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When anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted. When it is a top 5 item across stores on Black Friday. The story

When anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted. When it is a top 5 item across stores on Black Friday. The story is how a small Canadian company has such religiously loyal customers and evangelist. I think it is a far article. I bought myself one in September. I love to cook and cook 70% of meals. Almost everything is from scratch and takes over an hour. I now use this Instant Pot 3 or 4 days a week. I owned a non-electric pressure cooker my whole life and find this makes it so convenient to just get good tasting food done quickly and with much less prep work. Also this is about Tech Startup inventor making such a strong impact on appliances. No advertising just Amazon and Internet Word of Mouth. Edit: Also it is virtually sold out across the internet. Bought one for my parents and it was only found by stopping in at stores and looking for the last one not inventories.

mattmaroon 9y ago
I think to OPs point, is not that articles in general aren't warranted. It's just that this one was useless. It doesn't tell me what instant pot did to make it beat out rivals other than some nonsense about sensors. And sending units to reviewers is paid advertising. I'd like to hear more about that. Was that his plan from the beginning? Make the same device everyone else does at the same price but get blog reviews?
- ghaff 9y ago
  The article does get into the viral marketing etc. but, like you, I would like to hear more. I'm honestly not sure why the Instant Pot took off when (admittedly mostly much more expensive) electric pressure cookers have been around for ages. Though, reading the article, it's also not clear to me if the founder really knows why it became so successful either.
  - mattmaroon 9y ago
    Yeah, I'd love to know if it was intentional.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      FTA: > In 2010, after several months of sluggish sales in and around Ontario, Mr. Wang listed the Instant Pot on Amazon, where a community of food writers eventually took notice. Vegetarians and paleo dieters, in particular, were drawn to the device’s pressure-cooking function, which shaved hours off the time needed to cook pots of beans or large cuts of meat. > Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb. I really don't know what you are talking about. It spells out exactly what they did, and why they did it. It also talks about taking advantage of "Fulfilled by Amazon" back in 2010, still early in the program, and credits Amazon with over 90% of it's sales at one point.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        Yes, but it seems as if it was starting to gather a fair bit of attention on Amazon before they sent out the test units. I suspect that the initial answer was some combination of Amazon + good product + smart positioning + good luck. Overall, it's an interesting story about a product that succeeded largely through viral marketing but I'd have liked more detail than you're likely to get from a general interest article.
        soundwave106 9y ago
        There's not that much more detail, but a University of Waterloo article on them (https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-social-media-ladder-to-success/ https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-soc...) describes the name of the tactic described above: influencer marketing. It's interesting that they align the fact that cooking is often a social phenomenon, with the fact that influencer marketing seemed to work well for Instant Pot. I gather from some of the articles linked (http://refineandfocus.com/when-brand-communities-become-cults-lessons-from-instant-pots-social-media-success/ http://refineandfocus.com/when-brand-communities-become-cult... and https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/from-ottawa-to-world-domination-the-story-of-the-instant-pot-1.3319793 https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/from-ottawa-to-world-domina...) that unlike other past influencer marketed products, Instant Pot largely utilized Internet space: big platform social media word-of-mouth to achieve their affects. Given that Internet social media space is growing, I would expect more of these type of marketing stories in the future. Some of it's probably the product for sure. If I remember right, rice cookers like the Zojirushi models had pretty much everything Instant Pot has, except the pressure cooking part. But that's a pretty big "except", given the dodgy past of traditional stove-top pressure cookers.
daveguy 9y ago
> anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted. If they started at 1 sale the first year they would be at 64 sales. No matter where they started they doubling every year for 6 years is 64x (2^6) sales. 64x sales over 6 years is great if you're an investor, but it isn't news. Inability to buy one means they are having trouble with production. You can bet it is doing more than 2x this year with great sales copy in the NYT. Makes me want to cancel my NYT subscription.
- baldfat 9y ago
  > Makes me want to cancel my NYT subscription. I think you should just do it. This is an article about a kitchen appliance and how the guy gave away 200 units and used Amazon Fulfillment to grow his company. > Inability to buy one means they are having trouble with production. Yes they can't make enough of them even though they are doubling production every year.
  - daveguy 9y ago
    > I think you should just do it. This is an article about a kitchen appliance and how the guy gave away 200 units and used Amazon Fulfillment to grow his company. Good point. I actually unsubscribed previously because of their "native advertising" policy (and then resubscribed in the last year or so). > Yes they can't make enough of them even though they are doubling production every year. The point I was trying to make in the first post was that doubling sales/production/anything else every year for six years doesn't mean a whole lot without seeing year 1. 1) If they doubled production every year for 5 years maybe they should have had extra capacity for year 6. 2) If year 1 they sold 1 unit then this year they sold on the order of 64 (obviously minimal). If year 1 they sold 100 units then this year they sold on the order of 6400. From a production standpoint that is not a difficult task. I was just disappointed that NYT ran what is essentially a corporate PR puff piece as a "news" article.

mattmaroon 9y ago

I think to OPs point, is not that articles in general aren't warranted. It's just that this one was useless. It doesn't tell me what instant pot did to make it beat out rivals other than some nonsense about sensors. And sending units to reviewers is paid advertising. I'd like to hear more about that. Was that his plan from the beginning? Make the same device everyone else does at the same price but get blog reviews?

ghaff 9y ago
The article does get into the viral marketing etc. but, like you, I would like to hear more. I'm honestly not sure why the Instant Pot took off when (admittedly mostly much more expensive) electric pressure cookers have been around for ages. Though, reading the article, it's also not clear to me if the founder really knows why it became so successful either.
- mattmaroon 9y ago
  Yeah, I'd love to know if it was intentional.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    FTA: > In 2010, after several months of sluggish sales in and around Ontario, Mr. Wang listed the Instant Pot on Amazon, where a community of food writers eventually took notice. Vegetarians and paleo dieters, in particular, were drawn to the device’s pressure-cooking function, which shaved hours off the time needed to cook pots of beans or large cuts of meat. > Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb. I really don't know what you are talking about. It spells out exactly what they did, and why they did it. It also talks about taking advantage of "Fulfilled by Amazon" back in 2010, still early in the program, and credits Amazon with over 90% of it's sales at one point.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Yes, but it seems as if it was starting to gather a fair bit of attention on Amazon before they sent out the test units. I suspect that the initial answer was some combination of Amazon + good product + smart positioning + good luck. Overall, it's an interesting story about a product that succeeded largely through viral marketing but I'd have liked more detail than you're likely to get from a general interest article.
      - soundwave106 9y ago
        There's not that much more detail, but a University of Waterloo article on them (https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-social-media-ladder-to-success/ https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-soc...) describes the name of the tactic described above: influencer marketing. It's interesting that they align the fact that cooking is often a social phenomenon, with the fact that influencer marketing seemed to work well for Instant Pot. I gather from some of the articles linked (http://refineandfocus.com/when-brand-communities-become-cults-lessons-from-instant-pots-social-media-success/ http://refineandfocus.com/when-brand-communities-become-cult... and https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/from-ottawa-to-world-domination-the-story-of-the-instant-pot-1.3319793 https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/from-ottawa-to-world-domina...) that unlike other past influencer marketed products, Instant Pot largely utilized Internet space: big platform social media word-of-mouth to achieve their affects. Given that Internet social media space is growing, I would expect more of these type of marketing stories in the future. Some of it's probably the product for sure. If I remember right, rice cookers like the Zojirushi models had pretty much everything Instant Pot has, except the pressure cooking part. But that's a pretty big "except", given the dodgy past of traditional stove-top pressure cookers.

daveguy 9y ago

> anything doubles in sales for 6 straight years I think this kind of article is warranted. If they started at 1 sale the first year they would be at 64 sales. No matter where they started they doubling every year for 6 years is 64x (2^6) sales. 64x sales over 6 years is great if you're an investor, but it isn't news. Inability to buy one means they are having trouble with production. You can bet it is doing more than 2x this year with great sales copy in the NYT. Makes me want to cancel my NYT subscription.

baldfat 9y ago
> Makes me want to cancel my NYT subscription. I think you should just do it. This is an article about a kitchen appliance and how the guy gave away 200 units and used Amazon Fulfillment to grow his company. > Inability to buy one means they are having trouble with production. Yes they can't make enough of them even though they are doubling production every year.
- daveguy 9y ago
  > I think you should just do it. This is an article about a kitchen appliance and how the guy gave away 200 units and used Amazon Fulfillment to grow his company. Good point. I actually unsubscribed previously because of their "native advertising" policy (and then resubscribed in the last year or so). > Yes they can't make enough of them even though they are doubling production every year. The point I was trying to make in the first post was that doubling sales/production/anything else every year for six years doesn't mean a whole lot without seeing year 1. 1) If they doubled production every year for 5 years maybe they should have had extra capacity for year 6. 2) If year 1 they sold 1 unit then this year they sold on the order of 64 (obviously minimal). If year 1 they sold 100 units then this year they sold on the order of 6400. From a production standpoint that is not a difficult task. I was just disappointed that NYT ran what is essentially a corporate PR puff piece as a "news" article.