Case Study #17: Nanda Home Plans to Grow Brand Architecture Beyond Clocky

Several product innovations fundamentally stem from the human desire for convenience. And many customers will pay a premium for convenience. This ranges from packaged salads to Blackberries to snooze buttons. The snooze button is simultaneously pressed multiple times by 90% of the U.S. population between early morning hours, Monday to Friday. How convenient is it to delay being awake by hitting a button to capture some extra “zzzzz’s”? Sure, the coffeemaker may fill your place with a jolt of aroma, the dog may lick your nose or the spouse and kids are already on the move (or all of the above), but you manage to find your restful peace between the time your fist lands on the snooze button and the time the alarm buzzes again. How convenient.

But, will we pay for inconvenience? Now, imagine if you hit a snooze button on a Clocky alarm clock that decides to jump off the nightstand and roll around the floor buzzing around in circles? Now you have to wake up, chase after this possessed machine and put it back in its rightful place. Are you awake? Founder of Clocky, Gauri Nanda, sure thinks so. Please check out her interview with Donny Deutsch on The Big Idea (on the right hand side).

Clocky is a result of the most pure form of stratelysis: An industrial design class project in graduate school. There are few, if any, bottom-line impacting politics or boundaries in a class project in graduate school. Students have the flexibility and time to do extensive, collaborative diligence on a deliverable. The Clocky alarm clock evolves out of Nanda’s own need for an alarm clock that won’t let her snooze repeatedly. She creates a prototype for a class project and a flurry of unexpected attention by the press ensues. She graduates from MIT in 2005 and becomes the Founder & CEO of Nanda Home, Inc. to officially design, engineer, manufacture and sell Clocky worldwide. She operationalizes and launches Clocky in late 2006, a year before the global economic recession starts.

I am very inspired by Nanda for a few reasons. The name of her company is not linked to her flagship Clocky product. This implies that Nanda has a vision for developing more products as Clocky gains credibility in the marketplace. In addition, she doesn’t put her “eggs in one basket” – Clocky is a unique and fun gadget, but may be at risk of being a “here today, gone tomorrow” technology. Nanda has to leverage her expertise with Clocky to build other market-driven products that represent Nanda Home. In 2007, she raises $80,000 in capital prior to launch, and forecasts $1 million in revenue in 2007, $3 million in revenue in 2008 and $4 million in revenue in 2009 (Chafkin, Max. Case Study #1: The Reluctant Entrepreneur. Inc. Magazine, July 2007). Assuming that each Clocky costs $50, her unit projection increases from 18,000 units in 2007 to 72,000 units in 2009. This forecast is created before the global economic recession, so I am sure economic and market conditions have revised unit, revenue and profitability projections for 2009 and beyond.

However, the company is planning on launching two to three more products later this year. Given the company’s lean operating principles, focused distribution strategy and viral marketing tactics, the company has available cash to grow the Nanda Home product portfolio. Now that the buzz is built for one product, a percent of that can be converted into engagement and transaction purposes. Nanda should continue to be focused with her strategic growth in 2010 and beyond.

As my six-year-old alarm, recently under-utilized clock stares longingly at me, even after my fist has come down hard so many times on the snooze button, an early start in the morning will be better accompanied with a little inconvenience brought by Clocky’s moves on the bedroom floor.