Don't Just Fit Into a Market: Create One Like Riedel Did

Austrian glassmaker Claus Riedel faced a problem that sounds familiar to any founder or product manager. The market for wine glasses was saturated. Most households owned one set of glasses and used them for everything from red wine to dessert wine to water. Competing on price or distribution against every other glassware company meant fighting for a tiny slice of a static pie.

Riedel found a different path. He stopped trying to sell to triallists – people who hadn't bought his glasses yet – and started selling to current users. The insight was simple: don't push a better version of the same product into a full market. Instead, invent a reason for existing customers to buy more.

Until the 1950s, the idea that different wines needed different glasses barely existed. Riedel introduced it. In 1958 he launched the Burgundy Grand Cru glass at the Brussels World's Fair, a glass he said was designed to "enhance the flavours and aromas of the Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo grape variety, specifically for Burgundy, Barolo and Barbaresco wines." The concept was novel enough to win the Gold Medal and land in the Museum of Modern Art's collection.