> It's not happening faster, people just don't know the history. That's why there were a billion auto makers in old Detroit, all cloning eachother rapidly. Those automobiles were more complex and difficult to manufacture than hoverboards.
Maybe. I don't know enough about the market for auto makers in old Detroit. But my suspicion is that no matter how fast they were, they were nowhere near as fast as we see microbrands pop up today. Pretty much any consumer manufactured good you care to search for on Amazon has not just one, but multiple weird micro-brands jostling for superior ranking. Brands form, rise and fall within a year or two. Maybe it has happened in the past, but it's definitely more hectic than any period in my lifetime.
I agree with everything in your second paragraph, but I think you're largely just stating the difficulty of business in a world where "making the product" is not the principal challenge. If anyone can contract manufacture a widget on spec and have it shipped from China for a few tens of thousands of dollars, then most people can do that part, and the game boils down to how efficiently you can market your product to a mass audience and poke your head above the crowd. This basically just boils down to "get attention by any means necessary" (which explains a lot about the internet and media today, and why you see so many celebrities-turned-investors achieving success. If you're already famous and rich, the job is 80% done.)
For the particular example of macaroni and cheese, I'm still amazed that this lady had enough time to build a brand via the sorts of shoe-leather techniques she used. I guarantee that if you tried this today, multiple opportunistic "hustlers" would clone your product and have equally well-developed branding before you had it in a dozen stores.
Maybe. I don't know enough about the market for auto makers in old Detroit. But my suspicion is that no matter how fast they were, they were nowhere near as fast as we see microbrands pop up today. Pretty much any consumer manufactured good you care to search for on Amazon has not just one, but multiple weird micro-brands jostling for superior ranking. Brands form, rise and fall within a year or two. Maybe it has happened in the past, but it's definitely more hectic than any period in my lifetime.
I agree with everything in your second paragraph, but I think you're largely just stating the difficulty of business in a world where "making the product" is not the principal challenge. If anyone can contract manufacture a widget on spec and have it shipped from China for a few tens of thousands of dollars, then most people can do that part, and the game boils down to how efficiently you can market your product to a mass audience and poke your head above the crowd. This basically just boils down to "get attention by any means necessary" (which explains a lot about the internet and media today, and why you see so many celebrities-turned-investors achieving success. If you're already famous and rich, the job is 80% done.)
For the particular example of macaroni and cheese, I'm still amazed that this lady had enough time to build a brand via the sorts of shoe-leather techniques she used. I guarantee that if you tried this today, multiple opportunistic "hustlers" would clone your product and have equally well-developed branding before you had it in a dozen stores.