The Rise of Fieldbar: A Brand So Popular That Even Scammers Are Exploiting The Demand
The Rise of Scammers Prove Fieldbar is An African Luxury Brand Everyone Should Be Following
Fieldbar's R2,200 ($120) cooler box is sold out and scammers are trying to exploit its popularity.
Here's why Fieldbar is inspiring and what the scammers are up to.
🧵THREAD🧵
Fieldbar is an outdoor products manufacturer based out of Cape Town that was only started in 2018 but in a short space of time has become a leading luxury brand selling – cooler boxes.
Yes, things that keep drinks cold.
I love the Fieldbar story because entrepreneurship and starups is too often associated with Tech only.
In addition many businesses (especially in tech) are not built on understanding what the African competitive advantage is.
With Fieldbar the genesis of the idea was understanding the value and positioning that they could provide as a business in South Africa that others globally couldn’t.
The quote below from founder Lee Hartment is gold.
Read this, pause and reflect!
Understanding what you can do better than anyone else in the world often results in more success than blindly copying global business.
For example, many people gifted in design shouldn’t be trying to start clothing brands but redesining something else.
Smeg for example is a billion-dollar company from selling well-designed toasters, kettles and other kitchen appliances.
This indicates there may be many product segments that are not so obvious with unmet demand for well-designed aesthetically pleasing products.
Case in point Fieldbar cooler boxes.
Cooler boxes are generally ugly partly because they are associated with camping and rugged outdoor living.
Just look at the most popular cooler box on Amazon in the US.
Im sure not many are posting that on their Instagram stories.
My guess is since most of the design/fashion hubs are in places like New York, Paris, Milan and London which have short summers and long winters, so cooler boxes or outdoor products have not been top of mind in terms of design
Fieldbars on the other hand are "Instagramable" and so they have benefited a lot from organic influencer marketing.
They are now so popular that they are fully sold out for the year in South Africa with the next stock available in January 2024.
Not only have they been a hit in SA. Fieldbars are now being sold in the Harrods, the most prestigious luxury store in the UK.
Interestingly when you search on Harrods' website for cooler boxes of the seven products that come up three are Fieldbars!
In some way, they are creating a new market or category of products that they can dominate.
All this from a factory in Capetown which had less than 50 people.
Not all brands that call themselves luxury are but Fieldbar ticks the boxes.
1. Sold in a major international market ✅ (if you only sell locally you are not yet luxury)
2. High demand at a high price point✅
3. Imitations or fakes - ✅This leads to my last point...
Because the demand for Fieldbards is so high and they have been out of stock several fake sites have popped up claiming to be selling Fieldbars at steep discounts.
The most blatant fake site uses the "fieldbarsa" in the website name a clear rip off of the original "fieldbar".
They have lifted all the product images onto their site and are “selling” them for half price.
I guess once you pay you will never get anything.
Filedbar's official website says they don’t have stock themselves until January 2024. Yuppie Chef, their sales partner says the same.
I really doubt this site has 50 units available at half price.
If you see something that is good to be true...you know the rest.
Otherwise hats off to the Fieldbar team.
There is no public information on their sales but an article from Nov 2022 said they had manufactured 15,000 to date which probably was worth around R30m ($1.8m)
With their expansion in 2023 I guess that number is now much higher.
I am looking forward to see what they do next and hopefully many other non tech companies will do the same and reinvent new products and industries.
What do you think about Feildbar?
Do you have one? Is it the real deal or overpriced and overhyped?
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Thanks!