Made in Puerto Rico

Why Puerto Rican businesses need to stop using Puerto Rico as a unique selling proposition.

With more than 100% of their goal reached in less than three days, Kytelabs became the first successful and high-profiled crowdfunded startup from Puerto Rico. I became an early backer for a few reasons, including that I know some of the founders but mainly because their video, pitch and product seemed world-class. None of the reasons were because they are from Puerto Rico.

As I started to share Kytelab’s BLEDuinos Kickstarter page on various social platforms I was temped to include a sentence such as: “Back these guys, they are from Puerto Rico” or “Check these guys from Puerto Rico” but I opted for a more sincere: “I don’t understand anything about how this works but I know the guys and they’re the kind of people that you need to support.” It is time to stop using “from Puerto Rico” as a unique selling proposition.

The country of origin is successfully used as a differentiating factor for many products, specially when the country has developed a positive reputation in that category. For example, think about Colombian coffee or Puerto Rican Rum. Also, country of origin differentiation usually works when all other aspects of a product are considered equal. For example, you might prefer to buy an American SUV over a Japanese one when they have similar characteristics.

The main problems we have with this strategy in Puerto Rico is that local entrepreneurs want to play the “from Puerto Rico” card when their products are not up to par quality-wise and when Puerto Rico has not developed a ‘country of origin’ reputation in their categories. These problems are magnified when products or services compete on a global scale.

An example can be found in this message written by the owner of a video club that went out of business:

“Video Club ceased operations thanks to Netflix, Redbox and other foreign companies, in addition to piracy and some freeloaders that didn’t pay late fees. On the other hand, thanks to all that supported us, many thanks for trusting and supporting local businesses.”

I am sorry that a small business had to close but asking consumers to support a physical video club over Netflix or Redbox just because it’s local is ridiculous. And keeping with that theme, check this spam message I receive on a blog:

“Boritweeter.com, the best way to share and discover what is happening right now. Social Network and microblogging, messaging service and SMS. This was created by a Puerto Rican that wants to grow. Support Boritweeter.com, it is from here like the ‘coquí’. Facebook and Twitter are from gringos. Boritweeter is from here, from Puerto Rico.”

I don’t mind someone creating a Puerto Rican social network but asking users not to support Facebook or Twitter because they are not local is ludicrous and insulting.

The Puerto Rican economy doesn’t need mediocre products labeled as “Made in Puerto Rico” that weaken our ‘country of origin’ reputation. We need world-class products with real differentiating factors, unique selling propositions and international target markets. We need to compete with real benefits.

Kytelabs (and Blimp) give us hope that in the near future we will see many other successful world-class products and services that happen to be “from Puerto Rico”.