Flipping over Flip acquisition
Cisco bought Pure Digital Technologies, the makers of the Flip video camera yesterday. We featured the Flip story on Grommet a few weeks back, so I feel a pride of association about their acquisition. We use the Flip all the time–we have three of them at Grommet. In fact this past Monday’s video interview was shot entirely on Flip, by Joanne. We normally do have a professional set up, provided and manned by our partners coBRANDit. But we acted very quickly on Monday’s Grommet because our featured author, Mary Pat Kelly was only briefly available in Boston. (Jeanne stayed up all night to finish the book, making her a little bleary-eyed in the video.)
Anyway, I can hardly claim that we “made” the Flip. The company’s clear-eyed execution of a simple, powerful consumer electronic product made it.
But we do have serious aspirations to help products like the Flip make the big time. Here is one tiny example of that kind of success. Early days, we told the story of Soapnuts, a very improbable natural laundry product made from, well, dried nuts. Subsequent to our story, the founder of the company, Lisa Albrecht, was contacted by a person putting together the celebrity goodie bags for one of the main Oscars parties in Hollywood. She told Lisa she had seen Soap Nuts on Daily Grommet. Yay.
Regular people, entrepreneurs, marketing and product managers will discover Daily Grommet first. But I am quite certain that astute buyers from major on, and off-line, retailers will consider Daily Grommet a go-to source for new product ideas. Way more efficient than attending a trade show, and they will totally piggy back on our research and curating. And that’s the goal: to help great products get discovered and distributed. No one needs to buy schlock when there are Grommets to be found.
Anyway, I hadn’t really thought about Grommet playing a role in a company being acquired. But I can now see how being selected for Daily Grommet could certainly be a proof point for a product and a company.
Well done Flip! Well done Cisco!
Jules Pieri 
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