In a world obsessed with giving consumers more choice than they need, retailers may feel that a tipping point is on the horizon, writes Julian Lea. Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." Of all the famous business quotes bandied about, these words said by Henry Ford in 1909 are among the most widely remembered. He was referring to the Model T, and the need to restrict variety as a trade-off to allow factories to produce more of them. He was one of the first businessmen to apply assembly-line manufacturing to the mass production of affordable cars. But the statement wasn’t entirely true. As demand waned, it became possible for consumers to get the ModelT in a range of colours, including red and green. It is one of the earliest examples of product life-cycle management, where the conditions in which a product is marketed change over time and must be managed as it moves through different stages. More than 100 years later, the battle betwee...
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