Did you know that Moleskine notebooks have their own ISBN?
I used to run a bookshop in a tweeting vending machine called Machine Supply. It was the smallest member of the Booksellers Association (I had a sticker on the glass and everything) and I partnered with a great book wholesaler.
So the book business relies on wholesalers. They buy the books from the publishers and bookshops buy the books from them. They provide warehousing and distribution for the publishers… but critically for the bookshops they provide a trade account. Credit! The ability to return stock! Ordering systems and consolidated invoices and regular shipping! A big deal.
It all relies on ISBNs.
One day I discovered Moleskine notebooks in the book catalogue.
They had an ISBN, which meant they would fit into my vending machine automation too. (I built a bunch of custom software.)
I ordered some… standard wholesale discount. They arrived along with the regular books. I stocked them in the vending machine. (They fitted the shelf mechanism of course.) They sold well!
Would I have stocked Moleskines if they weren’t distributed by the book wholesaler? No, it wouldn’t have been worth the hassle.
It’s such a clever hack.
Moleskines are notebooks. Not real books.
But they’re book shaped. By which I mean the margin is approximately the same, and they can be warehoused just the same, and they can be sold on the counter of the exact same stores.
The publication date of “Moleskine Pocket Hardcover Ruled Notebook Black” (ISBN 9788883701009) is March 2003.
Moleskine the company was only founded in 1997.
I remember them being everywhere in the early 2000s.
This ISBN hack, early in their history, will have been part of why.
Every so often I see another product which is shaped like a book but clearly not a book, yet has an ISBN, and I’m like: aha.
Psychobox (Amazon) from 2004 comes to mind: it’s a box of optical illusions and tricks, plus a short pamphlet.
It’s packaged to fit on a bookshelf! It has an ISBN! It is reaching a whole set of customers it would never have normally reached!
There are fewer indie bookstores than there used to be. This was a really clever approach for a time.
Music.
Back in the day I remember hearing about one of the big music publishers – EMI maybe?
This was during the transition from CDs to MP3s. No streaming yet, and people would still buy CDs to rip them.
We’d call this a drop nowadays: they’d just dropped a new album.
They were selling it as a USB memory stick on a lanyard in JD Sports, a major high street sport and lifestyle chain.
And that was so smart.
USB memory sticks were in demand at the time, you always needed a few.
MP3 piracy was a big problem and free of course, but inconvenient.
So to put the digital files conveniently and visibly in a place where your audience is going to be anyway! Clever distribution play.
Often when we think about product innovation we start with: how have customer needs changed? Or, how has technology changed? And we look for opportunities to change the product.
But instead we can ask: where do our customers congregate? Can we find a novel way to distribute our product so it reaches our customers there?
Or you can even start with distribution, ahead of the final form of the product:
Where are there busy markets with well-established distribution channels and potential partners? How can we hijack that distribution to do something interesting?
Designers, this part is for you.
By coincidence I’ve had three? maybe four? conversations with designers and independent studios, just over the last couple weeks, where they have some side-project product they want to sell, or have tried and not quite found the way.
And when we’re chatting, I can see that it’s because go-to-market is an opaque process, or that the product would suddenly become much more interesting or tractable with a market tweak or distribution twist.
That’s why distribution is on my mind.
I would love for more design studios to be bringing their own products to market.
So, open offer: if you’re a design studio bumping up against how to commercialise something alongside your client work, especially friends with studios here in London and the UK, I’m happy to chat, share what I know, and be a sounding board. Drop me a note.
Did you know that Moleskine notebooks have their own ISBN?
I used to run a bookshop in a tweeting vending machine called Machine Supply. It was the smallest member of the Booksellers Association (I had a sticker on the glass and everything) and I partnered with a great book wholesaler.
So the book business relies on wholesalers. They buy the books from the publishers and bookshops buy the books from them. They provide warehousing and distribution for the publishers… but critically for the bookshops they provide a trade account. Credit! The ability to return stock! Ordering systems and consolidated invoices and regular shipping! A big deal.
It all relies on ISBNs.
One day I discovered Moleskine notebooks in the book catalogue.
They had an ISBN, which meant they would fit into my vending machine automation too. (I built a bunch of custom software.)
I ordered some… standard wholesale discount. They arrived along with the regular books. I stocked them in the vending machine. (They fitted the shelf mechanism of course.) They sold well!
Would I have stocked Moleskines if they weren’t distributed by the book wholesaler? No, it wouldn’t have been worth the hassle.
It’s such a clever hack.
Moleskines are notebooks. Not real books.
But they’re book shaped. By which I mean the margin is approximately the same, and they can be warehoused just the same, and they can be sold on the counter of the exact same stores.
The publication date of “Moleskine Pocket Hardcover Ruled Notebook Black” (ISBN 9788883701009) is March 2003.
Moleskine the company was only founded in 1997.
I remember them being everywhere in the early 2000s.
This ISBN hack, early in their history, will have been part of why.
Every so often I see another product which is shaped like a book but clearly not a book, yet has an ISBN, and I’m like: aha.
Psychobox (Amazon) from 2004 comes to mind: it’s a box of optical illusions and tricks, plus a short pamphlet.
It’s packaged to fit on a bookshelf! It has an ISBN! It is reaching a whole set of customers it would never have normally reached!
There are fewer indie bookstores than there used to be. This was a really clever approach for a time.
Music.
Back in the day I remember hearing about one of the big music publishers – EMI maybe?
This was during the transition from CDs to MP3s. No streaming yet, and people would still buy CDs to rip them.
We’d call this a drop nowadays: they’d just dropped a new album.
They were selling it as a USB memory stick on a lanyard in JD Sports, a major high street sport and lifestyle chain.
And that was so smart.
USB memory sticks were in demand at the time, you always needed a few.
MP3 piracy was a big problem and free of course, but inconvenient.
So to put the digital files conveniently and visibly in a place where your audience is going to be anyway! Clever distribution play.
Often when we think about product innovation we start with: how have customer needs changed? Or, how has technology changed? And we look for opportunities to change the product.
But instead we can ask: where do our customers congregate? Can we find a novel way to distribute our product so it reaches our customers there?
Or you can even start with distribution, ahead of the final form of the product:
Where are there busy markets with well-established distribution channels and potential partners? How can we hijack that distribution to do something interesting?
Designers, this part is for you.
By coincidence I’ve had three? maybe four? conversations with designers and independent studios, just over the last couple weeks, where they have some side-project product they want to sell, or have tried and not quite found the way.
And when we’re chatting, I can see that it’s because go-to-market is an opaque process, or that the product would suddenly become much more interesting or tractable with a market tweak or distribution twist.
That’s why distribution is on my mind.
I would love for more design studios to be bringing their own products to market.
So, open offer: if you’re a design studio bumping up against how to commercialise something alongside your client work, especially friends with studios here in London and the UK, I’m happy to chat, share what I know, and be a sounding board. Drop me a note.