Here is a new and very definite KILLER BRAND that I recently discovered.  How can one company own a 62% share of a highly fragmented category?

Meet Vic Firth.  Every heard of him or his company?  If you play the drums you probably have. Vic Firth drumsticks are the undisputed Killer Brand in the drumstick category.

Vic himself, now in his 70′s, was for years the chief timpani player for the Boston Symphony.  Never satisfied completely with his drumsticks, he began to experiment and make his own.   Soon, he was making sticks for snares, quads, bass drums, etc.  Then one day the real magic happened.

Vic dropped a lapful of snare sticks on a cement floor one day by mistake, and realised as they rattled on the concrete that they made different sounds.  Therein was born the idea of tuned drum sticks, a pair of sticks with exactly the same percussive characteristics and tuning, the Perfect Pair, his invention and his trademark.

Sounds suspiciously like “compelling differentiation” to me.  Since the introduction of the Perfect Pair for snares, quads, every kind of drum you can imagine, Vic Firth has contantly grown until now it is both a Killer Brand and a dominant brand among high school, college, drum corps, rock, symphony and all serious drummers.

It would be hard to find a better example of a true Killer Brand than Vic Firth’s Perfect Pair drumsticks.   How would you like to have a 62% share of your category?