Description: Tire traction aids
Main Pitch: "The fast, easy way out of anything your tires can spin into"
Main Offer: $19.99 for one box
Bonus: None
Marketer: Tristar
Website: www.TowTruckInABox.com
Prediction: Unlikely to succeed
I can think of at least three reasons why this won't work. First, this type of item has been tried before without success under the name Tread Ahead. In fact, I used the item in my December 2011 Response column to illustrate my next point ...
Preparedness is the opposite of impulsiveness. Like flat tires and dead batteries -- and the ill-fated DR products that have tried to solve these problems -- this kind of car calamity doesn't happen often enough to motivate people off the couch. Only a small segment of the population (i.e. the anal-retentive) would carry an item like this in their trunk.
Lastly, this is really a seasonal item. The only people who expect to get stuck in the mud are off-roaders, a segment of a segment to be sure. The only time anyone else might get stuck is when there's a snowstorm, and such storms only affect certain regions of the country certain times of the year. (Refer back to point No. 2 for the type of people who worry about such storms.)
