Knowledge and skill can turn the ordinary into extraordinary!

Blog - September 2007

Adding value to the customer

Posted on 16 September 2007 at 18:28

We are in the process of decorating one of our rooms, and one of the good ideas we had was to put up some sort of cornicing around the ceiling. So, Sunday afternoon saw me in a diy shop, looking at cornicing for the house. When I got there, there were three types, polystyrene and plaster, which I expected, and then a 'paper covered' one. Price differential was about 25% above the polystyrene, yet looked so much like plaster which was about 10 times the price of the polystyrene.

A quick discussion, and the pricing was set just right for us. We got the paper covered version because it appeared to give a much smoother finish, and it was still light weight and so easy to pick up and put down again.

Thinking about the processing, my guess is that it is relatively easy to put the paper covering on. It may have required a bit of modification to the moulds, but once modified I would imagine the costs would be relatively low to process. So there we have a premium product, getting an extra 25% over the base rate with little cost after the initial investment.

This is a great example of marketing and production working together in a company and coming up with an improvement that the customer will like and the company will benefit from. What examples like this can you think of in your own business?

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