What is the most successful company to only produce a single unique product? See OP for more info.

Factual Questions
101

I suspect the answer will be found in the commodities or intermediate products industries. Companies that only make paper clips, or pencil leads, or a certain type of fastener, or toothpicks, that sort of thing.

I’m sure there are lots of software companies that might qualify. Do the people who make Slack make anything else? What about Snapchat or Instagram before being purchased. There are also thousands of smaller software firms who have built themselves up around a single vertical market like process control, supply chain management for a specific industry, or an imaging package for medical use, or whatever.

When you get into the highly technical vertical markets, there is all kinds of specialization, like a company that might make nothing but drill bits for oil platforms, or companies that provide a specialized chemical for some industrial process.

This thread is biased towards consumer goods, probably because that’s the first thing to come to mind for most people. But consumer goods companies are probably the least likely to have a single product because once you have built the production, marketing, sales, and support processes for your product, adding a second is much less costly. So economies of scale start to drive you towards diversifying your product line.

102

I thought about these too, but it’s tricky.

Slack (and nearly any software as a service) has multiple pricing tiers. That seems like more than one product to me.

If you look at the revenue side, anything that sells advertising likely has more than one “product”, if only because ad sales slice demographics this way and that.

103

Yeah, but that just gets us back to the definition of ‘one product’. Here’s another: What if I have exactly one product, but I sell it worldwide? I have to have packaging for each country, so I will have separate inventory accounts and separate SKUs for each country. And when pricing globally, you use price discrimination which means that any product is rarely the same price everywhere it is sold on the globe.

I think that counts. We’re now into implementation of sales details which are really irrelevant. The core question should ber about a company that has developed a single product and been successful based on just that one product. I would include software updates and even upgrades. Photoshop is still Photoshop, and if that’s all that Adobe ever sold it would still count as one product. It’s still competing in the same industry under the same name and undergoing revisions and updates at roughly the same rate as its competitors.

In the same way, I would consider a car company that sold only one make of car to qualify. For example if Volkswagen never sold anything but the Beetle - not even spare parts or accessories, just the car - then I would consider it to qualify even if a 2018 Beetle was substantially upgraded over its 1938 predecessor. It’s a single product competing in an evolving marketplace.

104

1927? They’re still wet behind the ears. How about the Avedis Zildjian Company; founded in Constantinople (yes, Constantinople) in 1623. They make cymbals. Okay, drumsticks too.

105

Credit cards… arguably the CC companies make billions of dollars and do not even produce a product.

106

Some of the oldest companies in existence are hotels and restaurants which I would argue count, especially the hotels. For the restaurants one might argue that different dishes would count differently.

For the ones that have been in business for over 1000 years, they’ve taken in over a billion dollars in inflation-adjusted income over their lifetimes, without branching out from that one hotel/pub/restaurant.

107

I agree that regional differences (even localization ones, like text being in a different language) don’t make things a different product. But I don’t know that it extends to everything else that might vary.

Someone earlier in the thread said that, basically, if all you have to do is specify the quantity, that definitely counts as one product. After that, it’s trickier to say.

If the only difference is regional, then a normal customer still has just one choice: how many do you want.

You could probably also extend this to operating systems if the software is substantially similar on all of them, or to things like having the steering wheel on the other side for drive-on-the-left countries, if the rest of the car is the same. Those are implementation details, but not really choices for customers.

By that I don’t think it’s reasonable to count a single model of car as all one product unless you can’t configure it. If Ford were still selling model Ts in “any color you want, as long as it’s black”, then sure. But there are often a dozen independent choices you can make and still end up with the same “model” car. At that point, it’s just branding.

When Apple took the numbers off their iPads, the different models (that they continued to sell simultaneously) didn’t somehow become one product. They were still different products, just now with confusing labeling.

I think versions of software can count as one product if they’re sold sequentially. If Adobe only sold Photoshop, and came out with a new version every few years and stopped selling the old one, sure that’s one product, they’ve just improved it. But if they sell Photoshop 4 and also 5, and also sell an online version, and also Photoshop Student Verison and Photoshop Pro (I’m just making stuff up at this point. I’m not a Photoshop user)… then maybe not.

Obviously this is subjective and trivial.

108

How about a restaurant where a buffet is the only option? That can be ordered with “three please”. The drinks would have to be included and self-serve. Of course, any such restaurant that gets too successful will start selling T-shirts.

109

They also make luggage of a good quality.

110

Sriracha?

111

Already mentioned, and already said that Huy Fong Foods (assuming you’re talking about the most well-known brand of sriracha, as there’s a good number of brands making it out there) makes three different chile food products: sriracha, sambal oelek, and a garlic chile sauce.

112

I’d say that counts as a single product. I debated including a “bed and breakfast” caveat in my hotel post because I’d assume they’d be bought as one product, but I didn’t think of standalone buffets.

113

How about looking in the farming or ranching sectors? I have driven past many cattle feedlots that seem to only produce cows. And I guess the stench of cow, but I don’t think they sell that.

114

Those produce manure for fertilizer. Also lots of polution, but I don’t think that counts as a product.

115

Ford Motor Company used 30 different types of black paint for different parts of the car’s exterior.

116

Winchester made only guns for a long time, and made money doing it, but they diversified into ice skates and hand tools in the 1920s.

117

The closest I could think of is baseball rubbing mud. Talk about a niche product. They sell it in three different-sized buckets, but each one is the same stuff. Their store also has other items like shirts and towels, but they’re essentially just advertisements for the mud. It appears from the website that “Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud” has been in business, selling the same mud from the same mudhole, since 1938.

And for those who are saying, “what the heck is baseball rubbing mud?!”: a brand-new baseball is too shiny and slick for proper play. Before they are used in a game, all baseballs are rubbed with Lena Blackburne’s mud to take the sheen off and give the ball the perfect surface texture.

118

I’m thinking that De Beers is still the winner in this game to my mind.

I will put out another company that has diversified somewhat but still has a very limited product line: Tootsie Roll which has kept to its core candy concept for the most part. Tootsie Pops aren’t as common as they once were, but their original product still dominates their revenues.

119

Except you can’t call De Beers and say “Give me 3.”

120

Certainly not – every one is “a unique expression of your love”. At least, according to their incessant advertising.