In retail, there’s always a bigger fish — most of the time, that is.

Factories don’t sell direct to consumer. They sell at least 10,000 pieces of that product. The next distributor doesn’t sell unless the next fish is buying 5,000 pieces.

The 3rd distributor says “It doesn’t make financial sense for me to sell under 1,000 pieces”. And so on until we get to direct to consumer.

In the big picture, they all share part of the profit and that’s associated with time and means to sell. A factory doesn’t have the means to sell directly to consumer (most likely it’s not in the centre of a capital) plus they don’t want to spend that much time stocking and selling — so they trade part of their margin for some time.

That’s distribution.

This category does something remake-able.

In SaaS companies

The closest thing to distribution are APIs — and that’s a stretch and a metaphor. It’s not really distribution but it’s the closest thing.

In SaaS it’s all about scale. “Here, we made this, it should help you — a one fits all solution. Or maybe three (different pricing plans). Oh, doesn’t fit like a glove? Fine, we can adjust it so you’ll have a custom version and that’s “enterprise”, because we’ll charge a lot to do that” SaaS businesses say.

But unless we’re talking custom solution, the product is made so that it’s wide enough to encompass all needs of most clients within the scope of the solved problem. SaaS businesses also keep in touch with the users of their solutions so as to make the product even better (and therefore bring more value).

You’re not building something again and again. From 0 to “done” in a matter of few hours — that’s for factories, not for you. You keep on building on top of what was there yesterday and try to make it incrementally better. You’ve seen some time ago the power of compounded interest.

1% better every day means 38x better in a year. That’s what you were aiming for when you started a SaaS product.

That’s improvement.

This category does something remarkable.

Which side are you on? Are you doing something remarkable or remake-able?

About Ch Daniel

I run Chagency_, an experiences design agency that specialises on helping tech CEOs reduce user churn. We believe experiences are not only the reason why users choose not to leave but also what generates word of mouth. We’re building a credo around this belief.

If I’ve brought you any kind of value, follow me and get in touch here: LinkedIn | Twitter | Email | Quora | YouTube (same content but in video)

I’ve also created an infinitely-valuable app for sneaker/fashion enthusiasts called Legit Check that impacted hundreds of thousands over millions of times – check it out at chdaniel.com/app

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Illustration credits: Danila Solovev, Ana Porta