“The one thing that ceases to exist the moment it is shared.”
Many retailers see “private label” as their competitive advantage protecting their consumables margin, but what about broader categories of general merchandise? Brick-and-mortar retailers need proprietary innovation in all categories and lots of it.
This is no secret.
All retailers and CPGs realize that innovation is more important today than ever before. They also realize that regular folks – their customers, occasionally come up with awesome product ideas that once developed, could be insanely valuable, but (and here’s the irony) neither they nor their suppliers are engaging with these folks at the concept stage.
In the meantime, the retail industry continues to spend billions of dollars every year, developing faster and more efficient methods of connecting customers and merchandise. The problem is that it’s basically all the same merchandise that everyone else carries and when something innovative does come along, it often shows up everywhere, digitally, all at the same time.
This brings me back to the old adage about competitive advantage, “If everyone has it, no one has it.”
We’re AON Invent, the inventor’s best friend and America’s innovation depository.
For more on this topic read: Digital Judo is changing everything and The competitive advantage of AI.