Co-operative competitors? Not so farfetched as it may seem

Competition: a bitter struggle with no ground given. 
But not always…
Brands compete, and that’s always been the straight and simple law of the market that no standard manager or business enterprise would dream disputing! Good and fair competition where quick wits and foresightedness sharpen the cutting edge over rival brands makes for sweet tasting entrepreneurial success and satisfaction.

But rewards are not always forthcoming and results may be bitter indeed. When products don’t get any better, when markets start getting sluggish, when the going gets brutally tough, then competition doesn’t sound so great after all. What returns there may be end up seeming more like a windfall than just and durable desserts.
Brands are so focused on competing come what may that they are sometimes oblivious to the fact that there are areas in their relationship with the market and customer-consumers where they may have interests in common. Minimum quality standards is one area of the meeting of the competitive waters that applies to all product sectors. Failure to mutually come to an agreement on this point may lead to market stagnation that may initially only hit the worst businesses, but then bit by bit the rest as well.
When demand in general is at stake then cooperation among competitors to preserve the market for all comers becomes a sensible proposition. Collaboration among rivals under such circumstances may even appear obvious. But what’s even more interesting is when normally stalwart competitors work together to develop the market. In this case competitors may share and circulate among themselves basic skills and know-how, jointly striving to inform and even educate the consumer to best ensure overall market growth. Competitors may viably continue collaborating on these grounds, while at the same time it’s every Brand for itself when it comes to deciding who gets the larger slice of the expanded market cake.
A good example of this sort of cooperative-cum-competitive pattern is afforded by the Easy Serving Espresso (E.S.E.) Consortium. A bit of history will help to better understand this noteworthy case of co-opetition.
Before the E.S.E. Consortium was set up in 1998 only a few Houses traded in ready-to-use, throw-away coffee sachets, and these retained an extremely tight hold on their customers. The customer was in fact required to opt for one Brand or the other on an exclusive basis, the Brand then providing its customer with the full range of commodities and services, from the coffee maker to the fully processed and packaged pods or servings. The market looked so promising that other operators (coffee bean roasting Houses and coffee making machine manufacturers) anxiously tried to cash in on the pickings in an equally «closed-shop» manner. The scenario was typically one of tough competition. The customer, it should be noted, was seriously running the risk of ending up being the prey, lassoed and bound tight by an exclusive supply agreement, the longer and tighter the better. 
But the customer and ultimately the end consumer is not the kind of person who wants to feel held to ransom.
Knowing this and how important it is to show the consumer consideration, in the nineties illycaffè decided it was time to take a chance and went ahead and liberalised the use of its servings patents. Trade and press were stunned by this decision. The idea was to get the highest possible number of coffee processing Houses and coffee machine manufacturers dealing in filter paper servings to set down and subscribe to a Standard, first and foremost in the end consumer’s interest. It was a move that went in the opposite direction of that of the «closed-shop». The consumer was now free to combine different coffee with different coffee making machine Brands out of those adopting the Standard.
Like with most revolutionary ideas, at first only about ten producers showed interest for the project. Without a doubt they can now be deemed pioneers with a solid capacity for farsightedness. Today, E.S.E. certified products run to 163 (88 espresso coffee makers and 75 servings). And that only includes those actually authorised to carry the E.S.E. certification label, while the products that have de facto adopted the E.S.E. Standard but have not applied for E.S.E. labelling run to several hundreds.
A widely acknowledged General Standard may thus be said to have been born. It may not be the only one but there’s no other that boasts among its ranks so many prestigious Brands belonging to 26 important corporations. Cafés Richard, Lavazza, Saeco, De’ Longhi, Starbucks, Kraft Foods, Seb-Moulinex, and Drie Mollen are just some of the Brands that have endorsed the E.S.E. label and who can now display it on their products thanks to their confident commitment to its Standard. This undisputed success fully bears out the initial intuition that consumers want to be given options to choose from. And it is on the consumer’s right to choice that Brands can compete while continuing to strive and work together for goals of common interest. There are different stages in this ongoing collaboration. The Standard’s goodwill may be said to have been safely consolidated by now, as witnessed to by its many prominent subscribers. The next step is building up and extending consumer awareness of the label, so there’s still much room for collaboration among its sponsors.
Competition’s a good thing and it’s hoped that it’ll continue to stay around for a long time, but it must never aim at depriving the other of something. It must always strive to make what’s good better. Excellence is ultimately what’s at stake and it’s in this sense that competitors should struggle to outdo each other to the advantage, first and foremost, of the end consumer.