Originally Posted by
simla
I'm not quite sure how to explain that clearly, Emearg. You've probably noticed that I usually respond to things I'm not so happy about by not referring to them a lot. But I don't say positive things about things I'm not actually positive about.
My basic excitement about BLT has always been the maths. Applying that to the Bioguard situation, several points stand out.
Firstly, Blis is out there making pretty good progress on a large number of fronts now, so Bioguard is not a make or break situation, although we hope it will be a very useful result. Even as I sit here, the local chemist handout has an ad for Blis reading, "Need a throat lozenge that really works?". Over at CulturedCare there's a twitter from someone saying they had 5 pieces today because it tasted so great. Nature's Plus have just brought out even more products recently. Japan is open etc. Type in "+Blis K12" on Google and get heaps of real results. All we actually need from Bioguard, and all the other products, is for many of them to be at least okay. Well, Bioguard DOES seem to have at least joined the "at least okay" group with this news. No?
Secondly, I wasn't especially expecting a full nationwide rollout in a hurry, only good progress, which we probably got. To supply Costco nationwide would involve catering to the equivalent of 75 New Zealands in a very short timespan! What I definitely wanted to hear was that Costco did not reject the trial - which we have apparently heard - and that some progress was being made in expansion - which, again, we seem to have detected ourselves. Yes, I hadn't picked it would go off the shelves over summer, but neither was I expecting much in the way of sales over summer of a product specifically marketed for winter ailments. So, that wasn't a positive development from my point of view, but neither would I particularly expect it to change Bioguard annual sales by more than perhaps 20% or so, perhaps. Bioguard is apparently currently on sale in Oregon 3.5m, Washington 6.5m, Alaska .7m, Montana 1m, Utah 2.7m, Idaho 1.5m = 16m people. Could they really have added just 3 more states quickly, California 40m, Illinois 13m, or NY 20m? Yes, it would be great, but I wasn't relying on it. So, they do appear to have successfully opened in a fairly large market for the long term with this news, and shown some progress in expanding to more markets. No?
Thirdly, and most importantly, I have always seen the maths of Blis requiring some form of exponential growth. Einstein is said to have described compound interest as the most powerful force in the universe. It is far more important to me that the compounding is happening than whether it is fast or slow. Slow compounding will still produce vastly greater results than no compounding. So I attach far more importance to the yes/no idea that the product will be in the market long term, where is can grow market size, than to whether it is compounding fast enough just now. Well, this news is that Costco will apparently stock it long term. No?
And fourthly, as I have said, I do not see that we can really interpret this as telling us how sales have gone. If they were going badly, Costco would simply have dropped the product, which we are told they are not doing. So the more likely interpretation of this news is that sales are either so-so or good, either of which is fine considering the size of that market. No?
So I am okay with this news because I judge it mathematically. The stand-out news to me was that Bioguard seems to have successfully got itself aboard a large, compounding escalator, and to me that stands head and shoulders above whether early results are 50% better than might have been expected at this stage - which, for all we know, they might have been anyway.
Emearg, I can't promise you that BLT is blasting off without a hitch, because neither you nor I know that. But I can tell you I am not trying to see everything with rose coloured glasses. If the news had been that Costco was going to dump the product, I would certainly have been concerned at what that implied. As it is, this seems a perfectly satisfactory position.