Touchland

Compete on a different dimension: make the ugly utility product beautiful

Shaan links Ferrero Rocher's gold-wrapped packaging to Touchland, which he says sold for around $800M after turning hand sanitizer into a scented, perfume-like accessory. Instead of beating Purell on the functional spec (germs killed), it won on a dimension incumbents ignored: looks, scent and carry-ability.

“we've talked about Touchland Soap, this, this this woman who sold this company for, I think, $800 million or something recently. And what she did was she took Purell, like, hand sanitizer, this utilitarian, ugly product, and she made it look like women's perfume. And it came in different scents, and it was all hand sanitizer, but, you know, something small you'd want to carry in your, in your purse that looked cool, smelled great, and didn't have, like, you know, change of— just competed in a different dimension than hand sanitizer. Not trying to kill more germs per second, But say your hands aren't going to smell like ethanol at the end of this, right?”

Steal thisPick a utilitarian, ugly category and compete on look, feel and scent instead of the functional spec everyone else fights over.