The Museum of Failure is a collection of about 100 failed products and services from around the world. It was founded in 2017 by Samuel West, a researcher working on innovation in organizations. Samuel was inspired by a visit to the Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia, when he realized that we all hear the same boring success stories, but we never learn about failure when it comes to innovation. Yet, 80 to 90 percent of innovative projects fail within five years. The museum was born to showcase examples of failed products and services across a wide range of industries and aims to stimulate discussion about failure and learn from the mistakes of others. From its Swedish home, the museum recently embarked on a world tour stopping in Los Angeles, Toronto, Shanghai, and Munich. We will show you some of the most interesting artifacts from the exhibition. The first one is pets.com. Pets.com was an enterprise headquartered in San Francisco that sold pet supplies to retail customers. It only lasted for a couple of years, as it started its operations in 1998 and was liquidated in November 2000. The company had high-profile investors including Jeff Bezos, and invested heavily in marketing its products including advertisement in the 2000 Super Bowl. Its popular sockpuppet advertising mascot was interviewed by People Magazine, and even appeared on Good Morning America. The company spent a grand total of $11.8 million in advertising, but only generated revenues for about $620,000. In a desperate attempt to increase its sales, the company even offered lower prices and free shipping, which only resulted in further losses. Its high public profile during its brief existence made it one of the most famous failures of the dot-com bubble at the beginning of the 2000s. Moving to food, we have a couple of examples of products that haven't been well received by customers. One was Coca-Cola BlāK, a drink that put together Coke and coffee. The company spent two years developing this soda-coffee mix hoping to tap into the growing premium coffee market. The product was quickly discontinued after its sales sharply declined after its introduction. Why is that? Well, the poor coffee to coke ratio was one of the reasons why customers didn't appreciate its taste. The second example is a frozen lasagna sold by Colgate. Yes, you heard that right, the toothpaste company. The frozen lasagna was introduced in 1982 as part of the company's attempt to enter the frozen entrees market. However, this attempt to extend their brand and diversify the company's portfolio products did not work. There are also plenty of examples when it comes to technology. Several smartphones are included in the museum's collection. One of them is Amazon's phone that had a buy button the customers hated. But, a more recent example in technology are Google Glasses. What happened to them? Tech enthusiasts rushed to get the $1,500 glasses when they were first released. The smart glasses had voice control, a built-in camera, and internet connectivity. The product was, however, discontinued when the company realized users were concerned about privacy and safety. There were, in fact, several software bugs and the glasses were a source of distraction for drivers. The last example is an unusual attempt at e-commerce from Facebook. In 2012, the company introduced Facebook Gifts, so that users of the social network could send their friends gifts by clicking on an icon. The interesting feature was that the sender did not need a postal address. Facebook would simply take care of the shipping. What the company did not realize is that a lot of users on the platform barely knew each other, and Facebook users simply ignored Facebook Gifts. This feature was discontinued less than two years after its launch. These objects are just a small part of the collection of items displayed at the Museum of Failure. Do these cases have any commonalities? In hindsight, it is clear why these products and services failed to succeed, and the lack of understanding of customers’ needs and desires seems to be part of the reason behind these failures.
