Manufacturers lack retail ideas

I wrote a blog about Tyvek and complained that this miracle fabric has barely been used for retail products.

This is in fact a general problem. I can think of very few American companies that are successful on a large scale and are able to introduce small-scale retail products or services. 

The exception has been 3M. On the other hand, 3M probably has hundreds more products they could have brought to market had the skills been in the company.

This is not a problem for large Japanese companies. It is in fact the main way that new products enter the market in Japan and it is the reason that there are so many products on the market in Japan. Some of those products are duplicated in the rest of the world after they succeed in Japan.

I merely point this out because we do not have an adequate institution to intermediate between the incredible line of products and services that are generated in our vast economic output and the entrepreneurial talent that is widespread in our society.

An example would be for a chamber of commerce to sponsor a public fair in which all large producers of products and services put them on display with appropriate technical descriptions and invited the public to look.