The best businesses are the ones that completely rethink what an industry provides and how it provides it. Fortune just ran a story on two brothers in Maine who came up with a new way to market their business. They're lobster wholesalers who established a company called Catch a Piece of Maine. The business sells the rights to a specific lobster trap and everything that stumbles into it. Customers get online updates on their fortunes and have their haul FedEx'd to them. The traps cost $2995 each and guarantee 40 lobsters.
That's $75 a lobster - more than triple the price for lobster at a regular seafood store! But the business has sold over 200 traps so far to customers all across the US. Why? Because it provides an experience, not just a product. How much more fun to tell guests they're dining on lobsters picked from your very own trap off the coast of Maine than from the local fish market? Far better bragging rights.
The brothers have figured out how to provide that elusive engaging experience that customers seek.
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