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.
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.
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.
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.
Regarding the Sruli Recht Blankoat: "If you have enough money to spend $330 on a gigantic 120-inch long blanket made out of wool from Icelandic sheep, you have enough money to run your heater and walk around in your underwear instead."
This person clearly has no idea how expensive it can be to heat a building in colder climates.
Coming from Chicago and living in a country that has toilets which talk to you but has yet to figure out central heating, every time I see the Snuggie I think "I should buy one for, hmm, everyone I know."
I actually took me 45 second to realize ... it's a bathrobe! But re-imaged and re-packaged!
The thing is that I am sure that there are lots of physical products based on more-or-less re-imaging an existing physical product or perhaps taking a clever combination of existing products.
But the thing, I suspect that when these things succeed, they succeed based on marketing rather than their inherent superiority - the name "Snuggie" mmm! This isn't an negative on these things are business plans... But I (and suspect that a lot of hackers) have two reactions to them:
1) I'm a hacker not a marketer, I might think of an idea like a Snuggie but to succeed, the key ingredient isn't such an idea but the soft-focus infomercial, something I'm not particularly adept at.
2) I do want to revolutionize the world, not just sell another Snuggie. By now, I realize this isn't the most common way folks make money in business (Snuggies are) but it keeps the innovator happy, something that perhaps shouldn't be overlooked.
We talk about incremental development. For the most part, the world develops incrementally. If you think about how many people wear snuggies and how much more comfortable they are, the net change in happiness and well-being is...probably not that great, but in aggregate, deserving of the amount of money you can make from it.
Revolutionizing the world is something that happens by chance when you write a quick-and-dirty operating system for a PDP-7, help breed high-yield wheat strains in Mexico, or hack together a hypertext system with TCP/IP on a NeXT box. So even if you're trying to revolutionize the world, you shouldn't actually try, you should just solve problems here and now that seem ripe for the picking.
bath robes are too constricting for laying on a couch, and not that comfortable all things considered. Further, my bath robes at least are short sleeved.
When it's cold I sleep in my bathrobe (we call it a "dressing gown" which is a particularly poor name for it as one wears it when not getting dressed!). It has long sleeves, is below the knee in length and snug - very comfortable.
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.
Or in heated homes... but yes, I think your working theory is spot-on.
My theory is that products that are designed to provide comfort are more susceptible to scorn because being "tough" makes some people feel good.
There obviously are real technical reasons when choosing between a Snuggie vs a blanket, or a Segway vs a bike, or TaeKwonDo vs Pilates, but I think it's naive to think that:
- we choose products/services solely based on rational analysis
- our tastes are not affected by our perception of social expectations
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.