back in the early NUMBER_TOKENs a low-level marketing manager by the name of john sylvan quit his job and started work on a device where he could brew a single cup of coffee from a single plastic pod an invention that he would famously go on to regret john sylvan is the man behind the k-cup in an interview in the atlantic he says the pods are expensive to use and he feels bad he ever invented them this device would then ironically be named the keurig which comes from the danish word for excellence it's like people who name their dogs killer and they're like a chihuahua but i guess like the opposite of that this cute little pod would go on to change the way millions of people drink their coffee worldwide create mountains of trash and landfills all over the world in the process and push keurig to a billion dollar brand in the extremely competitive coffee industry but while the invention of coffee pods themselves was groundbreaking the marketing tactics that made it successful were not see most of keurig's profits don't come from the keurig devices themselves in fact a lot of their machines are actually sold at a loss rather NUMBER_TOKEN of the money that they earn comes from those little pods while this might seem precarious it's actually a very good business model this novelty brewing technique guaranteed the coffee drinkers would buy their specific products every time they realized they needed a refill it is what is known as the razer blade business model or the old bait and hook this strategy was pioneered by gillette which makes its money by selling unreasonably priced razor blades initially attracting customers with their really cheap handles sometimes even giving them away for free i actually have a whole video about this on my original channel where i talk about leaf shape which is a zero waste way to shave that doesn't gouge you every time that you need to buy razor blades but plenty of other companies do a variation of the exact same thing game console giants such as microsoft make literally no money off the xbox consoles but instead make all their money off of the games that they sell service providers lure customers in with the latest smartphone given away at a discount but you have to sign up for a huge data plan with a whole bunch of service fees and extra charges done well this model can make a company extremely rich but it does require a business to have some control over what can be used with their products that's why for keurig things weren't looking so good when their patent expired in NUMBER_TOKEN. suddenly that meant that anyone who even knew what coffee was could start making poc could start making pods for their coffee makers desperate to protect their hard-earned monopoly keurig turned to one of the most successful industries in the bait and hook game printers like keurig printers are often sold very cheaply with the intentions of getting their customers hooked on their ink cartridges they're notoriously expensive low quality ink cartridges but you can't just make terrible overpriced products right i mean people will just go and buy something else and printer companies knew this so they found a way to create their own mini monopolies within the industry this has probably happened to you you've gone into the store to look for printer ink and you can't just buy whatever ink is best and cheapest
START_SELFPROMO_TOKEN actually have a whole video about this on my original channel where i talk about leaf shape which is a zero waste way to shave that doesn't gouge you every time that you need to buy razor END_SELFPROMO_TOKEN