Are you familiar with FX hair styling products?

After having used hair gels to manage and style my hair for the past 20+ years, I was recently introduced by my hair stylist to a different category of products which were more of a paste or wax.

After seeing how it made my hair look and feel, I was instantly hooked. Of course, I didn’t want to pay the $20 for a small tub that they sold at the salon so I started looking at alternatives and found many sub-par products with name brands before finding a really great product that I am now loyal to.

Why did I have to endure wasting my money on these big brands with sub-par products, which were clearly not intended for people with hair like mine before finding the right one?

The answer is the same reason for why your mutual fund (as great as it may be) is getting ignored: marketing and distribution.

I (like many semi-informed consumers looking to make a change) gravitated towards the bigger brands that I had heard of, which were also conveniently placed on the shelves at the local pharmacy or outlets (near eye level).

I tried nearly all of those well-known brands, which were all quite disappointing before accidentally stumbling upon a brand I had never heard of located on the bottom shelf as I was picking up something that my 4 year old daughter had accidentally knocked off a shelf above it. This product called FX Hair Paste was exactly what I was looking for, but I might never have discovered it had it not been a fortunate accident.

Too many mutual funds will suffer the same fate. Chances are, they are a much better fit for certain investors than some of the ones offered by the larger, well know fund providers but will never get discovered due to the lack of marketing and distribution. Some of the savvy firms choose to do something about this problem, while others choose to sit on the sideline and hope that some other variable drives in assets.

I hope FX survives, but they will need to do something else rather than hope that little kids knock off their competition off the higher shelves to get discovered.

by Seuk Kim