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I think there's a big gap between the target market for this device and the average consumer. A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousa

I think there's a big gap between the target market for this device and the average consumer. A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousand dollars. A consumer model is ~$3-400. Cold press juicers are supposed to retain nutrients a bit more, and produce more flavorful juice. (who knows if that is true) The Juicero is the pro-sumer k-cup version of a juicer. It's not aimed at people who are price conscious at all. Price conscious people could get something close-enough for sub $30. My guess is that the $700 juicer was designed to get a high-end reputation, with lower-end follow on products once they established the brand. At this point, they are ruined. It's collective common sense that this is a bad deal and the value of the brand is diminished dramatically. Their engineering decisions are questionable. If you are going for a high-end high quality unique product that will push people to spend double what the competitive product provides, it should be more appealing to look at. It's like they tried as hard as they could to make a cube-shaped plastic lined product as expensive as possible to manufacture. I'm all for sturdy commercial quality components, but not in something that looks like it was manufactured by nintendo. The Bloomberg article was in poor form. At least let a company get out of the gate and establish itself before tearing them apart. But that's the danger involved with investing big money in companies based on a business plan and not vetting that they are good decision makers. This all could have been avoided if their PR people were on top of things. You'd think they'd have top notch PR people in place for this market segment... another bad decision.

CameronBanga 9y ago
Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer. Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story? Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.
- Steeeve 9y ago
  > Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer. I can squeeze a honeydew by hand and get plenty of juice. Pomegranate not so much. Kale, not at all. Celery? Maybe a little, but a few drips compared to what a juice press would give me is not at all in the same ball park. Do any of the juice packs contain hard to squeeze fruits or vegetables? The exercise is left to the reader, who can't do their own research without a $750 spend. Poor form. > Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? I don't know which Uber article that you are referring to, but Uber is in the midst of a sea of bad press and is plenty flush to buy the help of a quality PR firm to see them through it. Unroll.me - if you go after them, you should talk about how Mozilla uses data along with chrome, facebook, the television networks, netflix, etc. It's lazy to villify a single firm when there's an industry full of questionable practices. > Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market Not every product produces value. In the world of IT, software in general, and most certainly "cloud services", value should absolutely be questioned more. But it's certainly hard to be a consumer watchdog while at the same time doing the same thing. Especially when your biggest source of revenue is a series of other companies doing the same thing. > But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. Are you sure about that? The video looks to me like it was created with the intent of going viral.
idlewords 9y ago
The lesson you take out of juicegate is that they didn't spend enough money on PR?
- Steeeve 9y ago
  From an entrepreneurial standpoint, yes. If you have $120M in venture funding, somebody should have stopped and asked the questions - how do we protect the brand? And what are the dangers to this brand? That's a pretty enormous miss.
  - idlewords 9y ago
    I don't think there was a lot of stopping and asking questions happening at Juicebro. Laying it on the backs of the PR people isn't fair to them—they're not sorcerers. The failure here was at the check writing stage.

CameronBanga 9y ago

Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer. Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story? Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.

Steeeve 9y ago
> Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer. I can squeeze a honeydew by hand and get plenty of juice. Pomegranate not so much. Kale, not at all. Celery? Maybe a little, but a few drips compared to what a juice press would give me is not at all in the same ball park. Do any of the juice packs contain hard to squeeze fruits or vegetables? The exercise is left to the reader, who can't do their own research without a $750 spend. Poor form. > Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? I don't know which Uber article that you are referring to, but Uber is in the midst of a sea of bad press and is plenty flush to buy the help of a quality PR firm to see them through it. Unroll.me - if you go after them, you should talk about how Mozilla uses data along with chrome, facebook, the television networks, netflix, etc. It's lazy to villify a single firm when there's an industry full of questionable practices. > Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market Not every product produces value. In the world of IT, software in general, and most certainly "cloud services", value should absolutely be questioned more. But it's certainly hard to be a consumer watchdog while at the same time doing the same thing. Especially when your biggest source of revenue is a series of other companies doing the same thing. > But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. Are you sure about that? The video looks to me like it was created with the intent of going viral.

idlewords 9y ago

The lesson you take out of juicegate is that they didn't spend enough money on PR?

Steeeve 9y ago
From an entrepreneurial standpoint, yes. If you have $120M in venture funding, somebody should have stopped and asked the questions - how do we protect the brand? And what are the dangers to this brand? That's a pretty enormous miss.
- idlewords 9y ago
  I don't think there was a lot of stopping and asking questions happening at Juicebro. Laying it on the backs of the PR people isn't fair to them—they're not sorcerers. The failure here was at the check writing stage.