The Secret Society of People Who Know the Formula for WD-40
wsj.comSo what is the manufacturing process? Compartmentalized knowledge doesn't scale. Is it totally automated? What is the procurement process? Even if every ingredient is a commodity, they have names and prices and second sources, etc.
"Compartmentalized knowledge doesn't scale."
I don't understand what "doesn't scale" is supposed to mean here. They've been making and selling this stuff for decades. In the US at least, it's ubiquitous. Pretty much everybody knows what it is and a huge number of people have a can around the house. They apparently sell in 176 countries around the world.
What kind of "scale" do they need that they don't already have? There's no world in which they can sell 10 or 100 times more of this stuff than they already do. It's useful stuff but has limited applications and a can of it lasts a long time.
Seems like they've managed "scale" just fine.
If an amateur chemist can quite faithfully reverse engineer Coca-Cola in a year, so can they reverse engineer WD-40.