Hard luck Emma - Beaten by a Short Product Life Cycle

Emma Rushin of Belper, Derbyshire must have been hoping to make a small fortune when she won a competition by coming up with a new flavour of crisps for market leader Walkers. She took home a £50,000 prize and (potentially more lucratively) she stood to earn 1% of sales of her crisp idea…

Emma’s idea was for Builder’s Breakfast crisps. Never got to try them myself, although I can guess what they might have taste like.

But the bad news for Emma is that Walkers have decided to discontinue Builders Breakfast and focus on its World-Cup themed Walkers Flavour Cup instead. You might imagine that Emma was looking forward to some significant income from her competition win. After all, nearly 11 million packets of Walkers crisps are consumed every day. But perhaps Walkers knew all along that Builders Breakfast have a limited shelf-life or product life cycle.