Continuing series of Top 10 product innovations of the decade.

Product Innovation # 2: Silicone Baking Materials.

Unless you were a French baker, until about a decade ago, you probably hadn’t encountered silicone baking materials. Today, if you are a baker, you’re surrounded gadgets such as cake pans, moulds, hot pads, trivets, and endless more products made from this material. Silicone (not to be confused with silicon which goes into computer chips) is a class of polymers that are generally flexible and translucent and have been used in a wide variety of products from adhesives and lubricants to surgical implants. It’s a great material for baking because it’s a poor conductor of heat (thus preventing burning), can withstand a huge range of temperature, and it’s flexible (thus easy to remove your baked good from the mold).

A long time coming

What’s most interesting about the history of silicone baking materials wasn’t its instant success, but rather its delayed success. The product was invented by French chemist/baker M. Guy Demarle, who was seeking a better way to make baguette bread with forms using non-stick silicone coatings and created the original SILPAT in 1965. This invention was a hit with pastry chefs in France, but it never really took off in the U.S. until 1998 when food writer Amanda Hesser wrote a glowing review in the New York Times in 1998. Soon celebrity chefs began using Silpats on their cooking shows and they became popular throughout the U.S. Demarle today makes hundreds of different moulds for madelines, chocolates, petit fours, etc., but they haven’t cornered the market in this space. Many entrepreneurs and retail chains were able to create knock-offs by variations on Demarle’s innovation.

There’s no true patent protection

Because patents are extremely limited in what they protect and the penalties for violating are low, it’s easy to make copies of almost anything. One of the most distressing stories I’ve heard from an innovative entrepreneur who had patented her product involved a major retailer completely knocking-off her product shortly after a factory inspection (under the auspices of evaluating the product for purchase). Instead of bothering to even change the product slightly, the retailer decided that legal fees and the amount of penalty they have to pay patent owner was negligible compared to the price they would have had to pay you purchase the product from her directly. So much for ethics.

So what’s an entrepreneur with a truly unique idea to do?

1. Focus on your first-to-market advantage Be sure you position it as a premium product by using high-quality materials and branding and focus your channel sales through exclusive outlets as opposed to going after the major chains early. It took over 30 years for Demarle to enter the U.S. market, losing a great deal of opportunity to create an exclusive brand that customers will be loyal to.
2. Make it easier for chains to buy from you than to knock-you off. In order to make sure the major retailers stay away from your idea is to make it easier for them to purchase from you than to try to figure out how to copy you. You need accept the fact that they’ll want to pay substantially lower than your standard wholesale price, but be happy that they’ll make it up in volume and brand recognition. You might also offer your expertise to retailer who want to slap their brands on it so you’ll continue to get a piece of the pie. Just don’t expect nearly as high margins as your original idea.
3. Knock yourself off Another strategy to avoid el-chepo knock offs coming after you, is to do it before anyone else can. Since you have the experience in producing this product, you can probably produce a low-cost version easier than anyone else (ideally under different branding), so it makes sense to be working on how to make this happen early in the lifecycle of the product.

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