There are ideas that sweep through the business world that slowly work there way into every aspect of business though at first they seemed a little odd. It’s like going to the beach and coming home with sand in your shoes — it’s everywhere.

I offer two examples:

 1. Creating a club around a set of benefits such as Prime membership with Amazon; and,

 2. Subscription services such as was copied by Restoration Hardware.

Each of these ideas is related and each results in a true economic benefit to the customer whilst creating a solid, secondary cash flow for the sponsor.

Prime members number 230,000,000 and each will pay $179 for their next renewal. It started out at $79 nineteen years ago in 2005.

Do the math, that’s a lot of money. Continue reading →