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- Elsa Schiaparelli: How To Find Product-Market Fit
Welcome to the ambitious corner of the internet! Each week, we study history’s most successful icons so we can steal their strategies. If you were forwarded this email, you can get the free weekly email here.
If you missed the last post, here is Part One.
If you want to grab her autobiography, you can do so here.
For the rest of us…
In the early 20s, Paris was a magical place; a hub of creativity and innovation. Art Deco, jazz, and surrealism were growing in popularity. Pablo Picasso was working in his Neoclassical era; The Lost Generation of writers like Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald were arriving. Coco Chanel was at the height of her influence; she released Chanel No. 5 the year before.
So how does one move to a new city with no job, no connections, and build a thriving creative business? Especially when the competition is operating at such a high level of talent and skill?
For starters, they find product-market fit.
Solve a super specific problem for your target customer
Make them love your solution so much that they tell their friends about it
So What Is Product-Market Fit?
Quick definition from ProductPlan:
“Product-market fit describes a scenario in which a company’s target customers are buying, using, and telling others about the company’s product in numbers large enough to sustain that product’s growth and profitability.”
Let’s break that down:
Your target customer has a problem
Your company develops a solution to their problem
They buy the solution
They are so happy with your solution that they keep buying it, and tell all their friends about it
Their friends buy it, and love it so much that they keep buying it, and tell all their friends about it
And the cycle continues, leading you to growth and profitability.
So the first step in finding product-market fit is to solve a problem for your ideal customer. Elsa was able to figure out what problem to solve because her friend was running around Paris, the fashion capital of the world, in an ugly sweater.
Quote from the book:
“A woman friend, an American came to see me one day she was always very smart on this occasion where I split her that the plane looks different from any I had yet seen…the sweater, which intrigued me, was definitely ugly in color and shape, and though it was a bit elastic, it did not stretch like other sweaters” p. 45 && 46
The problem she solved wasn’t the most groundbreaking, but it was simple, straightforward, and easy to identify.
Great Founders Solve Super Specific Problems
And this makes perfect sense if we think of founders like Martha Stewart or Sheila Johnson or Janice Bryant Howroyd - these women are the modern blueprint if you want to build a great business. They each found product-market fit by solving a straightforward problem.
Just think about it. Martha Stewart solved a problem for middle-class women - they didn’t know how to entertain large groups of people at home.
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