Do Not Conform...

Megan (my wife) and I periodically lose our minds and decide that we'll go shopping and that our 33 month old son Benton and 19 month old daughter Malia will be in to this idea and want to go along as well.

This past Saturday we loaded up and headed to a local factory outlet for intense shopping at Carter's, Baby Gap, etc. As we're shopping I hear my wife start laughing hysterically, pointing at Malia. When I looked down I see my beautiful baby girl (she really is beautiful and I'm not just saying that. It's a fact! Just ask me!) running around having the time of her life in her new, technicolor outfit that her mommy purchased the day before with a pair of her brother's Thomas The Train underwear proudly positioned on the outside of her outfit. Benton is deep into potty training and wearing 'big boy' underwear, which of course means his sister must be wearing underwear as well. I'm sure every parent can relate.

The irony of this is that Malia wants to conform and be like her big brother, yet by dress standards of today she is completely nonconforming by wearing the underwear on the outside of her clothing. I'm very proud of her and hope she always maintains her own sense of fashion and 'normal.'

This is how I try and approach the positioning of Purely in the marketplace. A company developing and introducing products that meet the needs of the majority of consumers while having unique characteristics that make it hard to pigeonhole them into a specific category of existing products.

Words I avoid when developing products include 'traditional,' 'existing,' 'positioned,' 'proven,' 'mature,' 'entrenched.' You get the idea. Nothing wrong with these words and certainly nothing bad about these types of products. My reason for avoidance is that I think it's very important to recognize there are great companies already meeting the needs of these market segments.

My goal for Purely is to meet the consumer demand niches left wanting by offering them products in specific areas focused on eco-friendly, health and wellness. Our corporate structure and the way we approach the market are certainly non-conforming, I suspect much to the chagrin of my CPA and techie partners, who also happen to be some of the best human beings you will every meet.

I often measure how well we're meeting the 'unique' mantra of our product development by how easy it is to identify the retail section the new products best fit into and subsequently identifying the retailer's buyer for the particular product. Oftentimes some of our greatest challenge is connecting with the correct buyer for the product which leaves me smiling recognizing that we have a unique product, translating we hope in to less competition and greater market segment ownership.

Romans 12:2 encourages us to not transform to the ways of this World but to let God change us into a new person by changing the way we think. I love this! I love that Malia is her own person and pray that she and Purely always keep an open-mind to the way we think.