Make It Simple

by

Leo Crocker Rogers

In Tokyo, Kit Kat has supplied over 200 different flavors of sweet treats – they all look the same, except for color and flavor. The shelf life of a new flavor is 2 months. Simple marketing. Change sells. Regretfully, this was also the marketing strategy for US auto makers and look what happened to them. Today, cell phones are the marketing chamaeleons. And like the Kit Kat sweets, cell phones have different colors for the same phone. Second thought: Technology needs to advance utility and value, not vanity.

Binoculars don’t change that much. Those 75 years ago look a lot like those of today. It used to be that Zeiss binoculars were "the" binoculars – great quality. Too, Zeiss optics ruled the world. Then, I purchased a quality pair of binoculars in Tokyo’s Ginza, and guess what. They were 1/3 the price of the Zeiss binocs and were optically equal as best I could tell. Second thought: That was 47 years ago.

Next came cameras. Leica "the" camera gave way to Nikon and others. At first, the Japanese cameras were back-engineered, but it was not long before innovations and quality gave Japan a strong share of the camera world. Second thought: Why did that happen?

Masaki, a Japanese friend of mine came to the USA with women’s nylons all wrinkled in his hand. "Leo, do you think women will purchase these?", he asked. I did not believe so. Guess what. Those crinkled women’s nylons were sold in an egg shell and were a quality product. Second thought. Who missed what?

My 1984 Cadillac Seville had six shims to fit the door to the door frame – what quality? Japan made their car doors fit the door frames without shims. To prove their point, they rolled a ball bearing around the perfectly fit separation between the door and the door jam. 80% of Toyotas sold in the past 20 years are still on the road. Second thought. Quality.

Bosh and Samsung are suggesting that I may wish to own a washing machine that does not bounce, or growl, or whine. Second thought. I can wash while the baby sleeps.

And here we go.

What next? Maybe a computer operating system that is friendly to those over 70 years of age? Microsoft took a deep, deep dive with the super complex Vista operating system. They have thrown themselves a life preserver by offering the SIMPLER "Window 7" or so they say. But you know, they just may have out technologized themselves. Do I hear a Japanese mouse peeking around the marketing hole left by Vista? And if not Japan, someone’s mouse? Second thought. Where is America?

Quality. Meeting the customer’s need – commerce for the benefit of mankind as a prime directive instead of making money. Second thought. "Follow the quality."

Albert E. offered the idea that anyone can make things heaver, larger, more expensive, or more complex. Clearly, it takes a genius to make things lighter, smaller, less costly, and simpler. Second thought. A Monarch butterfly that can fly 3,000 miles.

The blaring contrast between the complex and the simple – the simple is understood.

Again from Albert: "Everything should be as simple as it can be, but no simpler."

Serving the customer or client with quality goods or services at a fair price is more than simple economics. Second thought. Simple is common sense.

As captain Picard would say, "Make it so." And I said, "Make it simple."