One of my best buddy from high school, Jason, is starting his own clothing line. The conceptions for his designs — “Henry and Jerks” — stems from the strange phenomenon that girls seems to fall for jerks. He’s at the planning phase of the business start-up cycle.
This phase is marked with a sense of wonder and possibility. It’s exciting to discover the world of options that are available to realize your ideas. For instance, Jason is faced with making decisions on the number of colours to be employed on his design, and the brand, and ultimately cost, of his t-shirts. With a limited budget, it is important to make the right decisions to minimize cost and maximize sales.
His situation reminds me of one of the most important part of launching a business: knowing your market. Two fundamental question:
1) Who’s going to buy?, and
2) How to reach those customers?
One of the easiest way to do this is actually to study what the competitors are doing. Ask yourself the following questions:
1) What kind of a spin are they putting on their products/services? Are they going green, organic or putting the ‘ethically-made’ touch on their product?
2) How do they connect with their customers? How is their product/service customized and made relevant to the customers?
From there on, once you have a firm grasp of your competitions can you really define your own niche within your trade.
Meanwhile, Jason made one of the most important business decision by setting a launch date. August 1st 2009 everybody!