Kebony
A superior product was losing bids to inferior competitors, then they doubled year-over-year revenue.
Kebony was already in a category of its own.
But their customers still compared them to inferior products.
Kebony had a patented process for modifying softwood that put them in their own product category by technical comparison. But, technical comparison charts aren’t enough to differentiate from your competition.
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Diagnosis
Transforming them into durable and long lasting that holds up like tropical hardwood without the sourcing problem, warranted against rot for up to thirty-five years. Set on a spec sheet beside ipe and treated pine, none of that survives. What survives is the number per linear foot, and Kebony lost bids to products it outperformed.
That is not a product problem. You cannot out-spec your way out of a comparison chart.
Treatment
Services
Results
- 2× revenue in year one
- 5× online leads from video
- 2× sample orders vs. the prior period
- 1M+ Instagram Reel views, cumulative
- 772,000+ YouTube views, cumulative
- 500,000 TikTok views, cumulative
Results
Instead of another brochure, Kebony backed an original documentary series and put its wood inside other people's stories — a whiskey distillery outside Seattle, a 1950s A-frame on Lake Superior, an award-winning theatre in Arkansas, a public pier on the Hudson. Architects who had already specified it went on camera across the US and Europe, talking about how the wood weathers. Installers were filmed board by board.
Dream clients began asking to be featured. Seven years on the library is still working: 150 terabytes of cinema-grade footage that keeps getting cut into something new.
The value added to my studio and our messaging was way more than anticipated.
Michael Goorevich, Architect · Kebony customer
Every one of them sponsored end to end. The wood is in the building, so the brand is in the story rather than in front of it.
Two continents, houses to public infrastructure, new wood and wood that has already gone silver.
Architects who had already specified it, answering the question every buyer asks and no brochure can settle: what does it look like in ten years.
Same claims, same photography, same brochure. The difference is whether anyone can tell you apart before they read the price.