Before you launch another SKU, ⤷ figure out what problem the customer is trying
By Will Haire · October 10, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Before you launch another SKU,
⤷ figure out what problem the customer is trying to solve.
In the 1950s, a secretary named Bette Nesmith Graham was tired of retyping entire pages over a single typo.
She also painted. Painters don't erase mistakes on a canvas. They paint over them.
So she brought a bottle of white paint to the office. Other secretaries started asking for their own.
In 1979, Gillette bought Liquid Paper for $47.5 million.
The paint was ordinary.
The breakthrough was her question: Does this mistake need to be erased at all?
On this week's Selling on Giants, I get into:
→ Why I treat Amazon search data as customer research
→ Why ad spend magnifies a weak listing instead of fixing it
→ A one-line exercise: finish the sentence "Our customers are really buying ___"
🎧 Listen to the episode: https://lnkd.in/eNcMwj8V