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Likely Sales Volume
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| We mentioned we had an incredible result with Rollfast Mark I and we would now like to share with you that history. This is vital information which will help you understand how we calculated the minimum likely sales. The Mark I version was manufactured in Hastings, New Zealand in the late 80's and early 90's. It was made of sheet metal and powder coated and all sales were through distributors. In six years, we made an incredible 26,000 of them (which was enough to totally flood the NZ market). For proof, see the letter below. To whom it may concern. I, Kevin Corby, whilst a partner of Fear Brothers Ltd in Hastings, New Zealand, confirm that we made 26,000 Rollfast toilet roll dispensers for J. Duncan McNeill over a period of six years in the late eighties and early nineties. Signed K Corby and witnessed by Rachel Styles.  Rollfast Mark I pioneered the key concepts of perfect access to the tissue with no slots, keyless loading, and high mounting on the wall above the toilet bowl. This combination does not annoy the user so vandalism simply disappears.
This is the dispenser that changed everything. It's vandal resistance was legendary and no one could get a roll out of it. The moment it appeared sales just took off, sweeping all competing products aside. We ended up flooding the New Zealand market virtually completely. Altogether we sold 24,000 in New Zealand and 2,000 in Australia and PNG (it was harder to sell in Australia because we appointed a master distributor which meant another margin - bad mistake).
What was more remarkable was at that time you could buy a Durolla brand three roll vertical in plastic for NZD $25 while our retail was NZD $75! Jumbos appeared about then as well. All these points show we knew the market then and we still know it now. New Zealand had a population of about 3.2 million at that time so we achieved a 'selling ratio' of .75% over six years. We can use that ratio to guide us on predicting likely sales of Rollfast Mk II, but instead of .75% and six years let's use .5% and 10 years just to be on the safe side. (Note: it has been 30 years since all that happened, but the provision of public toilets has probably risen dramatically per head of population since then, so you can assume dramatically more sales than predicted below). The traditional western or developed countries of the world have a combined population of about 1.2 billion, so .5% would bring sales of 6 million units (a cool GP of USD $151 million). Even Autraliasia with around 29 million people would bring sales of 145,000 units. Sounds like good business to us. On top of that, the fast developing nations of India, China, most of Asia, much of Africa and South America and even Russia can be expected to buy some. Let's assume this group will buy around 2 million (but surely you agree the real figure could be much more than that). We are sure that you can now see the potential for this amazing product which is destined to take the world by storm.
What happened to Mark I in the end? If it was so successful, why did production stop? Because the senior partner that ran Fear Brothers Ltd, our manufacturing partner, died and his partner who was a brilliant sheet metal worker, had no idea how to run the business. So Fear Brothers closed and our factory was gone. We approached other sheet metal shops but none of them understood the principles of mass production. So that was the end of that. Meantime orders were still coming in and we have often wondered how many we would have ended up selling if we had been able to keep going. But we think the New Zealand market was flooded anyway. |
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