A millionaire’s dental floss.

So I am at the store yesterday picking up a few daily items: shampoo, dental floss, and toothpaste. I get to the dental floss aisle, which took me about 15 minutes to find due to the size of the super store I was shopping at, and the first thing I thought was: I have around 25 choices of dental floss to choose from, who knew the dental floss market was this large?

Cinnamon, mint, unflavored, kids’ flavors, waxed, soft, floss picks, easy-glide, ultra-clean, “pro”, indicator floss, and natural were just a few among the vast selection of string I could pick from to get that piece of corn out of my teeth. Do different types of people, different income levels or genders use different types of floss? Maybe it’s a flavor thing? I know people who hate cinnamon! Maybe it’s a status symbol, the fancier the floss, the fancier the person? I don’t know, but there must be a market for all the varieties of dental floss that hang before me on their metal shelf hangers.

I picked the “store brand” — 200 yards, waxed, mint for 97 cents. I could not drop $3.47 for easy-glide floss that came in a shiny silver case. I just couldn’t do it. I am not in that market, well not yet.

When I arrived home, I put my items away and pulled out the floss; that corn was still stuck in my teeth. I’m flossing away and on the third tooth the floss snaps in half. “That’s what you get for 97 cents”, I told myself. I should have bought that millionaire’s floss. Five minutes later, with two pieces of floss in my hand (which began as one) I dislodged that irritating piece of corn and also stopped analyzing the market for dental floss.

The point of that story is not that I was able to remove a piece of corn from my back teeth with 97 cent dental floss, it was that there is a market for almost everything. Your product has a market, there is a need for it, there is a need and a want for most things, but you have to understand what your market is — who buys your product? Do you sell $4.00 dental floss to millionaires or do you sell 97 cent dental floss to me, maybe you sell both? Find your market.