Believe it or not, gardening is the number one outdoor activity, ahead of both walking and golf. There are several barriers locking the average consumer out of gardening as a hobby – it is time consuming and can be overwhelming for the newcomer who doesn’t know an annual from a perennial. So how did an activity with so many potential barriers to consumption become so popular?
A primary driver of the increase of the popularity of gardening is the advent of innovative packaging and products that break down these "barriers to consumption" by making it simpler and more fun to spend time in the yard. Scott’s MiracleGrow Liquafeed is a great example of such a product; it is a hose-and-bottle system that automatically combines water and plant food (see picture).
It is not a better version of plant food, but it is a packaging innovation. It makes it simple and idiot-proof for the novice gardener to easily feed and water their outdoor plants. My bet is this product is mainly enjoyed by people who previously wouldn’t use fertilizers or even spend much time doing yard work. This is described nicely in this quote from Scott’s Miracle-Grow's CEO, Jim Hagedorn: "Our biggest competitor is people's time. We have to make it easy and fun for people to work in the garden."
A little bit of research turned up what I had suspected to be true. Liquafeed was the most successful new product launch in the history of Scott’s. It increased sales in the fertilizer category by 11 percent. First-year sales were $50 million, making it the most successful new product launch for the company ever (while projected sales were $20 million). The key to the innovation is the packaging, which was developed in partnership with Calmar, a MeadWestvaco company.
The key thing to remember here is that innovation requires looking beyond improving a product along the traditional dimensions of performance (in the case of plant food these might be things like increase in chlorophyll production or improved heat and cold tolerance) and using other innovation levers to break down the barriers locking out potential consumers from using your product!