“A typical grocer carries 100 types of mustard. We have just brown and yellow.”
- Bill Shaner, president of Save-A-Lot discount grocery in the Wall Street Journal this week
Don’t let your head explode, but: keeping it simple comes in many forms. A few examples:
- Save-A-Lot keeps it simple while providing low-priced (usually private-label) food. Few options across a useful range of stuff that normal people need every day. This is a mile wide and an inch deep.
- Justblinds.com (one of my favorite places to find wood blinds at low prices with great service, don’t let the dour website fool you) goes the other direction. They are an inch wide and mile deep. They sell one main thing but it is customized to the nth degree.
Both work even though they are almost categorically opposed models; neither could borrow each other’s strategy.
