Should USP be part of MVP

First of all, my apologies for the jargon, but this is a way to get attention of those corporate types who I hope to sell to. The MVP here in question is the startup-wala MVP (minimum viable product) and not the sports-wala MVP (most valuable player). There is no ambiguity to USP.

So it’s an accepted mantra in the startup world that product development should follow the “agile model” rather than the “waterfall model” (borrowing from software engineering paradigms). It is recommended that you put out a “minimum viable product” (MVP) out early into the market and get continuous feedback as you continue to hone your product. This way, you don’t end up wasting too much time building stuff the market doesn’t want, and can pivot (change direction to another product/service) if necessary.

The question is how “minimum” the “minimum viable product” should be. Let’s say that your business isn’t something that creates a new market but something that improves upon an existing product or service. In other words, you are building a business around “a better way of doing X” (it doesn’t matter here what X is).

The temptation in this case is to copy X and release it as your minimum viable product. This is rather easy to do, since you can just reverse engineer X, and put out a product quickly. That’s the quickest way to get to the market.

The problem with this approach, however, is that your initial set of users who experience your MVP will fail to see what the big deal about your product is – while they might hear your promises that this is only a start and you intend to do X in a “new improved way”, the first version as they see it shows no indication of this promise.

Worse, when your product is branded as a “new improved X”, it automatically gets anchored in your users’ minds with respect to X. Irrespective of what your product looks or feels like, once you’ve branded as a “new improved X”, comparisons to X are inevitable. And when your MVP is not very different from X, people might lose interest.

On the other hand, if you need to build in your USP into your MVP, it results in a longer product development cycle. In such cases, if the market doesn’t really want your “new improved X”, a lot more effort would have been expended, leading to higher risk (of market not accepting product).

Yet, if your MVP is nothing like what your “real product” is, then you are not really getting feedback from the market on your “real product” – only feedback on your MVP. And the MVP should be something such that you can make use of any feedback you get on it in terms of superior product design.

Tailors

In a little street called Narayana Pillai Street, off Commercial Street in the Shivajinagar area of Bangalore there stands a building called “Ganesh complex” which can be called a tailoring hub. There are some ten to twelve shops (forgive my arithmetic if I’ve counted too low) all of which are occupied by tailors who stitch women’s clothes, primarily salwar kameez and its derivatives. I don’t know if there’s much to choose between the stores, and I think it’s a question of “tailor loyalty” the way it’s practiced among beach shacks at Baga beach in North Goa.

The wife is friends with a tailor called Ahmed, who runs a shop called HKGN tailors in this complex. Till recently (when he took two weeks with a consignment) his USP was “one hour tailoring”, where upon receiving cloth and measurements, he would stitch your dress in about an hour. I hear that there are a large number of tailors in the vicinity (though not sure if they’re in Ganesh complex) who offer the same terms. In fact, I know a lot of women who travel to that area to get their clothes stitched both for the quick delivery and also for the network of tailors that is present there.

While waiting for Ahmed to deliver the wife’s latest consignment yesterday (the one he took two weeks with), I was watching tailors in neighbouring shops working. The thing that struck me was that there isn’t much economies of scale in bespoke tailoring. Each piece  of cloth needs to be cut separately, in its own size, and there’s nothing that can be “batch processed” across different samples. Of course, there is tremendous scope for specialization and division of labour, so you see “masters” who measure, mark out and cut cloth, and “stitchers” who stitch up the stuff together.

However, across the city, except for the handful of tailors in the Shivajinagar area, the standard turnaround time for stitching seems to be about two weeks. And given the wife’s experiences (I usually buy readymade garments so not much insight there) it is a fairly disorganized industry and requires several rounds of follow-ups and waiting at the tailor’s shop in order to get the goods.

The economics of the industry (that there are no economies of scale) makes me wonder why the two-week-turnaround time has become standard in this industry. Isn’t the turnaround time solely because of inventory piled up at the tailor’s? Can the tailor not manage his inventory better (like say going a few days without fresh orders or hiring a few extra hands temporarily or working a weekend) and thus lead to much shorter turnaround time? Given the individual nature of the job, what prevents tailors from offering instant turn-around like the handful of people in Shivajinagar do? Or is it that bulk orders (one person coming with a bunch of clothes to stitch) mess up any “quick turnaround model” the tailors could offer?

There is only one explanation I can think of. “Sales” and “production”, for the tailors happens at the same spot (their storefronts). For “sales” purposes they need to be there all the time, though they don’t need to be actively doing anything. Hence, it suits them if production is also a continuous full-time process, so that the time they spend at the storefront isn’t all “wasted”. By piling up an inventory of orders, tailors are always assured of having something to do even if no fresh customers are forthcoming.

So as the wife’s experience with Ahmed has shown, the “quick turnaround” hasn’t been sustainable at all.

Buffet Strategy

Skip the main course. I’ve come to this conclusion based on three buffet meals I’ve had in the recent and not-so-recent past – Khansama in UB city in early July, Barbecue Nation in JP Nagar last weekend and The Higher Taste at ISKCon tonight.

In all these meals, there has been significant variety in the starters. There have been various kinds of starters and salads (and anyways Barbecue Nation’s USP is the barbecues – which are starters). And significantly awesome desserts too – wtih a couple of Indian sweets, variety of cakes, fruit and ice cream.

The problem with main course in all these restaurants is that it’s too standard. There might be the odd innovation here or there but it is usually a close cousin of some standard item itself. The nature of North Indian main course meals (which is the main course of the main course in all these places) doesn’t lend itself to too much radical innovation and hence the main course ends up being not too much special.

So this is what you need to do at buffets – load up on the starters. They are usually the best part of the meal in these buffets. And if you combine all the starters judiciously, it should give enough nutrition (except maybe for calories). Maybe have a little bit of main course (something like rice) to fill up your stomach (density of food fundaes). And then thulpitmax on the desserts. I’m sure you’ll leave the meal feeling happy and contented and full.