During my teenage years, I worked for my step-father’s plumbing company. Of course there were times that I would get the disgusting jobs like going to the deepest part of a sewage spill to place a sub-pump. But at times, I would learn different ways to use common tools and objects. For example, sometimes we would repair sprinklers. like the times a sprinklerhead with a galvanized nipple (not plastic like today) was broken off. A portion of the nipple would be left in the fitting. To remove and replace this nipple, we would use something very unusual…a large (1/2 inch?) drill bit. I would pound the drill bit into the broken nipple and turn is with a pipe wrench unscrewing the nipple out of the fitting.
And within a couple of years, somebody adapted the shape of these drill bits to do such a job, adding a handle and such to make it a specialized device to remove broken nipples. IT was called an EZ out tool. It reminded me of my friend Seena Sharp where in her article of Sharp Insights wrote, ” The question is not just who needs what you are selling, but who else needs what you’re selling.” How can you find them? How can they find you?”
In other words, in my example, a drill bit company could have adapted their current product to tackle a new market that didn’t even remotely connect with drilling holes. To understand this though, the drill bit company would have to understand the customer’s needs of a whole different market, and the current trends of that need.
But the analysis doesn’t stop there. In addressing the current trends, the drill bit company would have to understand the changing industry. If they were to discover that the sprinkler industry was converting from galvanize to plastic, then their drill bit nipple remover could reach obsolescence before they recouped their investment in R & D.
Another trend could be that people are moving from sprinklers to drip systems. These types of market analysis can be the difference between a company blasting into a new market with successful results, and a company arriving too late to an industry that has changed.
Before moving into another market, understand it. Then develop your strategies.