What's in a brand...
What's in a brand?
What's in a brand and the politics that may be behind it.
I have wanted to write this down for some time and am finally going to do it.
I worked for a little known company (now no longer around), called Olympus Image Systems Inc. (OISI) in 1994 - 1995. They were a subsidiary of Olympus Japan (mostly known for their film camera's). We were given a small budget and one year to justify our "life" - i.e. sell enough products to become self-sustaining.
I was the product manager and was given various products to try and "market/sell" to the U.S. market.
We were first given a Magneto Optical (MO) drive (which we launched the same month that the Iomega Zip drive came out). This was not very successful - even though it was a much better product, but, was twice the cost.
With the MO drive, I learned that price truely did drive sales, and not necessarily having a better product.
After this, we were given a CD-R drive (which we sold for $6000). This also failed - yes, we sold some, but, not enough for Olympus Japan to keep us in the business; the MO drives did better).
And then, we were given our final product, with Olympus Japan saying "Here is your final product, if you can't sell this, then, we will shut you down".
It was a digital camera.
We were very excited, because we knew that this would be a big hit in the U.S. market - but, we had one problem - a very BIG problem. Olympus America did NOT want us to use the Olympus brand when selling it and we could NOT use their existing sales force that already sold into camera stores.
Olympus America had a large revenue stream from its film camera sales and did not want to lose any of that to digital camera's (they were on a different P&L then we were).
So, we at OISI had to come up with a sales force and a brand that we could sell this under. What we came up with was having a distributor in Boston sell the digital camera's under their name. Their name was Camedia.
Within a few months, we could not get enough digital camera's from Olympus Japan, as everyone we received, we sold (to Camedia, who then sold to the general market).
Olympus Japan now recognized that OISI had a product that was selling and profitable - but, it no longer wanted us on their books. They decided to shut us down and roll the staff and products into Olympus America.
Olympus America, when hearing this (and very upset because the digital camera was eating into their film camera sells), had to agree to the merger, but, had a problem - they now had a new brand of digital camera's, which did not have the Olympus brand name on them.
Olympus America ended up buying the name from Camedia (for a hefty sum).
This is why, if you are ever shopping for a digital camera, you see the Camedia name on the Olympus products.
Because Olympus America did no research on digital camera's (and that film camera's were on their death-bed), they chose not to allow their brand to be shared, and thus now have a name (brand) on their camera's that does not make 100% sense.
But, now, I hope you do understand the "sense" as to why they have this name.
We failed in part because we did not convince Olympus America that it was unwise to not let us have the Olympus brand, but, looking back on it, the blame was small on us, as we were going up against a company that had sold film camera's for over 30 years and it did not want to "change".
So, when launching new products, think it through. Your Brand has equity and can be used to make a success of new products.
By the way, the MO drive and CD-R were both marketed under the Olympus name, but, because they weren't competing directly with other existing products (at Olympus America), it was okay.