Getting the Product, Market, and Timing Right
Jim Watkins still wonders if timing is his big problem.
He knows that business success lies in getting the right product to the right market at the right time. Today Watkins timing problem involves microwave popcorn (opposite page), but it wasnt always that way. Still, he does seem to make a habit of developing products ahead of their time.
While in college, Watkins spent all of his student-loan money developing a waterbike, a kind of aquatic motorcycle. It had only one major flaw: when Watkins rode it on its first test, it sank. Today, about 20 years later, a dozen brands of self-powered water-sleds, which are cousins to his original design, are skimming across lakes around the country. His waterbike was ahead of its time.
After college in the early 1970s, Watkins joined the Pillsbury Company and worked with a team developing a family of 30 new food products to be cooked in microwave ovens. The problem: at the time only about 10 percent of American households owned microwave ovens, so sales never took off. It was the problem of bad timing all over again.
In 1978, Watkins left Pillsbury and started his own business. Watkins named his firm Golden Valley Microwave Foods, Inc., (Golden Valley) and focused it on the research-and-development and marketing of microwave foods, leaving production and quality control to others. The first products were a line of single-portion frozen soups and entrees. The products had quality-control problems and fizzled.
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DISCOVERING WHAT CONSUMERS WANT
Going back to basics, Watkins concentrated on frozen popcorn and pancakes for vending machines. He produced them in his own plant so he could control quality. He became convinced that the secret to success lay in developing food products and the necessary packaging targeted specifically for microwave ovensnot in simply adding new microwave cooking instructions to the label: of existing food products.
By the mid-1980s, Watkins concluded Golden Valley should not rely exclusively on sales through vending machines but should market microwave popcorn for home use, where the average American was eating over 28 quart: a year. His marketing research found two key benefits people wanted in their: microwave popcorn: (1) fewer unpopped kernels and (2) good popping result: in even low-powered microwave ovens. His research-and-development staff successfully addressed these wants by finding better strains of popcorn and b developing new, patented packages to produce high-quality popped corn regardless of the power of the ovens.
A challenge? By 1985, Watkins and Golden Valley had developed what they thought was a better microwave popcorn. They accomplished this b- following an almost classic textbook approach to marketing: (1) assessing buyers needs and wants, and (2) satisfying them with a quality product. They introduced the Act I brand of microwave frozen popcorn, which was soon followed by the shelf-stable, microwave, nonfrozen Act II brand.
Watkins then decided to take Golden Valleys microwave popcorn into the fiercely competitive retail market, even though it would involve fighting for shelf space with 70 popcorn producerssome with nationally distributed products, such as the Orville Redenbacher brand. Considering this decision and Golden Valleys puny size, one experienced food-industry executive told Watkins, Jimmy, my boy, youre going after an elephant with a.22.
