Three Kittens: A Business Fable
This article is posted under Business.
In a pet orphanage, three kitten friends are talking to each other.
“I heard there’s someone coming over today who’s interested in adopting one of us,” Cathy said.
“Really? Now that’s exciting,” Catlin replied. “I can’t wait to get out of here and finally have a home.”
“Me too,” Catrina answered. “So I guess we better prepare. I’ll practice my dance moves now so when the humans come, they’ll see how talented I am and choose me.”
“Yes, that’s why I’ve been practicing since last night,” Cathy remarked. “I prepared a lovely song for the humans when they come. I hope they’ll like my singing.”
“That’s great Cathy. How about you Catlin? What are you doing to do to impress the humans?” Catrina asked.
“I’m not as talented as the two of you, so I guess I’ll just sit here in my cage and try to look my best,” Catlin answered.
“Oh, too bad but good luck anyway,” wished Cathy.
After a while, a girl and her mother came inside the pet orphanage. The three kitten friends got excited and prepared themselves.
The girl walked towards Catrina, who was doing some tumbles and turns. “Look Ma, a dancing cat!” the girl exclaimed.
Then Cathy began singing and the girl said to her mother, “This cat is also talented! She’s singing some lovely kitten song.”
Then the mother and daughter saw Catlin, just sitting quietly inside her cage. The daughter’s heart skipped and said, “Awwww, how cute this one is. Mom, can we adopt her?”
"Please adopt me."
“Sure,” the mother replied. “Let me just talk to the manager.”
Musing:
Cats are not famous for dancing and singing, except maybe in Broadway. 
But in reality, people get them as pets primarily because they’re cute. This is the reason why Catlin got chosen in the end.
Business Lesson:
Fancy gimmicks and promotions may catch your market’s attention, but what sells is the real value of your products. Show that to your audience and they’ll buy.
To receive more stories on business and personal finance, please subscribe to Ready To Be Rich.
Special thanks to Lindsay of Writing for your Wealth for inspiring me to write this business fable.
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Photo courtesy of Anatoli Papirovski.
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Hi, my name is Fitz and this is my blog entitled, Ready To Be Rich.
This is a very interesting strategy, Fitz. I guess it’s really best when we should not only know our product, but also know what our customers want the most. I will stick this in my mind.
Off topic: I am not sure if it’s me who has a problem, but your blog is very slow when I opened it. I’ve been visiting your blog regularly, but this is the first time that it became slow.
That was a great story and an illustration of a natural good marketing strategy. We really need to consider what our customers really wanting for a product. Because they buy a product to consume…thats why they are called consumers.
Fitz, are you using the WordPress super cache plugin? It will help speed up your blog.
Hi everyone. Thanks for the comments.
Anyhow, I don’t really know what’s causing the delay in loading. It’s actually fine on my end. Maybe it’s because I’m currently doing some backups of my blog. I’m preparing to transfer my hosting this week.
Thanks for entering the contest, Fitz!
I love the idea of a business fable, and bonus points for that cute kitchen picture (those always work, hah!). I’m glad success doesn’t depend on singing or dancing, because I’m horrible at both.
I tend to only agree partially. I have a business selling taiwanese food in Singapore and we save on “branding” because we were confident of our food. In the end, we do get lots of repeated customers but new first timers are much lesser. Therefore i think some gimmicks and promotions are still required to capture the “audience” before you can “sell” them your real value.
Great lesson! It is so true. Cheap tricks and promotions are just smoke and mirrors which hide the real value (or lack there of) of a service. Most of the time a gimmick is a means of compensating for lack luster products/services or a weak method underachieving marketers use to make up for a lack of promotional skill. Its so funny, you can always tell the quality of a product by how much ‘pushing’ it takes to sell it.
Dear Sir, Nice story. I’m an event organizer and I have an ongoing bazaar at 6797 Ayala Ave. cor Rufino St., Makati. I’ve been in business for 25 years now, that’s half of my life. I also collect anything cat and am a cat breeder, (persian and himalayan).
I really like the message of the story. You don’t really have to sugarcoat or exaggerate your products and/or services to the dismay later on of your customer or client. I guess your credibility and integrity are far more important that the wealth you’ll accumulate because of deceit. God bless!