[Nicholasp27]

some judo strategy:

minnetonka test-marketed liquid soap back in the day and it went over really well, so they decided to go full out and sell it all over the place. well, the bar soap makers didn't wanna get involved at first, as it would hurt their brand name if it was a failure, and they were content with the way things had been in the bar soap market for awhile

so they held off

meanwhile, the liquid soap was selling well, so minnetonka found out that there were only 2 companies in the world making that little plastic pump at the time; so they bought 1 (or 2?) years capacity of the pumps from both companies, so nobody else could buy them...so the other companies saw the success of SoftSoap and decided to get into the market, but were shocked to find out that there were no manufacturers of the pumps besides those 2, and they were at capacity for the next 1-2 years

so during this time SoftSoap built up a huge brand name...then dial, etc got in after pumps were available, but still were cautious, so they didn't use their own brand name...those new products got killed, as softsoap had brand recognition and these competitors didn't...so finally they used their own name liquiddial and captured a good share of the market, but at that point softsoap had enough momentum that it remained the market leader