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Manufacturers like you want to enter new markets, create lasting partnerships with dealers, and earn lifetime customers.
You want to move inventory.
Taking learnings from our 15+ years serving leaders in the outdoor recreation and commercial vehicle segments, we've created The Inventory —an educational podcast focused on how to win in your distribution model and bridge the gap between manufacturer and dealer.
From dealer programs to product portfolio, we'll cover topics that are relevant to helping you grow market share and ultimately move more units.
Scott Smith (00:00):
You have to think about the fact that they are making decisions in 2025 about what kind of product people will care about in 2028, and then navigating that journey from 2025 to 2028 to continue to refine that product to be the thing that will land well in the market then and all the while, what you have to remember in these industries is that they are also releasing a 2027 product and a 2026 product, and they're planning for the 2029 product.
Reid Morris (00:30):
Welcome to The Inventory. We are running a special podcast series from Element Three and Trader Interactive exploring how OEMs can launch products smarter and with more lasting impact. In each episode of this series, we unpack new research on what really drives sales momentums in dealer distributed industries from the timing of your reveal to how buyers actually shop and how dealers sell. I'm Reid Morris and I'm joined by Brian Cole from Element Three and Scott Smith from Trader Interactive. The team behind leading marketplaces like RV Trader, Commercial Truck Trader and Cycle Trader, as well as statistical surveys, the industry leader in sales intelligence. Together, we'll dig into data stories and strategies that reshape how new products come to market and what it takes to turn a launch into long-term growth. Let's get started. Hi Scott and Brian, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks Reid.
Brian Cole (01:26):
Thanks, Reid. Good to be here.
Reid Morris (01:28):
For the audience, so Scott Smith is the VP of OEM and Strategic initiatives at Trader Interactive and then Brian Cole is a strategy director here at Element Three and these are the organizations that came together to just conduct the research that we're talking about around product launches. And to that point, I would love to just dig into the two of you with what was the impetus behind doing this research? Why did we find it important to dig into the different areas that we did around product launch?
Scott Smith (01:57):
A lot of it comes from experience. I'll let Scott speak a bit more to his experience, but from my end, spending several years now working in our agency at Element Three and working for companies that RV Marine, a lot of different adjacent businesses, it's just very common that we're hearing pains from those groups about bringing new products to market. And there's different parts of that pain and different ways we hear it, but it's just a common topic. It feels like once a year it's coming up and we're talking to them about how they could do it better and we wanted to dig into the experience that we have and Scott's team has and the data that's available and talk to the people that we know to try to uncover a bit more about what's going on there.
Brian Cole (02:44):
Well said, Brian. I think that for my experience working at OEMs and now partnering with OEMs at Trader Interactive, I think our experience is quite similar that I think the next perfect product launch will be the first ever because never been a perfect launch and until there is our work's not done, which is really what prompted us to examine the art and the science of the product launch today and seek a number of perspectives from the industries we work in, from the consumers we serve on how we can perfect or strive to perfect the product launch going forward.
Scott Smith (03:22):
Yeah, I totally agree.
Reid Morris (03:23):
So Brian, I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of those common pitfalls? The areas that we see organizations fall short, particularly from our perspective on the agency side of things that goes into the issues that we dug into. Where do people not get this right?
Scott Smith (03:39):
I'll say one of the most common things that we hear is that the marketing people we talk to who are the people we spend most of our time with in these businesses are almost to a T across the board expressing feelings that they wish they were more or differently involved in the development and planning of putting new products in the market. And so part of this is not just how could marketing be done differently to launch products, it's digging into what is marketing's role in launching a product and what is happening potentially that is keeping that from maybe getting the outcomes that we want or the outcomes that these OEMs want or that the dealers need across these industries.
Brian Cole (04:24):
If I could just add there, I would say that I think the reason that we constantly are searching for ways to perfect the product launch is because of the inherent complexity of a product launch. There's just so many moving parts, especially in our B2X industries, there's an added layer of complexity that makes it very challenging to pull off and to do it. And I would say that our impetus for this research wasn't that product launches are bad, but until they're perfect again, we still have more work to do. So that's what we were really excited to dig into with OEM partners across our industries with consumers to understand where there are points of friction and where we can concentrate our efforts in the future.
Scott Smith (05:08):
That complexity point is such a good one, Scott, not to get ahead of ourselves in looking at what some of the responses were, we had conversations with people who were OEM, it just shines light on the fact that they will spend years developing a product that they then have to embed in the market and hope that people buy. And if you just step back from that for a minute, you have to think about the fact that they are making decisions in 2025 about what kind of product people will care about in 2028 and then navigating that journey from 2025 to 2028 to continue to refine that product to be the thing that will land well in the market then. And all the while, what you have to remember in these industries is that they are also releasing a 2027 product and a 2026 product and they're landing for the 2029 product. And so it is not ever a single product that you're launching or even a single model year of a product that's in development. It's always moving. And so it is super complex and feels like a river that's running rather than a pool that you're jumping into and that makes it hard.
Reid Morris (06:16):
Very much so. I'm actually curious from both of your perspectives going into the research, were there any hypotheses that you already had around what we would hear from OEMs or even the areas of opportunity that would come from the data that we dug into?
Brian Cole (06:32):
Yeah, I would say that from my own experience as an OEM marketer having worked for companies like Ford and Nissan and also the point around product development is an interesting one because I had the opportunity to work outside of the automotive industry and work in QSR for McDonald's and I got in that capacity, got to work in product development. So I understand the different dynamics that there are in these industries. I think for me, the hypothesis that I had in mind was all around. So really if you think about the moment of launch, the on sale moment on the marketing calendar, that's when we typically think of the launch as having begun. Clearly there's a ton of effort that's gone into getting ready for that moment, but I was really interested to see where we might be able to improve pre-launch processes and what consumers, what OEMs and what dealers had to say about how that pre-launch could be done better more effectively so that the point of on sale, there's a little more momentum behind it. I often think about the analogy of running a race. So you think about a hundred meter dash right? You know what that time looks like, what your personal best looks like on the stopwatch and a hundred meter dash, but then you compare it to a relay race when you get a running start. Those times are always faster. So how do we help OEMs have a running start at the point of launch? I think that's what I'm really interested to find out from this research.
Scott Smith (07:57):
Yeah, that's really good for me. We spend a lot of time talking to the people at the OEMs, that's who we work with the most and we through them and as a part of that work we talked to dealers a decent amount. Part of what we did is we talked to consumers as well with this and we looked at how consumers interact in the platforms and the marketplaces that traders team runs. And I just had a lot of hypothesis about the consumer is how much attention basically they're paying to these launches. And I think that's something that I sort of expected people who are passionate about these industries, people who are boat buyers, boat shoppers or RV interested people that they would be paying a lot of attention to what's coming up and what's coming out. And I was interested to hear whether the interviews we had with those people would tell us that or something different
Reid Morris (08:49):
Actually. So I'm curious to build on that. Talk to me about the different types of research we did. There's a lot of different perspectives. We talk about complex environment B2B2X, what were the different areas that we dug into to get that full picture
Scott Smith (09:03):
On our side? What was so great about this and the way that we worked together with Scott's team is data that they have and relationships that they have an access they have merged with relationships we have and access we have in a really interesting way. So on our side we know a lot of people in and around these industries. So we had conversations with verbal interviews on the phone with people from OEMs and those were concentrated mostly within this outdoor space of marine rv. That was where a lot of it was a little bit of power sports. And then we also, because there's some similarities in these worlds, we also talked to a few people who are OEMs in the commercial vehicle side. Those are businesses that operate in a very similar model but do this differently. And so we looked a little bit at that as well to see where we might've heard similar or different things. And then I'll let Scott, you can speak to a little bit, but we looked at some data from your end as well.
Brian Cole (09:59):
I think you put it well, Brian. I think we consulted a number of sources. I feel like we really got a fairly complete picture. We've got to look at this question that we had from a number of angles. So we had the OEM interviews, which were incredibly helpful in giving us perspectives that sort of rounded out our own. We had historical data to review on what you might call launch velocity. So, from the point of a new model going on sale, what does that sales trajectory look like? When does the sales peak? Is that immediate? Is that a year or two into the product cycle? We were really interested to look at this from a historical perspective, consulted past research. We've done marketplace activity as a sort of a real-time barometer for consumer interest in a new product because I think Brian's exactly right that one of the hypotheses that we had going in is how aware is the consumer really of whether a product is new. We know that they're looking at new versus youth, they're cross-shopping in a marketplace environment like RV Trader, Cycle Trader, any number of our platforms, but are they able to distinguish what products are brand new and which are further along in their life cycle? I think our hypothesis going in was that many consumers don't, which is up to us as marketers to help inform them.
Scott Smith (11:25):
And then to add on there too, we also used your marketplace user base to reach out to people using your marketplaces, Scott, to ask them survey questions. And so we actually built in a survey with something like 500 or so people, I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but we asked questions of actual shoppers of these products about how they make decisions, what things look for, what do they care about, how do they choose one product over another? What would make them more likely to choose a new one versus a used one? And so blending that in as well was just really compelling to be able to get some verbatims from the OEM end and the customer end and then also see how people interact in places where a lot of shopping happens to sort of validate that a bit and look at sales data to see what's selling when.
(12:19):
It just gives us a pretty good round picture. I think the piece that we are excited to keep learning about this and have more conversations, I know that something we're looking to do going forward is to build on this research with more conversations from the dealer element of the B2B2X model and hear their perspective on these things. We got some of that through the other inputs that we have and we know those people and got some input from our historical working with them, but that's another path to keep digging into this going forward.
Reid Morris (12:48):
So for context for the audience, we are going to do some more double click content, some more episodes of this show that go into some of the specific insights that hopefully do create that well-rounded picture from these different perspectives and data sources. And we'll get into that into a lot more depth there. And of course the research report itself, but there's a bit of a preview. I'm curious if there were some specific pieces in this that were most interesting to you guys at a high level just to give some insight into some early things that we saw and then obviously we'll go into a lot more depth in later content too.
Scott Smith (13:20):
I think for me, the one that has at least come up the most for the work that we do in helping OEMs market their products, it was pretty resounding from the interviews we did with consumers that the most likely reason that they would choose a new product over an old product or used product was features and options like the different technology that the new product might have. And while that's not surprising, that sort of makes logical sense in the world of car buying, any product buying like phones, whatever. It's just really interesting to me about how technology in general evolving what's pressure on businesses where that's not as important because it changes the expectations people have and it's just really compelling for me and something that we're thinking a lot about now as we move forward into applying these into the marketing that we do for our clients.
Reid Morris (14:15):
It feels like as well from that perspective, when we're talking about big ticket items, there are some just different things that you are putting features and technology up against, like price promotions and things that are specific to this B2B2X environment and why people buy there as opposed to something that is a hundred dollars decision or a $500 decision. So the data shows more around that, but you're not just putting it up against what you would maybe typically think of a direct to consumer low dollar item product.
Scott Smith (14:43):
And even within that answer, features and technology, if that's what you select in a survey, even an opportunity for us to dig deeper into that. So if you're thinking about an rv, what does that mean? Does that mean more beds? Does that mean a bigger fridge? Does that mean lane assist, like Lane keep assist while you're driving? Does that mean a better stereo system? Does that mean wifi? There are so many things that could mean for these highly complex, big investment products that is both interesting and also just another doorway to step through to go learn more.
Reid Morris (15:18):
Was there anything in particular, Scott, that stood out to you?
Brian Cole (15:21):
Yeah, I would echo that. I think that it was resounding that it's intuitive that the newness of a new product is what makes it most compelling to the end user. So for me, that gets back to communication. Do they know the product's new? Do they know what makes this product worth buying, worth waiting for? If this new model is coming out in six months, it's compelling enough for me, it's attractive enough for me as an owner that I should be maybe rethinking when I plan to upgrade the product I have today. So it's really, it comes back to communication and I think that the data sources we consulted tell us that there are really two product launches within each launch. There's the operational launch, it's getting ready for the unit going on sale, and then once you're in market communicating to in-market buyers that it's out there and it's worth buying.
Reid Morris (16:16):
That's great. Well, we won't go into too much more depth here. We've got some double clicks like we talked about that we'll go into if you want to access the report, you'll be able to get that through the show notes. So feel free to dig into the details there and then I'm sure we will have a good time chatting in greater depth with some of our takeaways.
Scott Smith (16:33):
Talk to you next time.
Reid Morris (16:34):
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks. The Inventory is brought to you by Element Three. We're a full-service marketing agency that helps modernize go-to-market strategies for organizations that go to market in the OEM to dealer business model. And this series has been brought to you in partnership with Trader Interactive you the organization behind brands like RV Trader, Cycle Trader, Bullet Mart, and statistical surveys. For more information on the Element Three, you can head to elementthree.com. And for more on Trader, you can head to traderinteractive.com.