> In 2010, after several months of sluggish sales in and around Ontario, Mr. Wang listed the Instant Pot on Amazon, where a community of food writers eventually took notice. Vegetarians and paleo dieters, in particular, were drawn to the device’s pressure-cooking function, which shaved hours off the time needed to cook pots of beans or large cuts of meat.
> Sensing viral potential, Instant Pot sent test units to about 200 influential chefs, cooking instructors and food bloggers. Reviews and recipes appeared online, and sales began to climb.
I really don't know what you are talking about. It spells out exactly what they did, and why they did it.
It also talks about taking advantage of "Fulfilled by Amazon" back in 2010, still early in the program, and credits Amazon with over 90% of it's sales at one point.
But what was the original plan? Was it to make the same product Cuisinart and Presto were already making at the same price and hope? Why would someone invest $350k with such a plan?
How did those blogs settle on the Instant Pot when better known brands had functionally the same units at the same price (which the author seems not to know)? Why is it continually more successful than pre-existing brands from much larger companies? Crock Pot sells a unit for half the price. Almost all brands of electric pressure cooker have between 4 and 4.5 stars on Amazon because they're all about the same and admittedly a good product.
That's the story and it gives it short shrift. Not how Instant Pot invented something that actually existed for decades. Or how they don't explode, a problem solved before I was born.
Yes, but it seems as if it was starting to gather a fair bit of attention on Amazon before they sent out the test units. I suspect that the initial answer was some combination of Amazon + good product + smart positioning + good luck.
Overall, it's an interesting story about a product that succeeded largely through viral marketing but I'd have liked more detail than you're likely to get from a general interest article.
There's not that much more detail, but a University of Waterloo article on them (https://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/2017/03/instant-pot-climbs-the-soc...) describes the name of the tactic described above: influencer marketing. It's interesting that they align the fact that cooking is often a social phenomenon, with the fact that influencer marketing seemed to work well for Instant Pot.
Some of it's probably the product for sure. If I remember right, rice cookers like the Zojirushi models had pretty much everything Instant Pot has, except the pressure cooking part. But that's a pretty big "except", given the dodgy past of traditional stove-top pressure cookers.
Modern stovetop pressure cookers are pretty safe these days but some people certainly worry and, as others have said, they can be a bit fiddly. You certainly don't fire them up and leave the house.
Influencer marketing is a big deal in many product categories these days. The details vary by B2B or B2C, product/service area, etc. But reviews by people who may not be full-time writers and reviewers can be very important, especially for product categories that don't have a lot of trusted expert review sources.
With money and goods often changing hands there can be a whiff of payola about the whole process. But most people who have a trusted following really are giving honest opinions. You may be able to get me to write a review if you send me something I'm interested and qualified to have an opinion on. I'm not going to be positive just because because I got some freebie though.
I owned a stove top and my wife refused to use it. My wife uses the Instant Pot all the time and the dreaded slow cooker is gone for good.
I still like the stove top 8 qt model for when we have company for dinner and I am making a roast, (I always try to eat a roast all the time so good excuse).
