Going From Leader To Follower

I mentioned before about a coffee place called 85 degrees. Today I'd like to talk a bit about their rise and fall (sort of). They are a Taiwanese company which kicked off around the time I arrived in Taiwan. They made a bit of a name for themselves by having some unique features that most coffee shops at the time didn't have.

The first is they had some truly great cakes. Sweet, a bit moist, and no various chunks of fruit inside like most Taiwanese cakes usually have. The best part though was that their prices for these delectables was quite low. You could get a whole cake for only a tad more money than just a slice would be at other coffee shops.

Unfortunately this practice ended. After awhile their prices seemed to be going up every few weeks. What was once a place that had lines of people waiting to get a cake, was eventually line free. No longer need you go early to get the cakes before they were gone, now you could go late at night and still see a fully cake section.

The other special thing about them is that they were open 24 hours. To my knowledge they were the only coffee shop that did this. I'm using past tense because this practice also changed. Now despite the "24h" signs, locations close at the same time as other shops.

What to make of all this? Well on the one hand you could say that this is pretty clever. Taking an initial lose in price by selling things for less and being open 24 hours, all in a effort to greatly separate yourself from the dozens of other coffee shop chains out there. Then once people know you, slowly conform to the industry norms. But having spent so much time here, i'm guessing it was something else. That this company started out with a vision, one i commend them on, but as with most start ups in taiwan, they didn't lay out a realistic budget, and quickly realized that they had two options; become like everybody else, or close down.

Or perhaps it was hubris, as they claim they are the most widespread chain in the country, but they definitely had to make concessions to get there. Not to mention that again knowing business in taiwan, over saturation is killing them and making them close down location after location.

But I think the true killer is that they just aren't popular. When people speak of coffee, they don't mention this store, and when they think of cakes they definitely don't think of this store. A quiet little secret of mine is back when their complete cakes were very cheap, i would get a large tiramisu cake for friends' birthdays. They would all give me credit for getting what seemed like such an expensive cake, not really knowing the true price. This place never could become the exact type of place it set out to be, and that's a shame cause what they set out to be was a truly unique place.

The picture is of a little tiramisu bowl which costs about a buck and a half. This was just a harsh reminder of the good old days, when a complete tiramisu cake was around three bucks.

[Photo Co-op]

Great story, could be about many coffee shops, not just in Taiwan. Make themselves unique and create a niche market, then slowly conform and lose their main customer base. Could not help but notice even the cakes are 'cute' as with many products in Taiwan.

[Taiwandaily]

@handmade Ha, yes, good eye! i didn't even notice that. I'm guessing so much time in Taiwan's cuteness overload, has dulled my ability to spot "cute" things. I think this might actually be a good thing. A survival mechanism of sorts.