Many owners work hard, build a product better than the shop next door — and still spend years stuck in the same place. In a recent edition of his newsletter, Rony Meisler, founder of Reserva, explained why. And the answer isn’t in the product: it’s in the business model.
Reserva was fixing the right parts in the wrong machine
When Reserva launched in 2004, the bet was simple: make the best t-shirt, the best shorts. And they did — a genuinely good product. But the business stalled. They poured money into advertising when the problem was the price; they hired more salespeople when the customer just didn’t see a reason to pay more. In 2009 they spent a fortune on an award-winning campaign, full of creativity trophies. Sales result? Almost zero.
The mistake, as Rony puts it, was improving the right parts inside a machine assembled wrong. No one had stopped to look at the business from above and answer: why does the customer buy from us and not the competitor? Why do they come back — or not? How much is really left at the end of the month?
The turn: stop selling clothes, start selling a lifestyle
When they finally looked at it all together, it clicked: the customer wasn’t buying the shorts, they were buying how they wanted to feel walking out the door. Reserva stopped selling clothes and started selling an experience — the same move Disney and Starbucks were already making, brought to men’s fashion in Brazil. Anyone can make clothes; the feeling of wearing the brand and sensing it says something about you — that can’t be copied.
The rule behind it: change two things at once
You don’t need to reinvent everything. A study by the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, analyzed more than 250 highly successful businesses over 50 years and found a pattern: over 90% invented nothing from scratch — they took an idea that already worked in another market and brought it to theirs. The bonus lesson: to build something hard to copy, you must change at least two things at once. Netflix didn’t beat Blockbuster with better movies — it dropped the physical store and swapped per-rental fees for a monthly subscription. Amazon doesn’t dominate by having more products — it let other sellers use its store.
The 4 questions every business must answer
Rony boils the business model down to four simple — and honest — questions:
- Who do you sell to? Not the dream customer, but the one who actually buys, stays and refers.
- What do you deliver that the customer can’t find elsewhere? If they had to explain to a friend why they buy from you, what would they say?
- How does the business run day to day? What you do yourself, what’s outsourced, what sets you apart operationally.
- How does money come in and what’s left? Where revenue comes from, what costs the most, and how much truly remains after paying everything.
Wine changed one thing — and became the world’s largest
The example that seals it is Wine. It was an online wine shop that sold well, but with a problem every retailer knows: every month started from zero. In 2010 they changed a single thing — how they charged: they created a subscription club. The customer picks a plan, pays every month and gets wines delivered, with no need to remember to buy. The wine stayed the same; what changed was how the company made money. Today Wine has over 445,000 active subscribers, is the world’s largest wine subscription club, and brought in close to R$1 billion in 2024.
That leaves the question Rony poses: in your business, does the scoreboard reset to zero every 1st of the month? If so, what could you deliver every month to your customer, without them having to decide to buy again?
Where technology comes in
Changing your business model almost always runs through technology: a chatbot that serves and sells on its own, a subscription platform, a recurring digital service that turns the one-off sale into a monthly relationship. That’s exactly where we help — putting into your business the digital levers that bring the customer back without you having to start from zero every month.
Post inspired by an edition of the Email do Rony newsletter, by Rony Meisler (founder of Reserva). Worth reading at the source: businessofbrandspost.substack.com.