The Museum of Product Failures
Dan Gould
Thousands of new products are released into the wilds of the market every year. Some become great successes, while others fail hard. What’s the secret, the x factor that makes or breaks a new product?
Arbor Strategy Group thinks they know. For 30 years, the Michigan based company has studied and collected failures, along with their more successful counterparts, creating a massive physical database of consumer goods. Brands and designers can view over 110,000 items to get inspiration for developing new products. Highlights include baby food for adults, garlic flavored cake and a breakfast cereal that encourages kids to play with it.
Entry to this museum isn’t cheap. It costs $5000 just to get in the door. But the service is still popular, 2 to 3 groups come in every week to examine the collection -and it’s probably worth it. Before a company thinks to release a crazy new product, they can come and get some historical perspective on ideas that seemed good at the time, but ended up being tremendous flops.
Marketplace: “Firm gets good reults from bad ideas”
[via Murketing]
Posted on: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 12:25 pm 
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