Run your product roadmap in public, and let the customers who voted for it pay before it exists.
Rare Beauty and Glossier both operate communities on TYB, which reports more than 2 million users, and Rare Beauty shapes product decisions through that community by its own account. Crowdfunding proved the mechanic more than a decade ago. What is different now is that you can run the whole cycle inside your own store instead of renting someone else's platform.
The build is unglamorous. Metaobjects hold the candidate concepts: a shade, a scent, a format, a colorway, a size extension. Members vote. The winner goes up as a presale product with a real funding threshold and a real ship date. Backers get named in the credits, get the first units, and get a better price. If the threshold does not clear, the product does not get made, and you just avoided a purchase order you would have regretted.
What you get is a demand signal before you commit capital, and a launch that is already sold. What the customer gets is authorship, which outperforms points as a loyalty mechanic because it cannot be transferred, discounted, or matched by a competitor.
The honest catch: voters are not the market. Your most engaged 2% skew toward the unusual option, and the boring shade nobody voted for is often the one that funds the next 3 years. Treat the vote as 1 input against your own data, not a mandate. And public commitments create public failures. Miss a ship date on a presale and the damage lands on the customers who trusted you most, which is the most expensive group to disappoint. Only publish dates your supplier has confirmed in writing.
A focus group tells you what people say they want. A presale tells you what they will pay for. Only 1 of those survives contact with a purchase order.
