Firebrand

I looked inside my desk drawer, and what do you know… no pens! So I go to the supply room to find a new box of pens. I opened my newly acquired Papermate Flexigrip Ultras and I was pleasantly surprised that Papermate had given me two Flexigrip Elites. I’m one of the elites of the company now; the pen says so!

I believe Papermate wanted me to be pleasantly surprised at the free pen upgrade. But my thoughts were “What are so special about these Elites and if they are so good why aren’t they the standard Papermate pens?” I initially thought that the Elite pens wrote better than the existing pens, and that Papermate was tiering the quality of their pens. (The pens write exactly the same. The primary difference is the grip-ier overmolded rubber over the pens, which is an improvement. It also has more modern industrial design.)

As a brand, you don’t want to tier the quality of your products. A patron should have exactly the same positive experience if they buy the entry level product or the flagship product. What should change between teirs of products is the scope of the features or the level of problems they solve for users. The quality of the product should be exactly the same, and user experience should be just as positive. If you can do a leap in quality for a premium in price, than it should be sold under a completely different brand name. The best way to explain this is through examples.

This is most common in cars. Whether I spend $20,000 on a Jetta or $35,000 on a Passat, Volkswagen is still selling me the same quality, design, and user experience. Between those two cars are filling different needs, so there is an obviously need for different products and price. Now I would buy an Audi if I want to go a tier up in quality, materials and prestige. But it is sold under a completely different moniker.

Another example is printers. We just bought a printer for our design studio. We bought a Brother 11×17 borderless photo printer. As a design studio we had a whole new set of needs that the average person would not have, so we pay a premium. But if I bought a $70entry level printer for my house, I would expect the same quality of print when I put photo paper in and crank up the settings.

All your products or services should be at the same high quality and user experience standards. If the flagship product is made to high standards, but the entry level is not, than customers will not percieve the products as part of one brand. More importantly, you want your customers to climb the ladder from entry level products to the more expensive and inclusive products. If they have a poor customer experience due to poor quality in the entry level, than they are not going to consider your brand when their needs expand. Poor quality on the entry level reflects poorly on the entire line.

Keep your customers in your product ecosystem; do not tier quality.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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