New Product Idea Memo – Robert Fan
My new product idea would be an instant iced tea brewer/chiller for the home. When you want to enjoy an iced version of your favorite quality tea, you would have to boil water, brew the tea, wait for it to cool, put it in the refrigerator and wait for it to chill. Putting ice in it will only water down the tea you just brewed. While boiling and brewing water is relatively simple and easy, it’s the cooling and chilling of the tea that takes the most time. An instant iced tea brewer/chiller would conserve the quality of the tea and chill it in a manner of minutes. This definitely will beat the $3 black or green iced tea you can get at Starbucks.
Customers: The customers of this new product would be all the tea drinkers in the world that enjoy an iced version, especially people living in hotter tropical climates. Also, another potential customer is the coffee drinker who likes an occasional iced tea.

Company: There is potential to make profit because the market for specialty beverages is large. From a competitive strategy point of view, it’s all about carving ourselves a specific niche where we can be sustainable. I believe a market to sell an iced tea brewer/chiller is large enough to sustain a company.

Competitors: Competition can range from large-scale beverage companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsicola to Starbucks and Honest Tea. Competition also includes instant iced tea companies like Lipton and Starbucks’ Via brand. The value of having an instant brewing machine at home is to have the ability to instantly chill your own high quality tea at home for a low price per drink.

Collaborators: An important collaborator would be the retailers that would carry our products. It will be important to properly engage with retailers to lock down on distribution, pricing, customer service, warranty, etc. Retailers can be very much influential because, depending on their size, they will want to dictate price, packaging, presentation, etc. that will affect our supply chain, manufacturing etc. The risk here is if retailers want a very low price as a prerequisite (Target, Walmart, Costco, etc.). They might go too low for us to be sustainable.

Context: The United States has a very mature beverage market with a multitude of competitors and potentially complex distribution issues.