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Is your product an Ice Cream Glove or a Snuggie?
- tonystubblebine 17y agoThe Snuggie is actually a great product if you often laptop in a cold house. It keeps you warm but still lets you use your arms. Although I much prefer the slightly more expensive Slanket. This review of all the products on the market probably started as a joke (they include a review of a robe warn backward), but the info turns out to be good: http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/techtracker/archive/2009/03/31/3796903.aspx http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/techtracker/archive/2009/03/...
- ionfish 17y agoOne thing that the article misses is that there is a way to tell the difference: do you find your product useful? Clearly there are major limitations to this heuristic; you might be strange or exceptional in some way that makes the inference fail, and a sample size of one (or even two, three, four etc.) will not give you the same certainty as a large userbase. It is, however, better than nothing. Note that this is not an "exercise at the whiteboard"—you have to actually build the thing. Given this caveat, their claim holds, but there's a clearly identifiable step (actually, there are several, but this distinction is not necessary for the argument at hand) between scribbling on a whiteboard and releasing a product for public use.
- anigbrowl 17y agoExcellent comparison. I too thought the snuggie was a joke, but a clever part of their strategy was that they launched in late summer/fall...people laughed about it, but by the time it got cold, (and the product became useful) they were already aware of it. It's also a good lesson in the importance of branding - it has a good name instead of a descriptor, and not a web-2.0-meaningless-name either. Surprisingly, these kind of products been on the market for 10 years. But 'slanket' sounds like some kind of endangered fish that nobody cares about (edit: as below, it may be a better product, but I still say that a bad name = bad sales) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeved_blanket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeved_blanket Every time I get the urge to mock the snuggie, I just think about the fact they've sold >4 million of them.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 17y agoI don't really understand the scorn that people pour on the snuggie. Every time I've bundled under a blanket in the winter I have to either expose my arms (which means exposing my shoulders and half my chest in practice) or not do anything with my hands at all. It sucks, and sleeves are the one thing that makes blankets usable. My working theory as of now is that the mockers probably live in warm West Coast cities where there's no need for a blanket at all, ever, so they've never personally encountered the problem.
- andreyf 17y agoMy working theory as of now is that the mockers probably live in warm West Coast cities where there's no need for a blanket at all, ever, so they've never personally encountered the problem. Or in heated homes... but yes, I think your working theory is spot-on.
- sachinag 17y agoI scorn the Snuggie because those who own one are poor consumers. The Slanket is the better buy. "Get the Slanket if you're serious about staying warm while lying on your couch... Nobody anywhere should buy the Snuggie." (From Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5190557/ultimate-battle-the-snuggie-vs-slanket-vs-freedom-blanket-vs-blankoat http://gizmodo.com/5190557/ultimate-battle-the-snuggie-vs-sl...)
- philwelch 17y agoMan, I'm not getting an upscale sleeve-blanket until my student loans are paid off.
- jamesk2 17y agoI'm not getting one until there's an apple branded version of it.
- nazgulnarsil 17y agoI resent that! slanket + iphone = warm hn surfing thank you very much.
- DannoHung 17y agoIt's like they took the design for Obi-Wan's jedi robe and made it blue.
- bluishgreen 17y agoSame as this one in different language, interesting that people keep rediscovering this. http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/03/is_your_product.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/03/is_yo...
- rythie 17y agoCouldn't I just put my dressing gown on backwards?
- jsankey 17y agoIndeed, you could just put it on forwards. Seems like it would be warmer as it wraps around properly. The main difference is it won't cover your feet - but of course this allows you to walk. And there are these newfangled things called "slippers" that could help. I'm off to make an infomercial about how those snuggies are OK, but a pain every time I need to get up and walk somewhere...
- pbhj 17y agoI don't think their market moves that much, slippers might be OTT.
- electronslave 17y ago"So how can you tell the difference between an Ice Cream Glove and a Snuggie?" Personally? Marketing.
- joe_the_user 17y agoNot entirely... The ice glove is something people in the USA just wouldn't use because no body wears gloves of any sort and the "use-value" of wearing something all the time to protect yourself from something you do only occasionally is negative. The Snuggie is useful and more importantly, it's use is immediately obvious, in the sense that you use it like a blank but with some added benefits (some of which you can get from a bathrobe, especially wool bathrobes went out of style a while back). The Snuggie is still mostly marketing, since it doesn't just there among the zillions of clothing types out there. The lesson is that if you have something that offers little originality and value, it's best to offer in a warm, feel-good package that people can understand. Indeed, I suspect the package and the understanding where the originality of the product starts and the rest of it is just ... filler. (note the review that mentions how the Snuggie is simply an incredibly poor-quality effort at meeting the need it highlights). If the ice-clean glove was really cheap and dispossible, you might be able to sell it to ... ice clean vendors. That might actually be a product, not necessarily good but hey.
- electronslave 17y agoEr, I'm not quite sure you read the article, which basically propped up a kinda-lame joke intended to poke fun at VCs, then missed the point of the joke entirely while explaining its punchline. I say marketing because the Ice Cream Glove is a joke, whereas the Snuggie has marketing. I'm fairly sure that if you marketed the Ice Cream Glove with shouty ads in Australia, it'd sell like hotcakes. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZAGE0AIcE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZAGE0AIcE
- itgoon 17y agoHm. Now I wish Brahms handed out gloves with their cones. Especially kid-sized ones. *edited for poor grammer
- mrshoe 17y ago> So how can you tell the difference between an Ice Cream Glove and a Snuggie? You can’t. Steve Jobs can. :-) I'm only half joking. I know of no name for whatever ethereal quality Jobs possesses, but it is often the difference between a successful entrepreneur and an unsuccessful one. Building every single product idea to the point that you can get it into customers hands just requires too many resources. You have to narrow down the playing field before you start prototyping, even. It's impossible to let your customers make all the decisions. Some people just have the innate crystal ball which tells them what customers want and what they don't.
- joe_the_user 17y agoI think read an interview with Jobs where said something akin to every product he produced, he produced because he and his team found it super-cool and really wanted to have it - and that they did very little other market research. IF you can create things like that, that have the wow factor, THEN you're there. But this not the Snuggie OR the Ice Cream Glove, this is the hover board, once you have a real, working copy. -- There you have a third point the article leaves out. It's not hard to think of Hover Boards, it's very hard to make them. I suspect that Jobs was in the right place at the right time to rise to the level where he could demand that every product be a Hover Board and get that demand often met. That's not always where entrepreneur wind-up and plenty of folks, more folks, make money with Snuggies than with Hover Boards BUT the conditions for Hover Board Success should not be overlooked.
- eries 17y agoFor an alternate POV, see: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/steve-jobs-method.html http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/steve-jobs... In particular, Jobs is quoted as saying "It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do."
- philwelch 17y ago
- edw519 17y agoSo how can you tell the difference between an Ice Cream Glove and a Snuggie? You can’t. Only your customers can. There is literally no exercise at the whiteboard you can use to find this out ahead of time. A lot of startups - and a lot of technologists - make this mistake. I know I have. We're so used to attacking problems on the whiteboard, we often forget about the one of the biggest problems of all: when to turn off the computer and shut down the whiteboard. Can lead to very expensive mistakes.
- joshu 17y agoIce cream glove - a product that fixes a minor problem that very few people have very rarely. Snuggie (or the Slanket for the upper crust) - a product that fixes a problem that cold people have while watching television. Probably advertised to them while they're watching television too. Really can't tell the difference?
- Legion 17y agoExactly. Being cold is an ongoing problem. Getting ice cream on my hands is something I fix by pulling out a wet nap or running my hands under the nearest source of water. No one would carry around a bulky glove to avoid 10 seconds of inconvenience. People most certainly will buy a better blanket to avoid freezing their butt off all night. They're only comparable if you really put absolutely no thought into the problems they "solve".
- johnrob 17y agoYou only know the Snuggie is for watching TV in hindsight - because customers told us. I think it's a tough call when both products are still the idea phase.
- eries 17y agoWell said. I think part of the reason entrepreneurship is so hard is that we are really good at after-the-fact rationalization.
- thesecret 17y agoI love Snuggie. Their video makes me want to buy one because of it's "emotional" marketing. All of the circumstances they're showing - getting up to grab drink, chilling on the couch while watching tv etc..I can see myself doing.
- Psyonic 17y agoPlease oreilly, do some research. The Snuggie wasn't untested; they ripped off the already somewhat successful Slanket and did a muc
- diN0bot 17y agowhy don't people wear sweaters and sweat pants over their clothes? and a hat. so much heat is lost through the head! if i did have a snuggie the first thing i'd do is sew on a hood. when i go pond swimming in the fall and spring (in NewEngland), i didn't buy a wetsuit. i just wear the clothes i already have into the water. and sturdy hat. man, the hat makes all the difference.
- sireat 17y agoI didn't watch the Ali G video, but I could actually see myself buying an ice cream glove if it was presented(read marketed) well.. I like ice cream and I hate using up napkins after eating ice cream.