Everything is Possible: Life and Business Lessons from a Self-Made Billionaire and the Founder of Slim-Fast by S. Daniel Abraham

Author:S. Daniel Abraham
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-01-25T14:00:00+00:00

VIII

Slim-Fast and the Philosophy of Continuous Improvement

The great increase in sales that started with the Lasorda period served us well for a good while, until we decided that there was another big market out there that we were missing: the people who wanted an easy diet, but who felt that it was too time-consuming and inconvenient to have to measure powder and mix it with milk. The reason America is a fast-food culture is because ours is an impatient culture. When television first began, you’d flick on the set and it would take maybe fifteen or twenty seconds until the picture and sound appeared. People didn’t like that, so they developed television sets that turned on in an instant. The same with powdered diets. Many people were willing to mix the powder, but we suspected that there were far more who were not. And even though the powder was cheaper, we knew that if we brought out Slim-Fast in ready-to-drink form like a can of soda, there would be a whole new—and larger—market of people who would use it.

Unfortunately, for a long time, it was very difficult to get Slim-Fast in a can to taste good. That’s because when you put a liquid product containing milk on the shelf without refrigeration, you need to subject it to excessive heat in order to pasteurize it. Unfortunately, that heating is hell on the taste. That’s why a bottle or carton of fresh, refrigerated chocolate milk tastes so much better than a can of chocolate milk.

And that is precisely why, when we launched Slim-Fast as a prepared drink in late 1989, I was actually against it, and had to be argued into it. I didn’t feel it tasted good enough, but the other guys in the company would say to me, “Danny, come on. People want it. It doesn’t taste that bad.” And I said, “Yes, it does.” And they kept telling me, “No, it doesn’t. And we need to come out with it now.”

In any case, I didn’t feel we had developed the taste of liquid Slim-Fast to the level that I wanted. It certainly didn’t taste nearly as good as the powdered drink, and I didn’t want to release it. But our sales force kept pressing me: “Danny, you’ve got to come out with this because if you don’t, someone else will come out with something like it and beat us to the punch.” It reminded me of my early days when my pharmacist friends kept telling me I needed to come out with a product to compete with Special Formula Gum (see page 80). Anyway, when you have a company, there are times you have to listen to the people who work there and who are as dedicated to its success as you are, even if they disagree with you. This is one time I did that. But I couldn’t pretend that everything was all right. I was also relying on a program we always had in the company, a

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