I make a good product; why don't people buy it?

Significant quote from a Marketing professor at Harvard Business School :

“The customer should be at the center of any company’s universe.

A good product doesn’t always get you there.

You need marketing, sales, and customer service to sell it.”

We are astonished at the number of small manufacturers of T-to-the-Fourth-Power products that don't understand --- or refuse to acknowledge --- this simple, basic tenet of marketing.

"Marketing?" they reply, "you mean advertising, right? Gee, I place those one-inch high, two-column ads in every other issue of Traction & Trolley Chatter magazine. I don't believe that I've ever gotten even one inquiry on those ads ... and they've been running for two years now. I'm sorry that I ever started that product line."

There's an old saying in church circles, "You can't get many converts if you preach only to the choir."

I would say that "preaching to the choir" is endemic in model railroad circles, especially in model traction, and trolleys.

1. Marketing does not mean only Advertising .

2. Those specialty periodicals --- very few of them are ever displayed on newsstands or super market shelves. This means that only those specialty hobbyists who subscribe to these magazines ever even get to open the magazine and peer inside, so the only ones who see those ads are people already involved in the hobby.

3. Dedicated hobbyists flip through the pages looking for articles that they've already determined are pertinent to their part of the hobby --- and please don't fool yourself into thinking that, even in the small universe of model railroaders, there are very many that specialize in traction. The probability that they will stumble onto your tiny two-column-inch ad, with its almost invisible graphics, tiny typeface, and extremely limited appeal is smaller than a quantum particle.

This is not to take away the value --- or even the necessity --- of those tombstone ads in traction specialty magazines. BUT that's no way to launch a new product or a new concept or a new scale, as I'm urging you to do.

What is the answer ? Stay tuned over the next few weeks and we'll explore ways to accomplish your goal.