The ice glove is something people in the USA just wouldn't use because no body wears gloves of any sort and the "use-value" of wearing something all the time to protect yourself from something you do only occasionally is negative.
The Snuggie is useful and more importantly, it's use is immediately obvious, in the sense that you use it like a blank but with some added benefits (some of which you can get from a bathrobe, especially wool bathrobes went out of style a while back). The Snuggie is still mostly marketing, since it doesn't just there among the zillions of clothing types out there.
The lesson is that if you have something that offers little originality and value, it's best to offer in a warm, feel-good package that people can understand. Indeed, I suspect the package and the understanding where the originality of the product starts and the rest of it is just ... filler. (note the review that mentions how the Snuggie is simply an incredibly poor-quality effort at meeting the need it highlights).
If the ice-clean glove was really cheap and dispossible, you might be able to sell it to ... ice clean vendors. That might actually be a product, not necessarily good but hey.
Er, I'm not quite sure you read the article, which basically propped up a kinda-lame joke intended to poke fun at VCs, then missed the point of the joke entirely while explaining its punchline.
I say marketing because the Ice Cream Glove is a joke, whereas the Snuggie has marketing.
I'm fairly sure that if you marketed the Ice Cream Glove with shouty ads in Australia, it'd sell like hotcakes.
The ice glove is something people in the USA just wouldn't use because no body wears gloves of any sort and the "use-value" of wearing something all the time to protect yourself from something you do only occasionally is negative.
The Snuggie is useful and more importantly, it's use is immediately obvious, in the sense that you use it like a blank but with some added benefits (some of which you can get from a bathrobe, especially wool bathrobes went out of style a while back). The Snuggie is still mostly marketing, since it doesn't just there among the zillions of clothing types out there.
The lesson is that if you have something that offers little originality and value, it's best to offer in a warm, feel-good package that people can understand. Indeed, I suspect the package and the understanding where the originality of the product starts and the rest of it is just ... filler. (note the review that mentions how the Snuggie is simply an incredibly poor-quality effort at meeting the need it highlights).
If the ice-clean glove was really cheap and dispossible, you might be able to sell it to ... ice clean vendors. That might actually be a product, not necessarily good but hey.