The Magic Moment of Consumer Products

Finding the moment you’re actually selling.

We’re at the peak of the Shark Tank-watching, entrepreneur-romanticizing era.

You’re probably aware..

We adore the Mom & Pop shops and dorm room operations that cut through the noise of e-commerce and work their way into everyday culture. And, enamored with that same idea of self-empowerment, many of us spend our days cooking up the next great scheme—the product or service that’ll change the world.

Of the millions who dream it, hundreds of thousands of people act, working weekends, quitting jobs, tinkering with new designs. Some projects start as hobbies and side-hustles end up just puttering out..

Some ideas are brought to market

And there’s been no better time to do that. Building websites, running advertisements, getting the attention of people has never been easier or more scalable.

We see a lot of projects get off the ground

In the past year alone, we’ve seen a blanket raise a million dollars on KickStarter, spinning metal objects win the internet, and a really expensive rock.

These ideas don’t seem any crazier than the hundreds of thousands that no one ever hears of—or worse—have heard of because they fail so epically.

So what’s the key? The Magic Moment.

Ask yourself the question..

When someone is using your product, at what point do they understand its value? In that, lies the answer you need.

Let’s say you sell shoes. That Magic Moment might be the second your customer slips into their fresh set of sneakers. You’ve worked long and hard iterating on design and material to create the most comfortable shoe and BOOM! anyone who puts them on can tell.

In some cases, it might not be so immediate.

The magic moment for Fitbit, for example, might not be that second you strap one on—although the sleek design doesn’t hurt. It might not even be the first compliment you get. That magic moment might not be until days into wearing it when you look down and realize “it’s helpful to have this information at my fingertips”.

But for some products it may never happen.

Many bright ideas have been led astray as founders don’t realize what their magic moment is—or whether they have one at all. Not understanding why consumers buy your product is a dangerous path to be developing down.

Feature creep is a constant risk for people unfamiliar with their Magic Moment, as they continue to create without knowing what, exactly, they should be creating for. They instead just create a bunch of widgets and doohickeys that dilute what value they may have actually been providing in the first place.

Don’t do this.

Taking the necessary time to talk to customers, explore your product and, most importantly, try to think about it all objectively. Take a step back and find that Magic Moment.

Now reap the benefits..

The truth is, knowing not only that you have a magic moment, but that you can identify it, can go an incredibly long way. Customer profiles, acquisition channels, marketing campaigns can fall into place when you know the exact moment that you’re selling to customers.

It makes everything easier.

I’ll speak from experience for a moment.

I created the idea for a front pocket wallet a few years back that has since become The Ridge. We launched on Kickstarter in 2013 and immediately found some traction. 4 years and 100,000 wallets later, I think we’ve made an imprint on the pockets of a lot of people.

But why?

The idea of a minimalist, front pocket wallet came from a lot of place, but at the end of the day, it was about changing the way people thought about what they carried. Sure, there are additional forces at play—RFID-blocking and titanium being a few fun things that come along with the wallet.

But the Magic Moment, in my opinion, is when consumers dump their old, leather bifolds, throw away the excess contents of their wallets, down-size to The Ridge and realize: I have everything I need.

The idea of being minimal without being limiting is what we strive to do everyday.