Company Blog

New Item Failure: No Shame

by Adam Zack — January 28, 2026

“As leaders, we need to embrace failure like we do success.”

New items, campaigns, programs and initiatives are the keys to growth in our grocery business. To be successful they need great planning, thorough communication, coordinated execution and the patience for it to get established and grow some roots. It’s not easy and it’s not inexpensive. Too often a great product is just put on the shelf with little or no signage, story telling or promotion. No one is surprised when 30 days later very few have sold, or it goes out of code and like that, it’s buh-bye, never to be seen again. If only someone had loved and nurtured it, it could have been rookie of the year, or at least been an alternate on the all-star team. But that’s not what this is about. Let’s assume that we do all the right things. We like the product, promote it, tell its story and to our lament it still just sits there. It doesn’t resonate with the customer and we start feeling bad for it. It’s a failure. The shame. As leaders, we need to embrace failure like we do success. Well over 50% of the new items and programs we try won’t be around to see 2027. And that’s OK, because failure, when executed well, is the result of trying something new. There is no shame in failure when the process leading up to it was planned and implemented flawlessly. We need to realize when this dog just ain’t gonna hunt and move on. Sure, we might do it a little differently next time, but our takeaway is that we learned and moved on to the next project. In baseball getting a hit 1/3 of the time puts you in the hall of fame. No one looks at it like you’re failing 2/3 of the time. Like my Uncle Butch said about water skiing: If you’re not falling, you’re not trying.