So, this crowdsourced sewing machine could be sold and distributed widely. But why did Singer's prove to be the one with staying power? It was not due to Isaac Singer himself, who Liebhold describes as more of a “scalawag” than a businessman. Rather, it was the smart businessmen who took charge of the company, particularly lawyer Edward Clark, who co-founded I.M. Singer & Co. He created the company’s early advertising campaigns and devised the “hire-purchase plan” for customers who could not afford the machine’s high price—the first installment-payment plan in the United States.

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The company expanded the practice of door-to-door sales, in part because the hire-purchase plan required canvassers to collect weekly payments, but which also allowed salesmen to bring the product into prospective customers’ homes, and show them how such a novel machine could simplify their lives. The company opened up flashy showrooms where it could demonstrate how the machines work (a scale model of an original Singer showroom will be included in the exhibit), and took machine demonstrations to county and state fairs.

Singer Co. also became active in buying up used sewing machines and tamping down secondary markets of used sewing machines. Like the latest iPhone today, Singer would roll out a new sewing machine model and encourage consumers to replace their old one.

A fascinating history of how Singer sewing machines emerged from a pack of companies starting from roughly the same place. In fact, all the companies had joined together to create the first patent pool so that they could shift from litigating the bejesus out of each other to growing the market.

So many of the lessons of Singer's success still echo in today's tech world. How it's not enough to build a better mousetrap, or even the first mousetrap. You need to figure out distribution and how to overcome customer hangups and purchase hurdles. We tend to have a cultural bias against sales and marketing in the tech world, and perhaps in business in general. We revere product design as a craft. In our new networked age, however, the cognitive challenge of getting users to hear about and try out your product or service is quite underrated.