Shane Parrish

She needed something to draw people in, something that would make workers stop stride and think, I need to see what that is.

Wigs were hot in 1963.

Jackie Kennedy wore them.

So Mary Kay decided to add custom wigs to their skincare offerings.

She hired Renee from Paris, this famous stylist, and she even brought in a professional model and started serving champagne.

And the strategy sort of worked, but not how she planned.

The models attracted men, lots of men, and the women who bought wigs made terrible choices.

Blondes bought brunette wigs and brunettes bought blonde wigs.

So by Monday morning, customers were returning everything.

Their families had seen them and said, Goldilocks, what in the world happened to you?

But the real problem was the economics.

Wigs took enormous amount of space.

Each wig needed its own form, its own box.

They had to rent basement storage for cosmetics, which meant walking two blocks in Texas heat every time they needed to restock.

Richard calculated the actual return on investment.

Each wig sale required approximately eight hours of labor, eight hours for a product with a high return rate and marginal profit margins.

A skincare demonstration took an hour and resulted in full product sets with higher margins and virtually no returns.

So they quickly killed the wig business.

The next month, sales jumped $20,000.

Without the distraction, consultants could focus on what actually worked, intimate skincare demonstrations that built relationships and sold complete product systems.