Yesterday night I saw on TV on Virus the last part of Nicola Porro’s interview with Paolo Agnelli.
Agnelli, nicknamed “the lord of the pots”, leads a private group with over 150 million turnover. Famous for producing high quality pots and pans for over a century, the group has doubled its turnover in the last three years.
How?
Clear strategies and straight bar.
For example, they are autonomous in the production of the raw material, aluminium.
Above all, however, they used their know-how, aluminium processing, to expand their range. So, they are now also selling aluminium profiles for many other sectors apart from household products, window frames and automotive.
Attention: they haven’t diversified in vain, passing… you know… from pots to mobile phones. Not at all, there was instead a very precise common thread: their ability to work with aluminum.
Illuminating. And simple.
The key idea on which I invite you to reflect is therefore this:
Use your know-how to develop new business opportunities that are consistent with your current core business.
I don’t want to minimize, for God’s sake. But I’d like this Friday article to be a stimulus and inspire some reflection over the weekend.
Here’s in practice what Agnelli did:
- alongside product A, Agnelli has added products B and C to its range, exploiting its know-how in raw materials.
And if you think that your market is different, that it isn’t possible, etc., etc., I’ll mention three small personal examples:
- When I was Marketing Manager at Kodak in the division that sold photocopiers, we only had products with more than 50 pages per minute. So I contacted Toshiba’s Sales Director to resell their low-end products on certain accounts or in certain tenders.
That is: extension of the range with complementary products supplied by a partner.
- years later, at the dawn of my entrepreneurial experience, we sold a “product”: it was software that scanned and printed paper documents. At a certain point we started using the software ourselves to sell the document scanning “service”.
That is, from product to service.
- more recently, in addition to selling lead generation “services”, we have started to package our know-how and sell it in the form of “products” (ebooks and video courses).
That is: from service to product.
The case study could be further expanded: there are many examples in literature.
So now I ask you:
Are you sure that there are no similar opportunities in your business?
Are you sure you don’t have any know-how that you could monetize, and you are not doing it right now?
This last question is being answered in a series of free videos by a colleague and friend I already talked about yesterday, Valerio Fioretti, who’s specialized in teaching how to turn know-how into a business.
As I said above, we are already transforming our know-how into a new line of business. But I’m not ashamed to say that following his first video I collected two ideas to which I had never paid too much attention so far. And we already implemented one of these yesterday afternoon!
(When someone has good ideas, it’s always worth listening and learning…).
Good week
