I came across the Wuiper whilst at La Cantine in Paris. The product was presented by a team of young entrepreneurs to a very attentive crowd. There are many ways to define what wuiper is:

• a round plastic disc with a sticky side
• a new way of communicating amongst people
• a shy guy’s way to a lady’s heart

However, since all good marketers know that a “product is what a product does”, let me describe to you a plausible situation. Imagine yourself walking down the street minding your own business, when you suddenly pass this wonderfully beautiful girl/man. You have the choice of either approaching him/her with the high and present risk of failure and looking ridiculous. Or, you can quickly text a message to the number on the wuiper and then launch it onto the girl/man (hence the sticky side). Later on, the object of your desire will find the wuiper inviting him/her to texting the wuiper’s number to retrieve your message. The beginning of a love story….

If this does not sound familiar or too converted to be economically appealing, imagine this other situation. You are 15 in high school and would like to talk to this girl on the other side of the classroom but do not dare to, so you send her a little piece of folded paper. Now place this 15 year old into today’s world of mobile phones, internet and…. wuipers!!! Makes business-sense now?

The picture on the left is to give you an idea of what one wuiper looks like. The image is dark and not very focused due to real-life testing conditions or ‘market research’. Applying Mr. Buffet’s principles (‘our market research consisted of buying the product and trying it out’), we set out to launch a few in a pub to get the people’s reactions. The result is that much money will need to be spent to educate the customer. Indeed, the first reaction was to throw the disc away. The second reaction (after a bit more quizzing as to what the object is) was a LOT of interest (hey, who doesn’t like to have a secret lover!).

Would you invest in the business?

Well, let’s consider numbers here. A little disc like this one probably costs about €0.01 a piece to manufacture in China. Add on top of that another €0.1 for shipping the wuipers to Europe. Finally, you’ll probably want to spend (at least) €0.2 on customers’ education. Finally, add another €0.1 for the servers, the phone line etc… This gives you a total unit cost of about €0.4 for a large quantity. This is of course purely speculative and will depend on volume amongst other things. For, say a first batch of 100,000 units, this sounds about right.

The retail price on the website is €1.5 for two wuipers – they come in what looks like a teabag. During our market research, we found a customer price point closer to the symbolic €1. This would give you a margin of about 20%-50% depending on scenarios and assumptions. So, for about 100,000 units, this could be a margin of €20,000 to €50,000 that could be directly re-invested in the business.

Let’s just look at UK universities as a market for now. UCAS tells me there are about 0.5M people enrolling into University every year. Since the average course length is about 3.5 years (make it 3 for easier calculations), this gives you a target population of 1.5M/year. Let’s assume 1 in every 10 people will buy the product once a month (this is likely to be more), this would give you roughly about €1.8M/year in revenue or about €360k-€0.9M profit a year! This is not bad for universities alone (considering the school population is going to be bigger than that – thank you compulsory schooling!!)

Is it a good business?

Let’s think about it from different aspects.

First of all, consider the novelty aspect and the marketing strategy. My opinion is that the target age group ranges from teenagers to mid-20 year olds (including university students and club-goers). This population doesn’t have very much cash to spend however they spend the largest proportion of what they have on… entertainment (and drinks)!! The wuiper would therefore be totally appropriate for these people at a price point of €1-€1.5.

In terms of pure marketing, this has the potential to become viral and to take off very quickly amongst the target population where ‘fashion items’ are taken up at a breathtaking speed. I would go round schools and universities and find ways to get the people interested. For instance: I could totally see this kind of product being sold at entrances to clubs where people queue, think about their ‘pulling strategies’ and what their night will entail. Raise their hopes by just 1% and wuipers will sell like hotbuns.

In terms of novelty, there is clearly an upside and a downside to being first to the market with this kind of product. The upside is that you will get brand recognition. The downside is that you will be the first (and only one) spending money on customers’ education.

Looking at competitors’ reaction, here is the most likely scenario (taken from ‘pogs’, ‘scoobidoos’, etc…). You launch the wuiper, it starts taking off because it is novel and people are interested and no everyone else has it i.e. it is a ‘fashion item’. Your competitors (probably in China) hear about it and start manufacturing bucket loads of the same product pricing it at €0.1 less – let’s face it, it’s a plastic ring with glue and a number, can you justify a price premium on it from a customer’s perspective? Wuipers (and their competitors) are everywhere making them ‘uncool’ (because not that unique nor novel anymore), the product dies. Now, I think this kind of scenario is likely to take 3-5 years, which is plenty of time to make (lots) of money and invest the proceeds into another business. The kind of the wuipers will be to act quickly and to target group leaders.

One potential pitfall: if the wuiper works, production and shipping will have to follow.. fast! This point is often overlooked: if people are ready to buy your stuff, you need to be able to sell it to them.