Some brands have been so successful that they have become a common name. This is the case of Caddy, placed in liquidation in July 2024, but also of Tupperware, also bankrupt, Frigidaire, Bic, Sopalin, Kleenex, or Boules Quiès… All these brands have suffered, reluctantly one might say. say, this phenomenon of assimilation which we call antonomasia.
You might think that becoming a household name equals absolute success. That’s true…but not forever. It could also be the beginning of the end. First of all, this success is a good thing: it means that your innovation – it is necessarily an innovation, otherwise the product would already have a name – is so successful that we cannot imagine another manufacturer . There is none, moreover, as long as the patent, if the invention materializes by a patent, has not fallen into the public domain, which for Tupperware lasted until the 1980s. But when innovation is no longer protected, lower-cost imitators multiply, and as your “generic” brand does not have its own image, there is no incentive to choose it over another.
The Tupperware case is emblematic. The name is doubly generic: it designates both the product, the airtight plastic boxes used to preserve dishes, but also the method of distribution, home sales through meetings at a private home. Because these (at the time) so modern and sophisticated boxes invented by Mr. Tupper were selling poorly in stores, a woman, Brownie Wise, had the idea of marketing them through meetings of friends and neighbors, which made it possible to explain the functioning of the egg separator or the single ice cube mold, and all the comparative advantages of these boxes. Brownie Wise, who became vice-president of Tupperware, was the first woman to make the cover of Business Week magazine in 1954.
In September 2024, Tupperware, heavily in debt, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Its sales have been halved in ten years, dropping to $1.3 billion in 2022. The brand is outdated, plastic has a bad reputation, and for young professionals it evokes their grandmothers’ utensils. However, it sells online, it has created products suitable for the microwave or the freezer, and even some kinds of robots, but while it could have stated a real reason for being – to become the herald of recycling, of the fight against waste, the defense of the environment – it has become commonplace. Only a few demonstrators are still successful because they transformed home meetings into “culinary workshops”.
Caddy disappeared in the summer of 2024. The iconic brand did not survive the proliferation of competition. However, she had found an original way to make money: she sued the newspapers which in their articles used the word “shopping cart” to designate a simple supermarket trolley…
But the good thing about a powerful name is that it never dies. Take Frigidaire. He was believed to be dead and buried for a long time. The brand that manufactured the first refrigerators is now affixed to miniature, colorful, very designer refrigerators. Bic, Sopalin, Kleenex or Earplugs but also Scotch or Ti-pex still exist and are thriving. Because they knew how to differentiate themselves, not to rest on their laurels, instead of lamenting when they saw their customers being confused by the competition…
The lesson of this story? This is because the destiny of a brand that has become a common name is not necessarily to lose its leadership as soon as the market becomes competitive. It can find ways to differentiate itself, and stay ahead through innovation. To thus remain “the” market reference, the original… if not the only one.
Related News :