Apparently yes. Forbes has an interesting article describing VIPP, a danish company that sells trash cans. The side note is that those cans sell for $400 a pop, and sales are growing by 30% yearly. When I saw the price I thought “hhmm, for 400 bucks those trash cans must walk around the house collecting garbage here and there…”
But after reading further I realized that it was not like that. In fact we are talking about simple, metallic, standard trash cans. Well, to a certain extent they are not standard, though. The cans are extremely well-designed, to the point that they were featured in several expositions around the world. Heck, those cans even appeared on the Louvre… the only trash bin that was ever featured on the famous museum.
Forbes’ description about the innovation: “Notice what’s being innovated here. Not the kitchen trash can itself. VIPP bins aren’t a whole lot different in shape and function than any other. Oh, they have nice touches, like the swish of the mechanism that keeps the lid from crashing down. But to conceive and then execute a trash bin as an objet d’art, that’s a leap–a kind of innovation that matters.”
The message, in my opinion, is that innovations that take into consideration both the design and the user experience can be very profitable.
You can read the complete story here.
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