Innovation Blog

How to Transform Crisis into Opportunity: Big Time Brands, Big Time Innovation

By Shlomo Maital

  

   

Zanybandz                             SLAP watch           Splash Watch

 Big Time Brands is a company founded only about a year ago in Tulsa Oklahoma.  It has three enormously successful products: SLAP Watch, Zanybandz, and Splash Watch.  Each is a hip product, totally cool, have-to-have, with very low price tags, and we can learn much from this incredible company.

    First, the products:  

* Zanybandz, a silicone rubber band bracelet that became an international success almost overnight.  Big Time Brands gets 800 calls a day for this product, and others.

 * Splash Watch. Unique packaging and bright vibrant colors.

*  SLAP Watch is a twist on the spring coil bracelets  popular in the 80’s and 90’s, created  by combining the mechanisms with a watch. Available in 9   colors with interchangeable faces

  Now, the lesson.

  All these products are bright, colorful, eye-catching, and above all, really cheap.  They are all based on silicon plastic.  The founders say (on CNN):  our business was created by the economic downturn. People have stopped buying expensive gifts, and instead buy the Big Time Brand products, which are attractive and unusual enough to be appealing, yet cost very little.  When an economic crisis makes consumers very price-sensitive, innovators seek the low end of the market, and use clever design to make cheap products look great.  Some small businesses tell Big Time Brands these hot products have saved their business. 

   Check out Zanybandz, Splash Watch and SLAP Watch.  What do these products tell you about your own product innovation?  And how much do you invest in, and believe in, great design?