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Flowbee vs RoboCut
The History of Do-It-Yourself Vacuum Cleaner Haircuts

The Beginning:

TAMPA - The year is 1990, the Internet hasn't gone public yet, only 47% of Americans have cable and the USSR is still together. In the late 80's and very early 90's people still received most of their information from books, magazines. Infocommericals were still new and they didn't have acceptance that they have now. In this period before the Internet and 200-channel television getting your message to the American people was a challenge. However one product plowed its way into American pop culture, that product, Flowbee.

Flowbee was America's first look at the exciting world of do-it-yourself haircuts. Flowbee offered haircuts at a fraction of the cost and also boasted that you would never need to leave your home again to get a professional haircut. Never leaving your home was still just a dream to most people and certainly hasn't the commonplace event that it is today. With promises like this Flowbee became an overnight sensation selling thousand of units all stamped with the "AS SEEN ON TV" seal of approval.

Flowbee had completely corned the vacuum cleaner haircut and things never looked brighter.

Disaster Strikes

The year is now 1992. Flowbee had created a monopoly in the do-it-yourself vacuum haircut market but thing where about to take a turn for the worst.

Flowbee had just moved its headquarters to Homestead, FL in spring 1992. Cheap labor and no unions paved the way for Flowbee to slash its price from $129.99 to just $99.99, resulting in a 40% rise in sales. The new Flowbee Factory was working at 98% capacity and the original investors where making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Flowbee decided it was time to expand.

Flowbee had just made a substantial investment in building a second factory when Hurricane Andrew hit. The main Flowbee Factory was devastated and the new factory that was still under construction was completely destroyed. Flowbee was unable to fulfill it's shipments to it's customer's and even worse for the company it was unable to supply it's Flowbee product to Wal-Mart, a deal that Flowbee chief Jack Dickman had just inked. This was a devastating blow to Flowbee.

Flowbee would never again have the market share that it enjoyed at the time, 83%.

Devastation Leads to Competition

A new product entered the market shortly after Flowbee started experiencing problems. Wal-Mart was facing a growing dilemma. Wal-Mart knew it's customers wanted a vacuum hair cutter but Flowbee wasn't going to be able to supply them with enough products for the busy 1992 Christmas season. So Wal-Mart looked over seas and found a answer, RoboCut, a product made in the UK.

RoboCut promised at home haircuts but also promised out of the box pet grooming, a task that required you to purchase an add-on when using Flowbee. Wal-Mart believed that they had found a comparable product to Flowbee and stocked both products side by side for the 1992 Christmas season. They had very high expiations.

Christmas 1992 - The Big Crash

Wal-Mart had stocked their shelves in anticipation of a big Christmas for the do-it-yourself vacuum hair cut market. However things didn't work out that way. While Flowbee sales remained respectable America didn't embrace the new RoboCut. 

RoboCut believed a good way to break into the American market would be to capitalize on the success of the movie Robocop. The original Robocop movie was released in the United States in 1987 but had just been released in the UK and was #1 box office hit. RoboCut believed the Robocop name would bring instant name recognition and credibility to their product. However this was not to be.

Instead customers where confused as to what RoboCut was. The original packing showed a women using the product but also had a very large image of Robocop and sported the very controversial "Animal Tested to Ensure Safety" logo. Many customers that bought RoboCut ended up returning it after Christmas since they bought it believing that it was a toy. Other's boycotted the product due to the "Animal Tested to Ensure Safety" label. RoboCut changed their packaging shortly after the holiday's to remove Robocop and change the "Animal Tested to Ensure Safety" label to read "Tested to be safe for animals". However it was to late for RoboCut and Wal-Mart dropped the product in mid-1993 after an unsuccessful 1992 Christmas season.

Interest Declines

As 1993 came to an end many began wondering aloud if the whole do-it-yourself vacuum haircutting market was just a fad. Many of the popular haircuts of the mid and late 80s, the styles that these machines excelled at, were going away. Grunge was in, Mullets where out. People no longer needed or wanted haircuts. And then in poster child of the Flowbee, Larry Bird, retired. Flowbee pulled their TV ads and the RoboCut was already back in the UK. 

Internet to the Rescue

After enduring a horrible 1994 both Flowbee and RoboCut where on the edge of bankruptcy, but neither company could have know what was going to happen next. 

RoboCut, working with a marketing budget that was normally nothing more than sending out a used sample of the product, began looking for cheap alternatives to TV advertising. These searches lead lead RoboCut to the Internet. 

RoboCut wanted an Internet presence and they weren't going to settle for anything less than the best. RoboCut did extensive research of it's user base and found that most people related their product to getting a haircut. This meant only one thing to RoboCut, they wanted haircut.com. In 1995 RoboCut bough out the owners of haircut.com for a then amazing amount of $750.00.

With their domain secured RoboCut turned to the Sun Microsystems to create a way for customers to be able to order their product over the Internet. RoboCut became one of the first companies to do eCommerce when they sold their first RoboCut in October of 1995. 

Not to be outdone Flowbee quickly bought up flowbee.com relaying on the name recognition of Flowbee to compete with RoboCut and haircut.com.

The Internet once again gave both companies a pathway into the homes of American's everywhere. Both companies have since achieved a second round of success and it's not uncommon to see a Flowbee in the aisles of Wal-Mart.

Do-It-Yourself Vacuum Cleaner Haircuts, a real success story.

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Filed by Corky
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