Published Sep 6, 2005
Did you know that Sweden used to have a world monopoly in matches? It’s true, they made and sold pretty much all of the matches out there for a long time. The reason why is deceptively simple: at the opening of the industrial age, some Swede (or Swedes) had the insight that you might want to have exactly the same number of matches in every matchbox. Filling matchboxes by count, rather than by volume, made it easy to mechanically fill matchboxes, which took one of the most labor- and, therefore, cost-intensive parts out of match manufacturing, which meant that Swedish matches were suddenly cheaper, and more profitable than other matches — plus the purchaser would be sure to get the same value for their dollar in matches with every purchase. Sometimes the insight you need to succeed is surprisingly small.