Bring Something New to the Market

When you're trying to bring something new to the marketplace you have two options; 1. Subtly and gently start to introduce a basic offering to the market, gauge traction and tweak / develop / adjust accordingly until the point where you have the levels of adoption that you were targeting. Or, 2. Arrive with your product loud and proud, announce yourself noisily and slap people around the face with the fact that you are here! 

Now, I am being a bit over the top for comedic effect but, overall, those are your main options. 

And, neither is right or wrong as a broad rule of thumb, but you do have to be mindful of the existing market you are entering, what are the expectations and how you want to be perceived by the intended ideal consumer. 

In the case of one of my own businesses, I have to opt for the slower, softer and more subtle approach to arrival in the market. Let me explain why. 

Aleafia, the business in question, is a top-rated wellness centre that specialises in excellent training facilities, luxurious treatments and the sort of environment that you would expect from a high-end bespoke fitness location. We have specifically designed compact health and fitness rooms with top equipment (seriously, come and try our aqua rower it is a game changer!) and intentionally small-scale group training classes that are led by top experts in their industry from HIIT to pregnancy pilates, we cover it all! 

With a high focus on the experience of the centre, a higher price point than ordinary gyms and a targeted focus on a certain type of clientele we were already unusual enough when we opened our doors, so when it came to our food and beverage offerings we knew we had to box clever. 

For example, my vision and dream for the centre was always to have a wide and varied menu of amazing vegan-focused delights with speciality drinks and refreshments from around the world. But we knew that if we went into that full offering too fast we might alienate people. We understood that we would have to gradually educate, inform, intrigue and convert our customer base to come on the full-scale wellness journey that was always the intention. 

Aleafia itself actually means ‘to be in the state or condition of good physical and mental health’, that’s how committed to the mission we were from the get-go, we named ourselves after the dream outcome we were trying to create for clients. 

So, for us, we had to think about bringing something new into an old-school thinking world. 

And when you do this you have to think about how you're going to shine bright enough to stand out but, at the same time, be mindful of not being too overbearing that you scare people off! 

So with the Plant Bar specifically we have built things up slowly. Gradual incremental steps. We started out with standard coffees and beverages when we first opened the doors and, through that process of building ‘know, like and trust’ with the clients, we earned the right to have them want to examine something new. So, when the time was right we added speciality hot drinks such as our very popular adaptogenic lattes.

People got to know us, to trust us, to know the story of Aleafia, to understand our team’s vast experience as wellness experts, so when patrons got used to the menu and the initial offerings that we've had, we'd sneak new things in! And because of that rapport and admiration for what we were doing, they became curious about these new menu items. 

If we were to have come straight forward and said “oh, we make our waffles from Tiger Nut flour and we put mushrooms in our coffees” we may have lost a lot of clientele, but because they have slipped in there in small steps, they have become some of our firm favourites. 

And now those points of difference are working in our favour massively as we stand out in the crowd, in a real and authentic way. The centre is now not just a gym, not just a spa, not just a coffee shop, but it is becoming an experiential destination.