Barbican / Kaliber
When it was launched as the first alcohol-free lager in the late 1970s, Bass breweries' Barbican quickly became one of the most disliked brands around. Guinness's Kaliber came in two years later with better taste and more interesting branding. Twenty years on, Kaliber is the alcohol-free lager sector.
Chucks / Pampers
In 1932, Chucks launched the first disposable nappy. But they were expensive and ineffective. In the 1960s, soap giant P&G entered the market with Pampers. P&G now dominates, and who remembers Chucks?
books.com / Amazon
books.com thought it had it made when it launched the first online book store in 1996. Amazon wasn't even second, but fourth into the market. It came in with massive scale and now dominates the market.
Betamax / VHS
In 1974, Sony's Betamax was the first video player on the market. But Sony made the tapes just one hour long. Two years later JVC launched the VHS with two-hour tapes. The rest, like Betamax, is history.
Stowells of Chelsea / The rest of the market
In the early 1980s, new technology and growing UK consumer confidence meant that it became feasible to sell wine in a large bag located within a box with a tap – the wine-box. There was a race to market, which was won by Stowells of Chelsea. But the technology was so widespread that rival brands mushroomed within months and Stowells ended up as just one of scores of players.
Atari / Nintendo
Atari first created and then dominated the video games market in the 1970s. But it became complacent and failed to innovate sufficiently. By 1983, the company crashed amid a welter of consumer indifference and market domination passed to Nintendo.
3 / Vodafone
Hutchison Whampoa's 3 became the first European operator to offer video telephony when it launched on 03/03/03. It has since spent hundreds of millions of pounds on educating and growing the market. Despite this, most analysts expect the eventual market leader to be Vodafone.
Japan / The West
Throughout its history, Japan has excelled at finding the best the world has to offer and then adapting and improving it. This is what accounted for its stunning economic growth between 1945 and 1985. Since then, it has tried to lead the world in consumer technology and the economy has stagnated. Just a coincidence?
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