Rework jason fried

Decommoditize your product 
 
If you're successful, people will try to copy what you do. It's just a fact of life. But 
there's a great way to protect yourself from copycats: Make you part of your product or 
service. Inject what's unique about the way you think into what you sell. Decommoditize 

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your product. Make it something no one else can offer.  
 
Look at Zappos.com, a billion-dollar online shoe retailer. A pair of sneakers from 
Zappos is the same as a pair from Foot Locker or any other retailer. But Zappos sets itself 
apart by injecting CEO Tony Hsieh's obsession with customer service into everything it 
does.  
 
At Zappos, customer-service employees don't use scripts and are allowed to talk 
at length with customers. The call center and the company's headquarters are in the same 
place, not oceans apart. And all Zappos employees--even those who don't work in 
customer service or fulfillment--start out by spending four weeks answering phones and 
working in the warehouse. It's this devotion to customer service that makes Zappos 
unique among shoe sellers.* 
 
Another example is Polyface, an environmentally friendly Virginia farm owned 
by Joel Salatin. Salatin has a strong set of beliefs and runs his business accordingly. 
Polyface sells the idea that it does things a bigger agribusiness can't do. Even though it's 
more expensive to do so, it feeds cows grass instead of corn and never gives them 
antibiotics. It never ships food. Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime and go 
anywhere (try that at a typical meat-processing plant). Polyface doesn't just sell chickens, 
it sells a way of thinking. And customers love Polyface for it. Some customers routinely 
drive from 150 miles away to get "clean" meat for their families.* 
 
Pour yourself into your product and everything around your product too: how you 
sell it, how you support it, how you explain it, and how you deliver it. Competitors can 
never copy the you in your product.  

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