- Launching a new product is no easy feat — even major companies have unexpected flops.
- Less than 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceed first-year sales of $50 million, according to Joan Schneider and Julie Hall, coauthors of “The New Launch Plan.”
- Microsoft’s Zune failed to compete with the iPod, Cosmopolitan magazine couldn’t break into the yogurt business, and McDonald’s couldn’t sell a burger intended for more sophisticated palates.
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Launching a product is hard to do.
“Less than 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceed first-year sales of $50 million — considered the benchmark of a highly successful launch,” say Joan Schneider and Julie Hall, coauthors of “The New Launch Plan: 152 Tips, Tactics and Trends from the Most Memorable New Products.”
That’s part of the reason that the most heavy-hitting names in business — from Pepsi to Netflix, Microsoft to McDonald’s — have had some of the biggest belly flops.
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Here’s a look at 26 of them and what we can learn from these epic fails.
Aimee Groth and Jay Yarow contributed reporting to this story.