The bag for nobody in particular

A week before term starts, a stall outside a school in Ismailia hangs its backpacks on a rail. Most are in one football club's colours, or a rival's. A few carry a cartoon character a seven-year-old would cross the road for. And at the end of the rail sits a stack of plain grey ones.

The grey bag is the sensible one on paper. It offends no fan. It suits a boy or a girl, a child of six or sixteen. Nobody will be teased for it. If you were trying to sell to the whole school at once, it is the bag you would design.

It is also the last to go, every year.

Because nobody walks up to the stall wanting a bag that is for anyone. They want the one that is theirs. The club bag is a bet that only some children will want it, and that those children will want it badly. The grey bag is a bet that every child will tolerate it, and tolerance does not open a wallet, least of all a parent's in the week before school.

Followed to its end, the grey bag is a joke: a product made for all the people who are not anyone in particular. That describes most people, which is exactly why it feels safe, and exactly why it fails.

The narrow choice looks like the smaller market. In practice it is the only market that turns up.