S. O. S. Pads “There are so many wonderful things in your everyday experience, lucrative opportunities, glorious occasions, that do not exist for you because you do not have the vision for discerning them.” —Edward Kramer Sometimes the things that can catapult us to success are the things that begin as sidelines. We devise a solution to a problem we have and then discover that many other people could use the same solution to solve their problems. That is what Edwin W. Cox experienced in 1917. As a salesman of aluminum cookware, he was mediocre. He just couldn’t get housewives to listen to his presentation. That’s when Edwin thought of using a gimmick. He decided to offer each potential client a free gift as a reward for letting him do his sales pitch. The gift had to be useful for the housewife and had to solve some cooking-related problem. What Edwin Cox conceived was an abrasive pad containing soap that could be used to clean pots and pans. In his kitchen, he took small steel wool pads and repeatedly dipped them into a soapy solution. He let them dry and dipped them again, and continued the process until the pads were full of dried soap. When he began offering the pads as gifts, his cookware sales increased. Cox also found that housewives began calling him to obtain more of the pads. Soon, demand for the cleaning pads surpassed Cox’s ability to make them in his kitchen. Eventually, he had to stop selling cookware to take care of the growing demand for his new product. Cox’s wife called the pads S. O .S. for “Save Our Saucepans,” and the name stuck. Consider This : Keep an eye on those sidelines that may point to something that has great potential.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 01:06:16 +0000
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