4 ms·

No comments yet pointing out what I think is the important point: Siracha is the established brand. If anyone wants to compete with Siracha they would be best

No comments yet pointing out what I think is the important point: Siracha is the established brand. If anyone wants to compete with Siracha they would be best served by using marketing. That Siracha gets to skip spending on marketing after having developed a green field market just speaks to their competitive moat. They produce a high quality product at reasonable prices, if anything there isn't room to compete if not on marketing.

jollybean 5y ago
They've developed channel power, probably not on the same level as Coke, but something like that. Once you have your place 'in the system' etc. you have incredible leverage. The chocolate bars at my convenience store are the same, boring 20 variations for my entire life. They are not 'the best products' - they are just the products that will work through the system. It'd take a decade of consumer awareness to put something on par with 'Coffee Crisp' and then you have to get all of the gears of distribution to go along with it. So what we end up up with in chocolate - and any number of other goods - is kind of a 'channel equilibrium' where products establish channel dominance (which requires scale), and then inch forward ever so slightly. To see a 'new' product get to that level ... take a look at 'Swiffer' (cleaner) - basically, that's an institutional effort by P&G to 'disrupt' their own categories a bit and they've spent zillions marketing that. It's a trivial little thing, not much in the way of innovation, but when were talking consumer products at that scale, it never was about 'innovation'. These companies do buy brands and scale them but even then brands meet their limit. 'Ben and Jerries' they can probably 10-50x in size ... but at that price point they can only go so far with the category. Odwalla ... sadly had to shut down.
- noduerme 5y ago
  This makes me think about the explosion in ice cream startups in the 2010s (the second time it happened after the 1980s). Ice cream is particularly hard to distribute but several companies made the cut and found themselves in nationwide supermarket aisles. I think there's always a consumer appetite to try the next new thing. I don't buy the idea that there's a moat around any of it.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>No comments yet pointing out what I think is the important point: Siracha is the established brand In 2021 it is. They got to this place without marketing and by entering an already packed condiment market. Tabasco sauce had already been around for a century before they even started.
- thereare5lights 5y ago
  >Tabasco sauce had already been around for a century before they even started. Tabasco and Sriracha are about as similar are ketchup and mustard.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    I'd consider them like mustard and brown mustard, some broad differences but ultimately both versions of the same concept.
    - thereare5lights 5y ago
      Their concepts are not the same.
      - boomboomsubban 5y ago
        At most, they use a different pepper as a their main ingredient. That's the same concept, broadly speaking "hot sauce."
        thereare5lights 5y ago
        Like I said, this is like saying ketchup and mustard are the same. I'm sorry if you can't appreciate the difference between the two but saying that the main thing different between them is the pepper is ludicrous as is saying they're meant for the same kinds of culinary use.
        5y ago
failwhaleshark 5y ago
Yes, first-mover advantage per category, i.e., Pebble. There is also last-mover advantage, i.e., Apple Watch. If you get the FMA, you have to go big ASAP and continue to dominate.

jollybean 5y ago

They've developed channel power, probably not on the same level as Coke, but something like that. Once you have your place 'in the system' etc. you have incredible leverage. The chocolate bars at my convenience store are the same, boring 20 variations for my entire life. They are not 'the best products' - they are just the products that will work through the system. It'd take a decade of consumer awareness to put something on par with 'Coffee Crisp' and then you have to get all of the gears of distribution to go along with it. So what we end up up with in chocolate - and any number of other goods - is kind of a 'channel equilibrium' where products establish channel dominance (which requires scale), and then inch forward ever so slightly. To see a 'new' product get to that level ... take a look at 'Swiffer' (cleaner) - basically, that's an institutional effort by P&G to 'disrupt' their own categories a bit and they've spent zillions marketing that. It's a trivial little thing, not much in the way of innovation, but when were talking consumer products at that scale, it never was about 'innovation'. These companies do buy brands and scale them but even then brands meet their limit. 'Ben and Jerries' they can probably 10-50x in size ... but at that price point they can only go so far with the category. Odwalla ... sadly had to shut down.

noduerme 5y ago
This makes me think about the explosion in ice cream startups in the 2010s (the second time it happened after the 1980s). Ice cream is particularly hard to distribute but several companies made the cut and found themselves in nationwide supermarket aisles. I think there's always a consumer appetite to try the next new thing. I don't buy the idea that there's a moat around any of it.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

>No comments yet pointing out what I think is the important point: Siracha is the established brand In 2021 it is. They got to this place without marketing and by entering an already packed condiment market. Tabasco sauce had already been around for a century before they even started.

thereare5lights 5y ago
>Tabasco sauce had already been around for a century before they even started. Tabasco and Sriracha are about as similar are ketchup and mustard.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  I'd consider them like mustard and brown mustard, some broad differences but ultimately both versions of the same concept.
  - thereare5lights 5y ago
    Their concepts are not the same.
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      At most, they use a different pepper as a their main ingredient. That's the same concept, broadly speaking "hot sauce."
      - thereare5lights 5y ago
        Like I said, this is like saying ketchup and mustard are the same. I'm sorry if you can't appreciate the difference between the two but saying that the main thing different between them is the pepper is ludicrous as is saying they're meant for the same kinds of culinary use.
        5y ago

failwhaleshark 5y ago

Yes, first-mover advantage per category, i.e., Pebble. There is also last-mover advantage, i.e., Apple Watch. If you get the FMA, you have to go big ASAP and continue to dominate.