Product Deconstruction: The Eureka Habit
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Oliver Cookson's opportunity-finding method was a habit, not a flash of genius: take a product you personally use, physically break it down into its components, find out what those components actually are, then phone the people who make them to learn the true raw-material cost. He ran this loop on more than a hundred products before it paid off with whey protein, where a £3-per-kilo commodity was being sold at roughly £30 for 908 grams. The mechanism is that consumer prices hide supply-chain economics, and a few phone calls expose the gap. The final step is deciding what your version does differently — for Myprotein, owning the chain 'cow to customer' and selling direct online. He still uses the same loop today: stop at anything in your day and ask whether it could be done better.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Start with a product you actually use
Pick something inside a category you already live in — Cookson was a bodybuilder buying whey protein, so he understood the buyer, the language and the quality signals. Domain familiarity is what lets you judge whether a cheaper version would actually be accepted.
Pro tip Make it a standing habit rather than a one-off exercise; Cookson ran this on 100+ products before one of them turned into a business.
- 2
Break the product down to its components
Read the ingredients, the spec sheet or the bill of materials and list every input. Cookson turned the tub over and found whey protein, flavouring, sweetener, fillers and vitamins — five things, not a proprietary formula.
Watch out If the list looks short and generic, that is a signal the margin sits in branding, not manufacturing.
- 3
Research what the main input really is
Find out where the dominant ingredient comes from and how it is made. Cookson discovered whey was a byproduct of cheese-making that had been thrown away a decade earlier — a commodity, not a proprietary compound.
- 4
Phone suppliers until one breaks the pallet
Call the actual producers — dairies, co-ops, distributors — and ask the raw price and minimum order. Cookson called 20-30 dairies; most refused to split a 20-sack pallet before one supplier agreed to sell him two sacks.
Pro tip Ask for a trial quantity and be upfront that you are starting small; one supplier backing you is all you need.
Watch out Expect most to say no on minimum order quantity. That friction is itself a barrier to entry protecting you later.
- 5
Do the margin maths before anything else
Compare raw cost plus processing against the retail shelf price. Cookson's numbers: £3/kg raw whey, roughly £5-6/kg finished with flavouring and sweetener, against about £30 for 908 grams at retail. He concluded simply: there's a margin in that.
Watch out Include delivery, packaging and payment processing — not just ingredients — before you decide the gap is real.
- 6
Name the USP you will actually own
Decide what makes your version structurally different, not just cheaper. Cookson chose vertical integration ('cow to customer'), direct online sale as a brand, and made-to-order personalisation of flavour and sweetener level. Multiple USPs stack.
Pro tip If you can name more than one USP, the position is harder to copy.
Watch out Do not claim you invented the category. Cookson was explicit that whey protein had been sold for years; the innovation was the model, not the molecule.
In the wild
Making his bedtime shake in his mother's kitchen around 2002-2003, Cookson asked himself what whey protein actually was. He read the label, researched the ingredient, learned it was a cheese byproduct, then phoned 20-30 dairies and a New Zealand-sourced farmers' co-operative until one man, Andy, agreed to break a pallet and sell him two 20kg sacks for roughly £120. The raw material cost £3 a kilo; the finished blend cost £5-6 a kilo; the market leader retailed at about £30 for 908 grams. He built the site himself, sold direct, and undercut competitors by roughly two thirds while shipping a product with a full certificate of analysis.
→ Myprotein launched from a £500 overdraft and became Europe's number one online sports nutrition brand.
A daily flat-white drinker deconstructs a £12 retail bag of speciality beans: green coffee, roasting, packaging, brand. She learns green bean prices are quoted per kilo on public commodity boards, then calls three UK contract roasters and a green importer. Minimum orders start at a sack. One importer agrees to split it. Her landed cost per 250g bag, roasted and packed, comes in far below the shelf price. Rather than compete on price alone, she picks made-to-order roast level as the USP — light, medium or dark, chosen at checkout — the same personalisation angle Cookson used for flavour and sweetener strength.
→ A defensible direct-to-consumer position built on a commodity input plus a personalisation USP.
Common mistakes
Waiting to invent something nobody has done
Cookson was clear he did not invent whey protein — it had been sold for years in the UK and longer in America. He was explicit that almost everything now will be a slightly better evolution of something existing. Holding out for pure novelty stops you from running the deconstruction loop on the ordinary products already in your kitchen.
Never phoning the actual supplier
The margin gap is invisible until you know the real raw-material price and minimum order quantity. Cookson called 20-30 dairies and was refused by nearly all of them before one agreed to break a pallet. Desk research alone would have left him guessing at the numbers that made the whole business obvious.
Deconstructing a category you don't use
Cookson's edge came from being a customer first — he understood what bodybuilders cared about, where they gathered online, and what quality signals mattered. Running the same maths on a category you have no lived experience of leaves you with a cost gap but no ability to judge product acceptability or where to find the first buyers.
From the transcript
“It was a positive habit I had where I broke it down and I tried to see if I could do it better.”
“But in short, I found out it was £3 a kilo to buy whey protein, the raw material.”
“Can I do that better? How can I make this more attractive to the consumer?”
From the episode
How To Bootstrap £500 into £350 Million - Oliver Cookson Founder of Myprotein
Oliver Cookson