Product failures are a fact of life. They may be a disappointing fact of life, but they are going to happen -- and more often than not. In fact, Inez Blackburn of the University of Toronto, pegs the failure rate for new products launched in the grocery sector at 70-80%, and for smaller companies, the chances of success are even smaller: an estimated 11%. Successes certainly have lessons to teach, though the fact that nearly 90% of successes are line extensions may be the most obvious one.
However, a large brand is not a guarantee of success: Pepsi Crystal was clear and free of caffeine; it launched around the time health and wellness was becoming a center-stage trend, yet it was on shelves for less than two years. Entire careers have been made off of the New Coke disaster of the mid-80s. McDonald's introduced the Hula Burger in the 1960s, around the same time it launched the Filet-O-Fish, but the one with the slice of pineapple between two slices of cheese on a bun never took off. The same decade saw Mixed Vegetable and Celery versions of Jell-O, albeit for only a short time.