Go Extreme or Go Home

What do household sponges and USB flash drives have in common?

Arguably, it’s that they are both pretty common.  On my desk right now I have more than a dozen thumb drives of varying capacities.  At home I know that we have sponges in the kitchen, bathrooms, laundry room, and garage.

Sure, the USB drives are somewhat differentiated in terms of form factor.  And the sponges have varying sizes, textures and colors.  But for the most part, they’re fairly invisible.  While sponges have been around for seemingly forever (sponges preceded humans on the planet by a long shot), thumb drives have only been around for about 10 years.  Yet both have become commodities.

And in the world of product development, if you’re creating a commodity item, it had better be cheap.  Or different.  Really different.

I didn’t pull these two objects out of thin air.  Rather, two recent developments—one in sponges and the other in flash drives—are great examples of a couple of companies that are taking their products where few if any of their competitors are.

First, there is the O-Cel-O (ocelo.com) brand of sponges.  The company has hooked up with fashion designer (and, perhaps more importantly, winner on reality TV show Project Runway) Christian Siriano for its line of scrub sponges.

Said Siriano, “This new collection of O-Cel-O scrub sponges will allow everyone to bring home a piece of the runway that is fun, affordable and unexpected.”

A couple of points.  First of all, most people who are buying sponges probably aren’t likely to be attending Fashion Week, nor do they buy name-brand designer wear unless it is from one of the lines that Target has.  Therefore, allowing them to get a bit of whimsy at a low price is a good thing.  That is, if a decision has been made to go with a brand name rather than the house brand, then the brand that has something different is probably going to be the one selected.

Second, note how Siriano calls it “unexpected.”  Which is precisely the approach.  A sponge is a sponge is a sponge.  Unless it is unexpected.  Which makes it special.

Then there is the LaCie (lacie.com) XtremKey USB flash drive.  This is no mere digital bauble.  The flash memory is encased in a zamac—that’s a zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and copper alloy—pipe.  It is said to hold up at temperatures from +200- to -50-degrees C.  And it can be run over by a 10-ton truck.  It was designed by Parisian Constance Guisset, so it isn’t some sort of clunky-looking thing, but from the atelier of a renown designer.  And it is of a size that you could put it on your keychain without needing a really strong chain.

The XtremKey, which comes in capacities from 8 to 64 GB starts at $49.99, a heck of a lot more than what you can pick up something for at Office Depot.

But if you had one, wouldn’t you talk about it?  Wouldn’t you even stand on it or put it in a cup of water (it has screw threads and an O-ring to protect its innards)?

Which means that while the category it is in may be a commodity, it is anything but run-of-the-mill.

A sponge and a USB flash drive.  Sure, they could be common.  But clearly O-Cel-O and LaCie understand that common gets you nowhere.