Why the Beauty Industry Hates Men (Part V): The Beauty Industry and Missed Opportunities

beauty industry and missed opportunities:. Lessons from the IT sector and the writing on the Wall

In business, we all played "If I only knew then what I know now ..." game. And yes, most - if not all - of us would lunge at the chance to jump into a time machine and appear on the legendary right place at the right time: for example, just before the wild stock market surge, or just as valuably, right before an impending accident.

But all the "if I only knew then what I know now" ponderings, the ones that are painful - the ones that keep us at night, complaining not only what could be, but what should be - are able to let slip right through our very own fingers

They are able to sting the longest and deepest cut, because we see the past, with tragic clear that they are actually designed for us. Those opportunities came knocking on our door, all we really need to do is turn the handle to let them in, and reap the life-changing prize.

But for a variety of reasons - call it fate, bad luck, or anything else - we missed it. I also stopped knocking, the door remained closed, and the chance was gone somewhere else.

Top of missed opportunities (and errors) in the History of Technology

If you are thinking about missed opportunities you feel pretty bad, and then the heart, at least not to make the PC World-a sharp (but true!) Entitled "Top 10 stupidest tech company misconceptions" list. Indeed, as can occasionally lie awake in bed at night wondering "what would be," people on this list are probably knee-deep in a therapist at this point. Here:

• In 2006, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel reacted to some bad financial news company pulling back almost sealed $ 1 billion dollar bid for Facebook.Ponuda was reduced to $ 600 million, which is too small to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg . Only five years later, Facebook is now worth jaw dropping $ 80 + billion dollars.

• In 2006, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel reacted to some bad financial news company pulling back almost sealed $ 1 billion dollar bid for Facebook.Ponuda was reduced to $ 600 million, which is too small to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg . Only five years later, Facebook is now worth jaw dropping $ 80 + billion dollars.

• In the early 2000s, the monoliths Sony and Toshiba led the corporate war over who will define the new high definition DVD standard. Sony is a thing called Blu-ray. Toshiba is a thing called HD DVD.Bitka led until 2008, when Sony finally won - but only after payment of Warner Brothers Studios tidy $ 400 million to kill HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray. Had they worked together, they would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars and benefited hundreds of millions more. Talk about a missed opportunity!

• People of a certain age will easily remember the days when MS-DOS ruled the world of the computer system works (I can get a dir, please!). But most people do not know that before IBM chose Microsoft has tried to strike a deal with a man named Gary Kildall at Digital Research. As it turns out, the day that IBM stopped Gary spot fake job, he was out delivering products to customers - leaving his wife to handle the negotiations. Mrs. Kildall did not like some of what IBM is proposing, and sent them on their way. IBM went straight to Bill Gates and Microsoft, and the rest is history.

• In 1973, Xerox built something very interesting and named it Alto. At that time, nobody really knew what Alto, because nothing like this ever existed. All they know is that the Windows GUI, Ethernet networking, and WYSIWYG text processor. But who in their right minds want to? There was no personal computer market in 1973, and by the Alto is placed on the back burner. However, this was before the iPod man Steve Jobs played around with one, go "AHA!" and then spun a vision of the Apple Lisa and Mac computers. By the time that Xerox woke up it was too late and never recovered.

• In 1999, millions of people enjoy the warm glow in front of their monitors and loaded on a digital music through Napster. But not everyone was enthusiastic - including the music industry itself, which has gone to DEFCON 3 mode and attacked Napster, and thousands of "pirates" who are using the Internet to "rip'em off." That's when Napster CEO Hank Barry offered this revolutionary solution: license music and pay the fees for artists and radio stations. To make matters slightly, his suggestion was not listened to. Nor is it listened to the music industry, when a similar solution was proposed by MP3.com, or any other web site, where music like "pirates" congregating. Of course, we know how this story ends: today, Barry licensing model is worth billions of dollars annually - and raste.Digitalne music industry could have avoided years of missed sales, legal fees, and anger fans of the music (especially the 30,000 or so that the respondent), if it simply saw the writing on the wall and read it.

• Back in the 90's, Internet service provider landscape is dominated by CompuServe. That's all you CEO, investor or owner dreams of: a massive market share, established customers, large resources, little competition and technical advances (especially about data) that functions in some way as a natural monopoly. So what happened? Neglecting to establish its leading position to invest in innovative technologies and services, CompuServe to be held the door open for AOL to come in within a few years -. Expelled from CompuServe total market

• For years, Craigslist has seen but not heard newspaper industry. Who could imagine anyone turning of the (very profitable) newspaper ads and putting its truth to some strange ads on some obscure web page named after someone (probably strange) tip. Instead of understanding Craig Newmark's business model and exploitation, the newspaper industry went on whistling, and Craigslist and friends - eBay, Google, and so on - has grown exponentially. And now, there's a good chance that the only place future generations will be seen in the newspapers, or at least the classified section of newspapers, will be in a museum.

• We live in an age of Google, but we can live in the Open text age - that is, if the people at Yahoo! and a new partner Open Text, in 1997, decided not to abandon its plans to create a search engine that could could quickly and accurately scan documents on the Web and return results. Their supervision is Google calling, because in 1998, Google launched its search engine and, well, the rest is history (and, no doubt, the things of nightmares for the people in Yahoo! and the Open Text who missed out on tens of billions of dollars in profits).

• At the turn of the century, Apple, and his advisor Steve Jobs (yes him again) were facing a daunting problem: they did not have money, their stock was close to worthless, and it didn 't even CEO time. So why did not Apple will disappear into oblivion? Enter Bill Gates and Microsoft, which is sent over a check for a cool $ 150 million to Apple from rotting to the core. Obviously, Microsoft has never understood that it was a strategic miscalculation that cost the company billions of dollars in lost profits and market share in computers, digital devices and software. But it is not, and that is why the Bill on the list.

Ingredients Missed business opportunity

Although all shockingly great missed opportunities (and misconceptions) have different details and different color images, it is insightful to look beyond the surface of a common denominator - because in this way, it becomes evident that there are some key, common ingredients for each business an opportunity missed. Among them are:

1 Misjudging the market. Each of these sad story wraps itself around the core of the mistake, and that is that the market is sadly misjudged. Or markets that truly exist are assumed to be nothing (or, at best, is not worthy of consideration), or the fundamental basis of what consumers wanted was ignored in favor of what companies want and figured in their best interests, not consumers' .

2 I do not see the warning signs While hindsight is 20/20, it is fair to conclude that the writing was already on the walls of these people -. And for some, it's been there for years, if you would just pay attention. But instead of reading the characters, setting and accepting the reality, or they pretended it was all wrong, or the ostrich dive and insulated themselves against what is really događa.Ironija is, of course, is that people who have been accused of seeing reality - leaders - those who are dead-set on anything, but I see what is really happening. In the end, their failure was much bigger than they are -. Crushed the whole enterprise on the ground

3 It is not partnering with the right solution provider. All of these companies can be blamed for failing to look outside their organizations. If they are, they would no doubt connected with the right solution provider and gained access to invaluable knowledge, products, services, channels and systems - any or all of which might have to save them from economic disaster and a place on this list is terrible. In other words, they can not solve the problem on your own (assuming they saw it in the first place), but not to work with partners to solve it wisely and successfully.

Writing on the wall for the beauty industry

We have seen how the three basic errors above - misjudging the market, I do not see the warning signs, not partnering with the right solutions provider - has led to untold billions of losses for the IT leaders who will do anything to go back in time and undo the damage (not to be laughing stock of future generations). And chillingly, we can also see how these errors are making their way in the beauty industry - namely, that the beauty industry is dealing with people

Honestly, beauty industry, for all their combined intelligence and experience, sadly neglecting the people in its development of products, its marketing, advertising and his own particular trade. Why? Well, if you're the beauty industry, you will not get an answer - because most of the industry do not think there is a problem! Few people do, their visions are so short-sighted they can not see its way clear solution. In fact, traditional beauty industry would have you believe that people in general, are well on the way to the 'feminized'.

It would be fair to say that the beauty industry is the effort by creating products and marketing campaigns to "appeal to people." But what little they have done so far trail that pulls the train back to like getting him to stop on a dime. It is not surprising, because the altered fundamentally the money - a lot. However, because of men's men do not wield nearly enough purchasing power to catch the attention of the beauty industry, beauty industry figures are not important enough for them to invest in a complete and expensive overhaul of their current practices to the marketing men's skin care and men in the fight against aging products.

In addition, modern beauty industry as a whole, as well as some of their colleagues in the IT area, which has made the list, are still trapped by tradition and influence their female roots that have defined the beauty industry for almost 200 years, one suspicion in order to see the solution even if they are before their eyes.

But this is a monumental problem, and the writing is clearly on the wall.

It is an indisputable fact that men in skin care and anti aging is the fastest growing segment of the beauty industry today. But keep in mind that this growth is a result of the beauty industry efforts to respond to the needs of male humans, it is actually the opposite. Earlier issues of this article series, talk about it extensively, as well as the beauty industry practice of hiring and bribing women to do their difficult job -. That is why up to 70% of men's skin care products are purchased women

It's no wonder that everything from packaging to marketing to the ultra-feminine department store, "Jungle Beauty" experience is completely designed for the ladies. Even the most promotions are geared toward women - who would be expected to use "pretty" make-up bag full of lipstick, eyeshadow and mascara

Sound familiar? Type smell like some incredible miscalculations that IT leaders on the list made ​​up back when they had a chance to get ahead of the trend - instead of lying awake in bed at night (or the therapist's couch in the day) thinking about it.

So that begs questions ...

• Who will be the beauty industry, Yahoo! and profoundly misjudge the value of Facebook?

• Who will be the beauty industry, Xerox, and assume that just because there is no distribution channel to market, then the market does not exist?

• Who will be the beauty industry, plain text, which is within the grasp that, well, Google is the tech industry today, but then realizes it's not worth your time to listen to what the market is really saying. Enough said.

• Who will be the beauty industry, Real Networks, and Philips, which, despite its success in other areas, they will never get more financial loss to maintain the future of the iPod in their hands, but it was dismissed as a matter of "who never will not catch on "?

The list could go, but the point is clear: this is the beauty industry wake up call. Male people are real - and really great - a piece of the puzzle in the global marketplace, and they are willing, able and willing to spend billions of dollars on men's skin care and anti aging products that are designed and delivered to them on their terms - not their wives, "a its not the girls', not their sisters. "they want men men's skin care products that are designed from the ground up for the men's men - products and messages that meet the needs and accepting of life and self-image of a modern male human -. Man Man

beauty industry visionaries who see the writing on the wall, to accept the new reality, and take steps to incorporate smart men, men not only that the position of the profit and growth. They will do something just as satisfying:

They will not end "Top 10 stupidest Beauty Industry Company misconceptions" list when it comes time to write that one up.