Want Most

I've never had the need for the Instant Pot in my kitchen but have gifted a few over the years to young people starting out on their own. I've been told by atleast a couple of them that it is the most useful gift they ever got. It really does work as advertised and a big fit with the target consumer for a reason. Notwithstanding it has filed for bankruptcy. For the average person, the logic does not add up at all.

From the point of view of the consumer, this makes the Instant Pot a dream product: It does what it says, and it doesn’t cost you much or any additional money after that first purchase. It doesn’t appear to have any planned obsolescence built into it, which would prompt you to replace it at a regular clip. But from the point of view of owners and investors trying to maximize value, that makes the Instant Pot a problem. A company can’t just tootle along in perpetuity, debuting new products according to the actual pace of its good ideas, and otherwise manufacturing and selling a few versions of a durable, beloved device and its accessories, updated every few years with new features. A company needs to grow.

One might ask why a company needs to grow so compulsively. There is a world where Instant Pot never sold to private equity. Instead of chasing mass-market domination, it kept a lean team, made modest production runs, and treated its millions-strong Facebook community as its main sales channel.

No sprawling product lines, no desperate holiday discounts. The revenue engine wasn’t endless new cookers but high-margin accessories, recipe subscriptions, and colorful limited editions, something like KitchenAid’s iconic mixers. Manufacturing scaled only to meet predictable demand, avoiding the boom-and-bust cycle of the pandemic.

Profits were steady, if unspectacular. The brand stayed beloved, its cult intact, quietly thriving as a durable, slow-growing kitchen essential. In this alternate timeline, Instant Pot didn’t need to be everywhere. It just needed to be indispensable to the people who already swore by it.