And here, again, John Lewis is in a very strong position. It’s a superb brand blessed with giant awareness and strong associations of being never knowingly undersold, while offering unwavering, first class quality. The bullseye in other words.

Simply writing ‘A John Lewis Home’ at the bottom of a new rental property propels it to a higher level of demand and price insensitivity. That is partly because the presence of the John Lewis brand is so valuable. But it is also a function of a third advantageous factor that makes this new move so attractive: the competition is shithouse.

Just because you can enter a category, and just because your brand adds some value to it, does not mean you should actually extend into that area. Ask Virgin how successful their Cola was back in the 90s. I would argue any brand dumb enough to enter a category dominated by Pepsi, Coke and private label deserves to have its ass handed back to it, with a straw.

The lesson here is you should pick your fights. Look for categories that you can not only enter, but, once there, dominate thanks to weaker, smaller incumbents.

John Lewis brings salience, value and quality to its rental proposition. But it also brings those advantages to a category replete with anonymous operators that have close to zero brand equity to counter them. Name me a famous, trusted property rental company? Me neither.

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