Could you imagine a fruit stand that just sold bananas? Kinda lame, don’t you think? Customers want variety. Where’s the blueberries? The apples? The mangoes? Where’s all the options?
The problem is it’s hard to scale a business that depends on customers with varying desires and wants. Today they want plump sweet blueberries. Tomorrow ripe un-spotted bananas. The next day’s demand is for kiwis with a sweet and tart pop to them. It’s hard because you have to master all of the steps to achieve perfection in all those things.
But what if you just did bananas? What if you mastered all the steps for growing bananas, transporting bananas, preserving bananas, improving bananas?
Maybe going all in on bananas is a little bit… well you know… but that is exactly what Chiquita Brands did. A company doing $3.1B on mostly (and for the longest time, exclusively) bananas. Show me a farm stand that does $3.1B and I have a Brooklyn Bridge you should consider buying.