Phyllis Berman 09.18.08
Vita-Mix has had a lock on the upscale blender market for more than half a century. Then a brash competitor discovered YouTube.
Since the Great Depression family-owned Vita-Mix Corp. has sold snazzy, expensive food blenders to juice bars and gourmets. The company never had much marketing pizzazz. It used live demonstrations and, when TV came along, infomercials. The low-key strategy worked. Sales topped $100 million last year in the tiny market for high-end blenders. Until recently Vita-Mix pretty much owned all of this manufacturing specialty.
Then commercial blender maker K-Tec in Orem, Utah jumped into the consumer business. Last year the Vita-Mix rival rolled out a $400 Blendtec household blender and promoted its Total Blender model in a series of 50 or so Web clips that showed K-Tec founder and Chief Executive Thomas Dickson pureeing golf balls, a rotisserie chicken and an Apple (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) iPhone, among other things. The series, on YouTube and its own site, got 160 million hits. Blendtec got even more free advertising…
