If you're already established in the business world (i.e. you know your market, you know your product, you know what to expect on a day-to-day basis) you may want to consider taking a step to broaden yourself. Obviously this must be carefully considered and prepared for, but it can result in renewed excitement, new opportunities and relationships, and larger income. A great way to do this is to look for untapped markets for your goods.
We'll imagine that your company sells soccer equipment. Shoes to shinguards, socks to shorts, shirts to soccer balls, you sell the works. In the course of your business' development you've likely supplied youth soccer programs, summer soccer training camps, colleges and high school athletic programs, etc. That's all in-the-box style business thinking. Let's brainstorm a bit out-of-the-box.
Ok, where else could we ply our wares? Fashion shows? Perhaps soccer shinguards could be fit onto runway models to breed a whole new trend in women's clothing? No. No that's a terrible idea.
Ah! Of course, we could sell our soccer shorts at the gates of water parks! The slippery material the shorts are made from could zip us down those gigantic water slides even faster and more thrillingly! Of course if someone were to pitch off the side of one of those slides, having gained too much momentum, there could be a serious lawsuit and whatever profits we might have turned would surely be lost. That's not the winning idea, either
Hmmm…this is difficult. Well, have we considered the recreational leagues that meet informally in many towns and cities? Usually, while there is rarely any legal formality, these leagues have a high enough degree of organization that teams like to spend the extra money to buy matching uniforms. I have found in my experience many teams of Latin American, Caribbean, and South American origin who will purchase jerseys representing the country that they hail from. In this case, the matching jerseys are not simply a matter or organization, but a matter or culture, of nationalistic pride, of remembering who they are and where they came from. That sounds like a pretty serious market, does it not?
Keep in mind when looking for your next step that it can be tricky to find. There will likely be some bad ideas tossed around before you get your brain really simmering and the good ideas start to bubble to the surface. That's ok. Remember my idea about a high-fashion line of shinguards? The point is, keep at it. You're an entrepreneur, after all! You wouldn't have succeeded thus far if you didn't have some ingenuity up your sleeve.
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Written by Debbie Dragon for Jim Staley and Wholesale Gopher .
Debbie is a full time freelance writer and keyword optimization specialist. For more information, email Debbiep@mhcable.com