Your best product isn't selling. What's the first move?

If you said "drop the price," welcome to the club. It's the lever almost everyone grabs first.

Charlie Munger told a story about a guy who did the opposite. It takes about 90 seconds.

Munger had a friend named Bill Ballhaus, who ran Beckman Instruments. One of their products was complicated, and if it failed, it did real damage. It was also better than what the competition sold.

It sold badly anyway.

Why? It was the cheapest one on the shelf.

Munger said the low price made buyers think it was a "low-quality gizmo." So Ballhaus did something that felt insane. He raised the price by about 20%.

One story. Fair. So here's a second one, and this one has chocolate.

In 1972, Berkshire Hathaway (through Blue Chip Stamps) bought See's Candies for $25 million. Back then See's sold about 16 million pounds of candy a year.

By 2007, it was selling 31 million pounds and making $82 million in pretax profit, according to Warren Buffett's shareholder letter that year.

So what did Buffett do in between? He's said he raised prices every year, right after Christmas. His own words: "we could raise prices 10% a year and no one cared."

The fine print: See's volume roughly doubled over 35 years while prices climbed. We can't prove the price hikes caused the growth. But they clearly didn't kill it.

→ Price is a signal. When buyers can't easily judge quality themselves, the price tag does the talking. Cheap can read as risky.
→ Margin buys the good stuff. A higher price can fund better packaging, faster shipping, and support that actually answers. (That's our read, not a study.)
→ Discounts set the anchor. Lead with 30% off and you've told people what the product is really worth.

One anecdote isn't a pricing strategy. Both of these products are ones where the buyer can't easily check quality (a complicated instrument, a gift box). If you sell a commodity where everyone compares prices side by side, this may not apply to you.

If you want to test it, do it like an operator:

→ Test one hero product, not the whole store. Try 5 to 10% and hold everything else steady.
→ Watch repeat rate, not just conversion. A higher price that tanks second orders isn't a win.
→ Add proof next to the price. Reviews, a guarantee, packaging that looks like it costs what you charge.
→ Cap your discounts. Time-limited beats permanent, every time.

Cheap isn't always the safe choice. Sometimes it's the loudest way to say you don't believe in your own product.