
Is your product an Ice Cream Glove or a Snuggie? - wyday
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/is-your-product-an-ice-cream-g.html
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philwelch
I don't really understand the scorn that people pour on the snuggie. Every
time I've bundled under a blanket in the winter I have to either expose my
arms (which means exposing my shoulders and half my chest in practice) or not
do anything with my hands at all. It sucks, and sleeves are the one thing that
makes blankets usable.

My working theory as of now is that the mockers probably live in warm West
Coast cities where there's no need for a blanket at all, ever, so they've
never personally encountered the problem.

~~~
sachinag
I scorn the Snuggie because those who own one are poor consumers. The Slanket
is the better buy.

"Get the Slanket if you're serious about staying warm while lying on your
couch... Nobody anywhere should buy the Snuggie." (From Gizmodo:
[http://gizmodo.com/5190557/ultimate-battle-the-snuggie-vs-
sl...](http://gizmodo.com/5190557/ultimate-battle-the-snuggie-vs-slanket-vs-
freedom-blanket-vs-blankoat))

~~~
joshu
"Slanket" sounds like a victorian insult, doesn't it?

~~~
philwelch
You know, if you just developed one product and rolled it out in different
markets with different names, you could do pretty effective A/B testing on
which name is more appealing.

~~~
pbhj
No you couldn't, suppose your A does better in the first market and your B
worse (accounting for size) in the second. You choose A. Which does even worse
in second market. B was doing the best job for the second market, it is just
that market is less open to your product, B would have totally pwned in the
first market.

You have to do the A/B within the same market to get useful results.

~~~
philwelch
Use a good enough mix of similar markets and you'll get not-entirely bogus
results. The problem you're talking about had occurred to me too, actually,
since markets vary widely in climate. Market it in Alaska and people never,
not even in the summer, get used to light clothing for long enough to prefer
blankets over heavy clothes when on the couch anyway. Market it in Florida and
it never gets cold enough to use a blanket. You'd have to control for climate
and culture, which across the US would be challenging (to say nothing of the
world).

There are ways to do this in the same market though. Something like Vibram
FiveFingers is viral enough that you could probably seed like five Vibram
wearers in a single market and have each of them refer to the product under a
different name. Then track your incoming search queries or orders and match
them by market. If more people order "FiveFingers" than "Toe Shoes" than "Foot
Gloves" you have yourself a product name.

Well, until someone clever on the internet exposes you. Then you get free
publicity as that company that sells the weird shoes and can't decide what to
call them.

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anigbrowl
Excellent comparison. I too thought the snuggie was a joke, but a clever part
of their strategy was that they launched in late summer/fall...people laughed
about it, but by the time it got cold, (and the product became useful) they
were already aware of it.

It's also a good lesson in the importance of branding - it has a good name
instead of a descriptor, and not a web-2.0-meaningless-name either.
Surprisingly, these kind of products been on the market for _10 years_. But
'slanket' sounds like some kind of endangered fish that nobody cares about
(edit: as below, it may be a better product, but I still say that a bad name =
bad sales) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeved_blanket>

Every time I get the urge to mock the snuggie, I just think about the fact
they've sold >4 million of them.

------
joshu
Ice cream glove - a product that fixes a minor problem that very few people
have very rarely.

Snuggie (or the Slanket for the upper crust) - a product that fixes a problem
that cold people have while watching television. Probably advertised to them
while they're watching television too.

Really can't tell the difference?

~~~
johnrob
You only know the Snuggie is for watching TV in hindsight - because customers
told us. I think it's a tough call when both products are still the idea
phase.

~~~
eries
Well said. I think part of the reason entrepreneurship is so hard is that we
are really good at after-the-fact rationalization.

------
ionfish
One thing that the article misses is that there _is_ a way to tell the
difference: do _you_ find your product useful?

Clearly there are major limitations to this heuristic; you might be strange or
exceptional in some way that makes the inference fail, and a sample size of
one (or even two, three, four etc.) will not give you the same certainty as a
large userbase. It is, however, better than nothing.

Note that this is not an "exercise at the whiteboard"—you have to actually
build the thing. Given this caveat, their claim holds, but there's a clearly
identifiable step (actually, there are several, but this distinction is not
necessary for the argument at hand) between scribbling on a whiteboard and
releasing a product for public use.

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mrshoe
> So how can you tell the difference between an Ice Cream Glove and a Snuggie?
> You can’t.

Steve Jobs can. :-)

I'm only half joking. I know of no name for whatever ethereal quality Jobs
possesses, but it is often the difference between a successful entrepreneur
and an unsuccessful one.

Building every single product idea to the point that you can get it into
customers hands just requires too many resources. You have to narrow down the
playing field before you start prototyping, even. It's impossible to let your
customers make _all_ the decisions.

Some people just have the innate crystal ball which tells them what customers
want and what they don't.

~~~
joe_the_user
I think read an interview with Jobs where said something akin to every product
he produced, he produced because he and his team found it super-cool and
really wanted to have it - and that they did very little other market
research.

IF you can create things like that, that have the wow factor, THEN you're
there. But this not the Snuggie OR the Ice Cream Glove, this is the hover
board, _once_ you have a real, working copy.

\-- There you have a third point the article leaves out. It's not hard to
think of Hover Boards, it's very hard to make them. I suspect that Jobs was in
the right place at the right time to rise to the level where he could demand
that every product be a Hover Board and get that demand often met. That's not
always where entrepreneur wind-up and plenty of folks, more folks, make money
with Snuggies than with Hover Boards BUT the conditions for Hover Board
Success should not be overlooked.

~~~
eries
For an alternate POV, see:

[http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/steve-
jobs...](http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/steve-jobs-
method.html)

In particular, Jobs is quoted as saying "It’s not about pop culture, and it’s
not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want
something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty
good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other
people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do."

------
edw519
_So how can you tell the difference between an Ice Cream Glove and a Snuggie?
You can’t. Only your customers can. There is literally no exercise at the
whiteboard you can use to find this out ahead of time. A lot of startups - and
a lot of technologists - make this mistake._

I know I have. We're so used to attacking problems on the whiteboard, we often
forget about the one of the biggest problems of all: when to turn off the
computer and shut down the whiteboard. Can lead to very expensive mistakes.

------
thesecret
I love Snuggie. Their video makes me want to buy one because of it's
"emotional" marketing. All of the circumstances they're showing - getting up
to grab drink, chilling on the couch while watching tv etc..I can see myself
doing.

------
sireat
I didn't watch the Ali G video, but I could actually see myself buying an ice
cream glove if it was presented(read marketed) well.. I like ice cream and I
hate using up napkins after eating ice cream.

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tonystubblebine
The Snuggie is actually a great product if you often laptop in a cold house.
It keeps you warm but still lets you use your arms. Although I much prefer the
slightly more expensive Slanket. This review of all the products on the market
probably started as a joke (they include a review of a robe warn backward),
but the info turns out to be good:
[http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/techtracker/archive/2009/03/...](http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/techtracker/archive/2009/03/31/3796903.aspx)

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Psyonic
Please oreilly, do some research. The Snuggie wasn't untested; they ripped off
the already somewhat successful Slanket and did a muc

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bluishgreen
Same as this one in different language, interesting that people keep
rediscovering this.

[http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/03/is_yo...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/03/is_your_product.html)

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rythie
Couldn't I just put my dressing gown on backwards?

~~~
jsankey
Indeed, you could just put it on forwards. Seems like it would be warmer as it
wraps around properly. The main difference is it won't cover your feet - but
of course this allows you to walk. And there are these newfangled things
called "slippers" that could help. I'm off to make an infomercial about how
those snuggies are OK, but a pain every time I need to get up and walk
somewhere...

~~~
pbhj
I don't think their market moves that much, slippers might be OTT.

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diN0bot
why don't people wear sweaters and sweat pants over their clothes? and a hat.
so much heat is lost through the head! if i did have a snuggie the first thing
i'd do is sew on a hood.

when i go pond swimming in the fall and spring (in NewEngland), i didn't buy a
wetsuit. i just wear the clothes i already have into the water. and sturdy
hat. man, the hat makes all the difference.

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itgoon
Hm. Now I wish Brahms handed out gloves with their cones. Especially kid-sized
ones.

*edited for poor grammer

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DannoHung
It's like they took the design for Obi-Wan's jedi robe and made it blue.

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electronslave
"So how can you tell the difference between an Ice Cream Glove and a Snuggie?"

Personally? Marketing.

~~~
joe_the_user
Not entirely...

The ice glove is something people in the USA just wouldn't use because no body
wears gloves of any sort and the "use-value" of wearing something all the time
to protect yourself from something you do only occasionally is negative.

The Snuggie is useful and more importantly, it's use is immediately obvious,
in the sense that you use it like a blank but with some added benefits (some
of which you can get from a bathrobe, especially wool bathrobes went out of
style a while back). The Snuggie is still mostly marketing, since it doesn't
just there among the zillions of clothing types out there.

The lesson is that if you have something that offers little originality and
value, it's best to offer in a warm, feel-good package that people can
understand. Indeed, I suspect the package and the understanding where the
originality of the product _starts_ and the rest of it is just ... filler.
(note the review that mentions how the Snuggie is simply an incredibly poor-
quality effort at meeting the need it highlights).

If the ice-clean glove was really cheap and dispossible, you might be able to
sell it to ... ice clean vendors. That might actually be a product, not
necessarily good but hey.

~~~
electronslave
Er, I'm not quite sure you read the article, which basically propped up a
kinda-lame joke intended to poke fun at VCs, then missed the point of the joke
entirely while explaining its punchline.

I say marketing because the Ice Cream Glove is a joke, whereas the Snuggie has
marketing.

I'm fairly sure that if you marketed the Ice Cream Glove with shouty ads in
Australia, it'd sell like hotcakes.

Example: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZAGE0AIcE>

