu items that challenge customers’ tolerance for...
2 days ago • 1 min read
What if removing part of a product makes it more attractive? I bought a power shovel recently. The kind that runs on a removable battery system shared across several yard tools. When I looked at the options, there were two versions. One came with a battery and charger. The other didn’t. I chose the one without. The battery for the system that runs our lawnmower costs more than $300. The power shovel itself costs about the same. And I will never run the lawnmower and the shovel at the same...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Food waste is partly a behavioral issue and partly an informational one. Here’s a thought. Walk through most kitchens and you’ll find the same kinda thing. Half-used electrolyte powder; a specialty sauce opened with enthusiasm last year, and then forgotten. Wellness snacks purchased aspirationally and consumed … um, sporadically. Those expiry dates sneak up on you. We talk about sustainability constantly, and yet most CPG packaging still optimizes for shelf life, more than human...
4 days ago • 2 min read
The fastest way to destroy a good product is to slowly make it worse to squeeze out more profit. A short video from the Norwegian Consumer Council has been circulating widely this week. It’s called “A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator.” The premise is simple, and immediately relatable from a buyer perspective. A man goes to work each morning with one responsibility: making products worse. He adds advertisements to services people already pay for. He replaces human support with chatbots....
5 days ago • 2 min read
Misusing vision as an excuse to skip validation is how Steve Jobs wannabes burn cash. “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Followed by: “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.” Steve Jobs wannabes love, love LOVE this damned quote. It feels like permission to press ahead with unvalidated ideas and assume the market will inevitably see what they see. There are two major flaws in that logic. First, Jobs was a unicorn visionary. (Yet even he shipped products...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Speed is the new shelf advantage. But the nimblest are not only the ones using it. Smurfit Westrock (one of the world’s largest packaging and paper companies with deep visibility into retail supply chains) just released its 2026 retail outlook, and one item stood out to me. Emerging brands still hold less than 2 percent of share in many categories, yet they drove 39 percent of category growth in 2025, up from 17 percent the year before. That’s a wild swing, and strong influence. Consumers are...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Claiming perfection the wrong way can come off as spin. It feels safe and confident to say “100%.” 100% juice.100% satisfaction.100% natural. It sounds so strong. Totally certain. Absolute. Right? Yet in four experiments, researchers found the opposite effect. A juice labeled “100% juice” was judged 7.5 percent worse than the same juice labeled “99% juice.” Participants somehow believed it contained 13.3 percent less actual fruit juice when it claimed to be 100%. A frozen fruit snack with a...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Korean culture has moved from screens and stages into grocery aisles, turning snacks into cultural artifacts rather than just food. I’ve been noticing something new in grocery stores. An entire section of Korean snacks. Bright packaging. Unfamiliar (to me) flavors. Some directly tied to the wildly popular “K-Pop Demon Hunters” movie. Others just new to the aisle. My kids are totally fascinated. Not just with the snacks, but with all things Korean. This is not randomness. South Korea has spent...
9 days ago • 1 min read
