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A Story I Remember*
The Dog Food
A new company was formed to manufacture and market dog food.
They were "starting from scratch" and determined to "do everything right."
They hired the best teams.
- Working with some top consultants, they did the market research.
- They confirmed that there was indeed a good opportunity to enter the dog food market.
- They gathered together a first-class team of nutritionists. The team did their research and came up with a good formula - readily available ingredients at a reasonable cost - and nutritional for the dogs.
- They located sources of the raw materials.
- They negotiated a dependable source of supply.
- They assembled a packaging team which designed a very attractive package for the product.
- They hired a top notch advertising firm who put together a winning ad campaign.
- They identified the markets geographically.
- Another team established a solid distribution system.
- They geographically located an optimized plant site close to sources of materials, distribution and the markets, having a good labor pool, etc.
At last, the factory started production.
Dog food rolled off the production line. Cases of product were loaded onto trucks and send out through the distribution system.
The product received good placement on the store shelves.
- People bought.
- Sales were excellant.
- But then suddenly, sales virtually ground to a halt.
People stopped buying the product.
The company president was aghast. He was livid.
What went wrong?
At a hastily called staff meeting, the president wanted to know, "What went wrong? Who messed up?"
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The room went silent. No one said anything.
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The president went around the room, staring each department head directly in the eye. One-by-one, he demanded to know if their department had dropped the ball?
And one-by-one, each proclaimed that their team had done an outstanding job. They had done everything correctly.
- Facilities - excellent
- Raw materials - excellent
- Nutritional formula - excellent
- Production - excellent
- Packaging - excellent
- Distribution - excellent
- Advertising - excellent
- etc.
No one had a reason for the sudden failure in sales.
Finally, a small voice from the back of the room spoke up.
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"Sir, the dogs did not like it."
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