p. 65
Q   Let me give you what we have marked as 
Exhibit No. 7.  That’s a bulletin dated - - has 
two dates on it.  One is an original and one is 
a revised publication. 
A    Originally issued on November 6, 1958.   
Reissued again in February, 1965.
Q   And what’s the, the topic of this particular 
bulletin in 1965?
A    Plan for developing new products.
Q   Why don’t you tell the jury a little bit about 
why you thought new products were important 
to, at that time, U-Haul?
A    Businesses do not survive over the long 
term on a single product line.  It is a well 
known business principle that products have 
a life cycle —
Q   What do you mean by life cycle?
A    Well, products have a life cycle of a 
sort, a life cycle of it’s marketability, follows 
an S curve like this (gestures with hand).  
Now it may have an awful long S curve.  For 
instance, the automobile has been around 
basically the same from,19, maybe 16, as it is 
today, or maybe even 1900, not too much dif-
ferent, same product, still there, and it is, but it 
is on an S curve.  They go through pioneering, 
introduced to the public, through advertising, 
or however, and then take off and, and what is 
called exploitation stage, a stage where you 
make money, you create real wealth.
Q   The S curve you are talking about - - what 
is that curve indicating?
A    A time thing, a time thing.  It took 27 
years to pioneer the TV set.  It took nine years 
to pioneer the zipper, no, no, probably took 
longer for the zipper.  The ball-point pen was 
something like eight years before it got, before 
it got through the pioneering stage, in other 
words, being accepted and people are buying 
it in great quantities and you create wealth, 
actual wealth, and then soon you fall off into 
what flattens out and you are in competition, 
and the only thing you can get at that point is 
the cost of interest and labor.
Q   Did you notice S curves occurring within 
U-Haul?
A    Well, the S curve of the trailers and, and 
of the trucks, of course, I follow them carefully, 
but every product line had that, even small 
things like the hand truck didn’t start out suc-
cessful.  If it is a product that is needed and 
wanted, then you go into a great growth stage. 
It is called economic development, and that 
occurs if this is a successful product.  And 
then of course it, when competition comes 
it smooths out and levels off, the curve - - it 
runs flat for a long, a long while, and then it 
disappears, the product will disappear from 
existence. 
Shoen v. Shoen, Testimony 1994

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