Strategy Bits

Tales from the Strategy Vault
Contributed by Robert Bradford

Selling the Commodity Specialty - or the Specialty Commodity
Sometimes specialty strategies can be found in unlikely places. It's easy to focus our thinking about specialty business on Bentley and Louis Vuitton (both attendees of our Simplified Strategic Planning seminar), but the mass market specialty is also within reach for companies that are good at branding.

Procter & Gamble has been making great headway in bringing high-end products into - and I am not making this up - Wal-Mart. While this sounds silly, what P&G is really doing is putting expensive benefits into mass-market products. These products have hefty margins compared to regular Wal-Mart fare, but they are still less expensive than the pricey alternatives they are meant to replace. For example, tooth-whitening used to be a process that cost over a hundred dollars at a dentist's office, but now you can get P&G's Crest Whitestrips at Wal-Mart for about $25. In the whitening market, this might be viewed as a commodity, but compared to the basket of goods P&G is selling at Wal-Mart, it's definitely a specialty.

Strategy Tip: Take a look at the products or services your company offers. Do you have anything that you are treating as a commodity that could be a specialty in another?

Robert Bradford is the President and CEO of Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. He can be reached via e-mail at

For more, click here for a free subscription to Course and Direction.