If you're totally comfortable with the products you'll be offering, the next critical question to ask is whether there is a market for those products, and if so how strong that market really is.
If your products are new in the marketplace this does create a difficulty. My business experience has been that it is extremely dificult to gauge the marketability of a new product. Some offerings which I thought would be really successful and were price-competitive turned out to be total fizzers; while others which I'd have thought would never sell proved to be really successful. Obviously you will do the best you can to judge the likely success of an offering, but in the end the market consists of human beings and they can be quite unpredictable.
So if you are thinking of going into business with a brand new product range there is a significant risk involved. One way of minimising the risk is to survey people in your neighbourhood to get their assessment of the attractiveness of the products. This can help, but again beware: people sometimes tell you what they think you want to hear! On one occasion I set up a complete overseas operation on the basis of positive results from a very comprehensive survey, only to find the people who said 'yes' to the survey were not at all as enthusiastic when it came to actually buying and paying...
You may decide it's worth the risk and that you'll back your own judgment. That's fine of course, as long as you recognise the business risk involved.
Another, possibly better solution is to go with a product range which has been on the market for some time and has an established customer base, ideally elsewhere. This should enable you quite quickly to assess its general marketabilty.
Assuming the products are generally selling well, the next question of course is whether the market has already been well tapped in your area. Ideally you don't want too much competition, but if the market is big there may be no reason to fear a reasonable amount of competition. Unless your product is already a household name, most people you talk to will still probably not have heard of it!
These are just a few of the issues which you should consider before deciding to set up your new business. If you're not comfortable that there is a good market for you, do not go ahead. If you're happy that there is, it's time to consider the third critical question.......
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Great job, Arnold. This basic philosophy of filling a gap & solving solving problems for a profit is what being an entreprenuer means. Suprisingly so many people give the questions you've raised far less consideration then you, I, and many of your readers would! In my opinion, people do want to ask: 1) Is the general population ready to recieve this product, will it fill a gap everyone has and have little or no competition? 2) Will it serve the largest segment of our population? A great beginners book, soley based on trends (and not my bias of health & wellness) is Paul Zane Pilser's "Wellness Revolution." Paul has never been wrong in predicting the economic climate & trends and has accurately done so for the last 5 Presidents. He states that the next 10,000 millionaires will be in Health, Wellness, & Anti-Aging..as the world begins to address prevention. So consequently, you have tons of health & wellness network marketing companies doing similar things. My point here is not to promote the Health & Wellness sector of the network marketing industry, but to shine a spotlight on this as an example or exercise. How would you go about your evaluation? It all comes back to what you were saying, Arnold. In my humble but most accurate opinion, you want a company that is out of formulation & concentration (i.e.-'Ground Floor Opp'), but you want it before it has hit Stability; where all the market share has been taken. In summary, a unique product line in 'Critical Mass' or 'Momentum,' with leadership that has been in the field & taken a company to the top will have started the company and already be leading the organization & field strategies based on these understandings. Choose wisely and choose with your heart!
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