But if you can clearly define a market and its needs upfront, you can tailor your product or service offerings narrowly to meet that demand and quickly gain more wallet share than your competitors.
Related: How to Target Your Message to Find Customers
What exactly does this mean?
1. You could be like the enterprising young woman in northern California who discovered a secondhand store’s almost hidden section of distinctive children’s clothes and toys. As it turned out, the store’s owners wanted out of what they saw as a dead-end business. The woman took over the lease and reoriented the entire operation to focus only on children’s products, turning a 1,200-square-foot “dead-end business” into an 800-square-foot startup that was profitable in six months and expanded into a new downtown location.
2. You could be like the mechanic who went through the lengthy and fairly expensive process of getting his auto dealer’s license so he could go to the local car auction to make bids, specifically on older model BMWs. He didn’t want to sell the whole cars, but rather to take them apart and create a line of aftermarket parts for BMW owners and mechanics.
3. You could be like the computer repair technician who decided to strike out on his own in the highly competitive field of information-technology services, only to discover a more specialized market that offered higher rates, more loyal customers and more referral business. That narrow market turned out to be Apple computers.
These examples illustrate a general truth about business opportunity: The true opportunity may not be apparent at the outset. Niches exist in every broad category, and your job as an entrepreneur is to figure out what they are and whether they offer a profitable business opportunity. Find More:
