Learning from Bottled Water

Never take a market for granted. In here we often talk about how to avoid becoming a commodity. But what happens when the whole bottom drops out of a market? The New York Time reported on a trend in restaurants reverting to good old fashioned tap water. The reason? Concern for the environmnet.

This is a trend in its purest form. Consumers flocked to bottled water more than a decade ago causing panic among one product soft drink producers like Coke and Pepsi. Truthfully, the bottom falling out of a trend is just a sign that another trend is on it heels. Packaging suppliers are constantly being told that price is the most important factor by their cusotmers. Bottled water just proves them wrong. After all, even if you make the cheapest water bottle out there, the market is still going to shrink. (Link.)