If you had no competition, you could charge as much as you wanted, there would be no worry about customer service and you could just concentrate on getting your stuff made as cheaply as possible.   The stuff of dreams! 

It would be so much easier if the only place your customers could get what they needed was from you.   

But would it?  There are reasons to think otherwise.  There may little competition in your market because it is tiny – a shrinking niche or overtaken by new technology.  Potential competitors may have researched your sector, perhaps even dabbled in it, to find it isn’t worth the effort.     

Directing all your marketing resources to tell the world about what you do is a much bigger effort than being part of the much bigger noise created by a collection of suppliers.  You will be educating your market rather than selling to it.   And a sale can sometimes be the result of an enquiry which was originally directed at one of your competitors. 

Great Ideas

A competitor could have lots of ideas which you can use to make your own business more successful. 

The second mover advantage is the benefit a business derives from following along behind the early entrant.  The first one in carries much greater risk – what does the customer want, how much are they willing to pay, how will you find them?  Far easier to examine existing footprints than to leap into a murky quagmire.       

The ideal purchaser

You will be looking for someone to buy your business one day.  A business without competition is not an attractive proposition and, indeed, competitors in your sector will often be your best prospect for a trade buyer.       

A unique invention or breakthrough idea is not essential for a business to be successful.   We can’t all be visionaries; most great companies are based on doing things which already work but doing them better.

Battling the competition can be frustrating and it’s tempting sometimes to wish it away.  Yet, competition supports both the individual business and society at large, with better products and services and more efficient markets and prosperous economies.  In Soviet Russia there was no competition and the only supplier was the state.  The outcome was poverty, stagnation and devastating famine.

If you would like to learn more about competing successfully Contact Us  for a free consultation.