I love toothpastes!

Right, I am in my senses when I wrote this. Count, check, one, two, three, yes.

Here is when I fell in love with the toothpaste for the first time. One of the first lessons I learnt about business management came to me courtesy the toothpaste. When I was a young kid, my father, who worked in the sales department of an FMCG organisation, told me the fascinating story of how a simple idea about a change in manufacturing of the toothpastes' shell increased its production, sales and revenue. Here is the abridged version of what my dad told me.

In one of the meetings of a toothpaste making company, they were brainstorming how to increase its leading toothpaste's sales and consumption. People gave ideas like running campaigns about brushing more often, looking at different flavours, etc. One guy stood up and said, lets increase the size of the nozzle because people think about the 'length' of the toothpaste on the bristles of the brush and not the width. The wider noozle would give out more toothpaste, making people use more, resulting in them coming back to buy sooner, he argued. The idea worked and the company saw the sales jump and soon it became an industry practice. What followed was an orchestrated move to advertise people covering the entire bristles of the brush with the paste before brushing making the most of the 'real estate' called the brush. This is what I did too. Until recently.

Recently, on a sleepy and dull morning, I wanted to think of something different. As I took the brush and paste in my hand, I pondered if I could reduce my toothpaste consumption (dont ask why:)). I covered half the bristles with the paste and continued brushing as usual. The output was the same- mildly yellow teeth;)- I was elated! This was a 'leaner' process! I loved the toothpaste for letting me think of something creative and fruitful!

The last leg of my love for the toothpaste happened today morning. As I got ready to brush my teeth I saw two toothpastes in the stand. One was disfigured with almost nothing left in it, the other one was brand new. Clearly, my wife had decided that the old boy's time had come (Since I would never know where the toothpaste stock is kept). I looked at the toothpaste and found that there were parts of it towards the bottom that appeared to have a bulge. I saw opportunity. I started to squeeze the toothpaste shell from bottom, pushing whatever was left, upwards, towards the nozzle. I repeated the process and found there was atleast a week's stock (of brushing everyday, not once a week :p) left. I felt overjoyed! Not because I had saved what would appear to be insignificant to most. I felt great because I had made the best of what the toothpaste could offer, even if the scale of saving was relatively small comapred to, say, buying a jacket, it was significant by a toothpaste's yardstick (whatever that is).

My love for toothpastes is special because I have loved it for two extremely different reasons. The first love was about abundance and the last about frugality. Both providing a great opportunity to learn something about life.

In tough times like these, I think we need to think about how we can squeeze the toothpaste to see if we are getting the best out of it. And this can apply to most aspects of our daily life.

We can, and will, see the storm through!

Supercede

Its so funny and ironical that I have to pen this one down. In my office today someone (wont say who:)) wanted to know how 'supercede' is spelt. And they came to me.

This is my office in the UK. Funny. English seeking help on English from an Indian! Lol..