Frozen Business Models (A Parable)

An ice cream shop made the best pistachio ice cream around. It was the only flavour of ice cream it made. For years it sold well but one day sales started to decline. Some of the customers told the shop owner they should think of serving different flavours. But pistachio had sold well for years so the ice cream shop continued to make only pistachio. The ice cream shop told its customers that if they didn’t buy more pistachio ice cream, the shop would go out of business and they’d never again taste their pistachio ice cream. Some of the customers felt sorry for the ice cream shop and bought a load of ice cream. This gave the ice cream shop funds to carry on making pistachio in the short term.

Meanwhile, a second ice cream shop had opened across town. It too sold pistachio ice cream but it also sold many different flavours. Customers liked the variety of ice cream available and business for the second ice cream shop boomed. When the second ice cream shop noticed a flavour not selling so well they would stop making that flavour and try a different one.

The first ice cream shop still only sold pistachio and business was getting worse. It issued another plea to its customers to buy more ice cream and while some did, it was less than the first time and barely enough to keep the business going.

Eventually the first ice cream shop went out of business and sold its pistachio stock to the second ice cream shop at a discounted rate. Some of its former customers would meet in the second ice cream shop and reminisce; “If only they’d taken our advice and made more flavours,” they’d say to each other.

“If only I’d served what my customers asked for,” thought the first ice cream shop owner as he swept the pistachio dust from the floor.

The above was inspired by the Ars Technica AdBlock saga.