Competition

As I was falling asleep last night I started thinking about competition. Competition occurs on many levels and at many different times. My interest in competion is primarily business focused, allthough competition occurs in academics, relationships, war and athletics to name a few. The more I thought about it the more I began to focus on resources and how critical they are to your success in any competition. The marshalling of resources is a key factor in your potential victory or defeat. (more later)

What do you think?

-Khris

Tips for the Entrepreneur

Tips for the entrepreneur:

I have had some pretty interesting experiences over the last five years. I was never trained as a salesman and pretty much learned on the job. Nothing motivates you to sell like paying a mortgage. My top 3 realizations:

1. If a customer wants to give you money, take it then and there.

2. If you have sold "it", shut up and let "it" be sold, all you can do at that point is "unsell" - "it".

3. Sometimes you have to tell the customer to buy "it".

4. In preparing your long winded, graphic heavy, presentation remember to include a moment for the customer to buy. If they take that opportunity -see item 2 above.

5. Remember that every customer evaluates your product based on their own set of priorities. It's up to you to determine what those priorities are and shape your "pitch" to show how your product realizes those priorities. For me those priorities can be fit, style, protection level, uniqueness, sameness, beliefs, etc.

6. People barter with small companies, but not with large established ones. No ones goes into Target and offers $10 less than MSRP, do they?

7. Someone has to be the boss, even in a partnership.

8. Know what you do or sell, and do or sell what you know. You can't be a conglomerate from day 1.

9. Don't be afraid to tell a customer NO.

10. Talk to your customers even when they don't buy.

11. Women can help you sell to to a market dominated by men.

12. People buy in herds....others will assume value, investigate, and possibly buy, if others are buying from you. I believe the inverse to also be true.

Seriously...

The Walmart-ization of America

Do you purchase the cheapeast products available? Is that the only factor you use to evaluate a particular product? Has everything been commoditized?

No probably not, but access to inexpensive smartly designed products can be had at most big box retailers. The combination of market competition and cheap labor rates have effectively produced products that are both inexpensive and of questionable quailty, but hey it's cheap right? Buy, break, replace....it's only two bucks. Did you know oil is used in the production of plastic? Forget about cars, what happens to my life if the production of plastic is limited?

This all brings me to producing items offshore. My company produces everything offshore. We have no US production capability. When we initially set up the company we visited several countries in Europe, but settled on one in Asia. I would have loved to set up shop in the US (i think it's better), but I didnt think I could sell enough $800 leather jackets to support a business. So what does this mean? Well, I guess there are manufacturing jobs in the US that weren't created as a result of my business, but the market get's a product it wants at a price it wants to pay. So who looses? I am really not sure.

What concerns me is, if the US eliminates most of it's onshore manufacturing capability what happens if one day the Chinese or another Low Labor Producer (LLP) suddenly decides to stop doing business with us, however unlikey? We will move to some other socio economically depressed area and continue to exploit exceptionally low wages in order to deliver inexpensive products, but the real threat I see isn't this. The real threat I see is that a LLP buys a strong brand or develops its own and can go to market agressively at a price point that an "outsourcer" cannot compete with. What happens then?

-Khristiano