How Selling Cheap Products Is Hurting Your Company

Consumer culture is changing, and brands are beginning to feel intense pressure to put quantity over quality when it comes to what they sell in their stores.

Products are easier to conceive, produce and sell than ever before. Clothing company Zara created an unprecedented 40,000 designs last year. Traditionally, designers spent a lot of time developing high-quality products that were made to last. Wearing them cost money. You recognized anybody wearing them, and that meant something in society. Clothing companies have completely changed that by producing a huge quantity of fast, cheap varieties that aren't made to outlast the season.

But the problem with this approach is that disposable products, in most cases, don’t create an emotional connection with the people who buy them, leaving customers stuck in a cycle of consumption. Add the frightening environmental cost, and you end up with an existential problem for retailers and the world.

It's also not just fashion undergoing a fast reinvention. Everyone wants to be fast. Brands across all categories are following the leader and producing or curating thousands of lower-quality items that will quickly break or go out of fashion. The end result is that the customer has no other choice but to keep buying and replacing to sustain their lifestyle and express themselves.

So, what’s the answer for brands who are scared they’ll become irrelevant in such fast times, and what’s the answer for brands who don’t want to damage the environment through excessive consumption as they go?

A Brief History Of Production

For thousands of years, manufacturers produced objects by hand at a steep cost. Products were expected to last a long time. However, since the Industrial Revolution, the world has been powering toward increased production and decreased prices.

In the past 20–30 years, this trend has progressed so dramatically that products now cost so little they are almost free. It is a basic law of economics: When the merchandise is abundant, prices need to go down to meet demand; if items are scarce and more people are demanding them, prices go up. Factories are designed to produce more and more stuff, and the more products they make, the more prices drop.

Brands have access to a global network of highly productive factories, and the world is producing at a pace never imagined before. Prices now need to go down to meet demand, but how far down can you go?

If we keep up this trend, the system will eventually reach a point where the value of items will be equal to the cost of production. I believe we are getting there quickly, especially considering the younger generations are buying less than the previous ones, preferring experiences over possessions. Brands absolutely need to invert this trend before it is too late, and the only way to respond to this is by producing items that are unique, environmentally friendly and long-lasting.

Make Quality Products

You need to double down on making quality products that are made well and made to last.

Zig while everyone else zags, and make something that’s self-evidently the best in its class. Provide high-quality goods that do not deteriorate within months, or can at least be recycled, reused or made into other things. Make products that create a strong bond with the people who own them; this will result in a deeper connection, not just with the products, but with your brand as well. Once you’re making quality products, you can think about how the customer interacts with them.

Make Products For A Specific Niche

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies have been taking advantage of new technologies in order to target a very small niche of customers that was impossible to reach just a few years ago. I laugh every time I watch TV and find myself staring at ads that have nothing to do with me and my life necessities. McDonald's, Coca-Cola and IBM were companies that served the masses, creating products that were attractive for a very large part of the population (if not all). Today companies should focus on the niches that were left out by the big advertisers of the past. This is the era of individualism, and products should reflect that.

Create A Point Of Contact With Your Customers

Your store cannot be just a selling place anymore. You also need to entertain your client — see Nike, whose On Air events had customers paying substantial amounts of money to make their own customized shoes. Nike understands what kind of brand innovation its customers want; Nike's success with these events alone is a testament to this. Add excellent customer service to brand innovation, and the whole experience is not only enjoyable but unique for the customer, because through customer service you can relay brand values.

Based on my experience helping brands, this need for customer experience and interaction is growing. The experience of buying the product should be equally as fulfilling as the feel of using the product.

If businesses can provide experiences that give the customer a sense of cultural pride and achievement, customers will not only feel better about themselves, but about the brand that gives them this sense as well. And after this, given the quality of the product, it’s unlikely the customer will need to come back every three months to replace their shoes; a company that makes products that require customers to do this should not be considered a company that values its customers before anything else. A good company has people coming back because there's something exciting going on that they want to take part in.

This is an opportunity. Brands need to shift production from products that last three months to products that last three or 20 years, and they need to make customers care about this through terrific experiences centered around the brand and the product, in and out of the store.

We need to make longevity as cool as look.

Sergio Mannino

This article first appeared on Forbes

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