Holy crap, did this just really happen?
Is lifestyle brand Best Self’s “Weekly Action Pad” one of the biggest rip off products of all time, or just great marketing? You be the judge.
“Holy crap, did this just really happen?” is the title of lifestyle brand Best Self’s email marketing campaign. My sentiments exactly after being tricked into buying their best selling product, the Weekly Action Pad aka “One Page Success Tool.”
The Weekly Action Pad aka “One Page Success Tool” is basically an A4 ruled refill pad, the kind of thing you can buy for a quid, or less, at newsagents and office suppliers.
Only Best Self charge $24.99 (about £18) — a markup of around 3,000 per-cent!
Best Self describe themselves as a company “on a mission to create meaningful products that help people become their Best Self.” I say they are a company who sell terrible rip-off products that’ll make you say WTF! But, you be the judge of that.
It’s marketed, largely on social media, as a “One Page Success Tool,” consisting of 52 templates.
It is an A4 approx. 70gsm 52 sheet ruled refill pad, without a cover, stitched and linen taped at the top, with micro perforation and a stiff board backing. You can buy a pack of five for £4.99 from most online office suppliers.
Best Self’s “Weekly Action Pad” was launched by two entrepreneurs on “a journey of personal growth.” If enough people buy the £18 refill pad — a prime example of how trendy or lifeStyle has become code for ‘rip-off’ — then it will surely be a journey of financial growth.
Should the Best Self Co mark up products by 3,000 per-cent?
They do because they can, and because stupid people (like me), fall for the hype, make a couple of clicks, and (a few days later) open the box and find themselves saying “Holy crap, did this just really happen?”.
I’m a marketer and I get it? If you’re a merchant, the only way to profit is to sell stuff for more than you pay for it. As a consumer, whether you’re drinking wine in a bar (500 per-cent mark-up) or swilling bottled water from the grocery store (3,000 per-cent mark-up), you are swallowing that markup.
What’s a fair markup? Fifty percent? One hundred? One thousand? It depends on both product and business, but one thing’s for sure — you can save a lot of money by paying attention.
Best Self won’t reveal how many Weekly Action Pad’s it has sold, but in a sense, it would be an irrelevant stat, because Best Self only needs to worry if their product gets hi-jacked somewhere low on a potential high growth curve by someone like me who makes something very, very similar, probably better quality, manufactured in China and shipped for a quid and sold for a fiver.
Or maybe I’ll just photocopy the Weekly Action Pad and give it away. Watch this space!
