Here's a common sense tip when shopping at Home Depot - be very suspicious of buying any product when all the units on the shelf look like they have been returned:
Notice the shabby condition of all the boxes on the right. The product is obviously a market failure.
It's a great idea - a toilet valve that alerts you to a flapper valve leak. But somehow the way Fluidmaster has implemented it has turned off customers in a big way.
The Hydro-Clean model on the left is a copy of the Fluidmaster design, and doesn't appear to work much better. The boxes are fresh only because it was recently introduced.
Now a little commentary on product design and market testing. Fluidmaster could have saved themselves this costly market failure if only they had gotten a couple thousand out into the field for well-documented feedback. They probably tested the heck out of these to make sure they worked as designed, and found it was a robust design.
But here's the problem: They work DIFFERENTLY than what customers are used to. Sometimes different gets rejected by the market even when it's better.
Notice the shabby condition of all the boxes on the right. The product is obviously a market failure.
It's a great idea - a toilet valve that alerts you to a flapper valve leak. But somehow the way Fluidmaster has implemented it has turned off customers in a big way.
The Hydro-Clean model on the left is a copy of the Fluidmaster design, and doesn't appear to work much better. The boxes are fresh only because it was recently introduced.
Now a little commentary on product design and market testing. Fluidmaster could have saved themselves this costly market failure if only they had gotten a couple thousand out into the field for well-documented feedback. They probably tested the heck out of these to make sure they worked as designed, and found it was a robust design.
But here's the problem: They work DIFFERENTLY than what customers are used to. Sometimes different gets rejected by the market even when it's better.
