Jonah Peretti

It's a really good question, especially with physical products because it is very common.

People can go find the same factory and other companies can kind of mimic what you're doing and sell things for cheaper and undercut what you're doing.

And so

it's hard to keep your margins intact when that happens.

A few possible ways to do it, building a really strong brand, building community where people are subscribing to something, maybe connecting with each other,

good marketing where you're constantly hacking the attention economy, where you have new ways to get viral distribution, some membership or subscription-based program where maybe you buy the product but you

are subscribed to your catnip delivery or new additions or new changes or new toy, or even a subscription box where, a subscription where you get new cat things every month so that you have the customer for longer.

But it is the right thing to think about because there's a weird,

dynamic of this kind of super connected viral internet, which is that oftentimes people have their best year of sales the first year because there's novelty and it goes viral.

And then it's like, you know, what do you do the second year and the third year?

And it used to be you'd slowly build a business and it would take three years before you got any traction.

And that felt like painfully slow, but it also had more forecastability and predictability.

And I think with in a kind of more viral internet, you need to figure out, you know,

How do you either keep going viral or how do you lock in core customers into a tighter community or subscriber?

I mean, I think what you're getting at is

If you buy a Katsumo product, you'll also get to be part of this media experience where people are posting their cats and you might post your cat and you're part of more of a community.

If that becomes more of a thing, then the competitor product, you don't get that.

There's not the network, there's not the community.

then that's more enduring.

And so sometimes it can be the media channels and the customer feeling like, oh, I'm going to get featured on the Katsuma page or, you know, whereas the whatever knockoff karate cat is just like a cheap product that I buy, but I'm not part of something bigger.