The Perfect Thing

I read a great book by Steven Levy called, The Perfect Thing, How the iPOd Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. As the title says, the perfect thing is largely about Apple’s iPods and how they were introduced, what happened historically and the cool factor. Of course SYNNEX is a huge seller of Apple iPods so there was interest from that.

I can see that it can apply in other product areas as well.

Early in the music business, whenever anyone tried to set up any ability to sell music other than through the traditional channels, the music companies sued. The music industry seems to have a huge number of lawsuits and it appears that the music company used lawsuits as a way of trying to maintain monopolistic positioning.

Never underestimate the wow-factor of design, wrote Carl Rohde in his 2003 – 2004 Global Cool Hunt Report, even when in quantitative research, respondents hardly ever mention the importance of design as part of their buying decision-making process.

The interesting thing about cool factor is that it could be like the pursuit of money or happiness. If someone tries to pursue money, happiness, or coolness, they often do not achieve their goal, this tends to be a by-product. In the case of coolness, it tends to be the by-product of having great products that inspire users.

There is no doubt that the iPod has changed much of the world.

One of the things that I love about the computer distribution business is that there will always be new things. Early in business, I was concerned that there would not be something to distribute next year because we already sold people the capacity and products that they needed. What I have found over the past 27 years is that there are always new things and always changes and this provides opportunity.