Comments on: How Can Retail Leverage Help Garmin?

By: Retail Leverage Tribe Has Spoken – Our Ideas For Garmin « Retail Leverage

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:23:19 +0000

[...] week we asked “How Can Retail Leverage Help Garmin?” We didn’t pretend to have the answer, but we did share lots of background on their current [...]

By: Ben Smith

Ben Smith — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:26:25 +0000

Bob – thanks for your comment! Interesting to think that through open innovation perhaps they could differentiate nuviphones by having the best apps specifically designed to take advantage of location based services. I think you are on to something! They could put the “mobile” in smart phones!

By: Bob Solimeno

Bob Solimeno — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:01:57 +0000

While I’m not a marketer (even the arm-chair variety) I am a very satisfied Garmin Nuvi owner. I see the challenge before Garmin and their nuviphone line and think there is opportunity in giving end users more choice than iphone or blackberry.

There is both risk and reward available for those companies willing to dip their toes into “open innovation.” By opening part of the product architecture up to innovators around the world with challenges to develop both ideas for new features and to develop them – goes in a direction that neither Apple nor RIM dare to go. They key word is “daring.” The innovation comes from the market itself.

By: Ben Smith

Ben Smith — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:41:16 +0000

Doug – I like your take. Thanks for participating. Following your suggestion, I’m sure one option, albeit painful short term, is to go back to the future, where they become very focused on targeted markets where they already have an advantage and can’t be easily displaced by the basic GPS functionality in smart phones. Almost 40% of their profit came from the segments outside of automobile / mobile; Outdoor/fitness, aviation and marine. And some of the auto segment profit HAS to be from providing the GPS equipment to the big automakers for their in-dash GPS. Combine that with your anti-tech focus for their dying business, and perhaps that helps retain some of the profitability from auto/mobile. From a market perspective, that company would still be valuable – just on a smaller scale. And who knows – the nuviphones could be successful. I just fear they’ll be lost in the shuffle.

By: Doug Garnett

Doug Garnett — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:21:51 +0000

Great post. And thought provoking.

Is market segmentation the key? Consider a few things…

- I’m not a Garmin likely customer. I’m quite tech savvy and a great map reader. So, the iPhone works perfectly for me. I get a rough map, can see the street layouts, and that’s all I need. So, that means I don’t need what Garmin offers in blow-by-blow directions.

- But, I know people who love the simplicity of their Garmin BECAUSE it’s single purpose, always in the car, and never interrupted by the phone. Truth is, some portion of the population & even some youth (possibly a majority) are challenged to use tech when it comes to balancing 15 different functions in a single small device.

If there’s any truth to this, then Garmin might be able to hack out very nice targeted markets (like your watch for running).

But there’s a caution: I’ve done strategic communication work for several superbly useful “anti-tech” products (e.g. the Presto printer http://www.presto.com). These are products with highly simple technology that is extraordinarily usable – and was probably invented 10 years in the past but never packaged for easy use. (People with Presto’s love them and so do their kids who can now send email to their parents/grandparents.)

But, tech press tends to crucify anti-tech because they’re not “sexy” enough. (Look at how the tech skeptics complain even about the iPad announcement.) And that’s a hard way to start a product introduction.

It seems to be very difficult to succeed with “anti-tech”. From my experiences, critically this requires a very clear understanding of what the target consumer needs and how to find those people. And, it probably requires a very aggressive campaign to get the tech press to grudgingly accept that anti-tech provides important solutions to human problems.

Love to hear other thoughts. This is a great & tricky question.