Show Notes
One of the struggles and causes of anxiety for small businesses is the competition. It’s either the reality that you’ll lose deals to the competition, OR just the anxiety because you might (or when will you?)
“I can’t make any money in my area”
“No one can sell for that price”
One of the best ways to combat this is by getting in front of the knowledge. When you know your competition, you:
- Can get ahead of customers who shop
- Improve your products and services
- Be sure you are actually charging enough
- Know your strengths
Steps To Competitive Analysis
Identify Them
- All competition – This is anywhere your customer might buy a similar product. For example, Walmart and Bass Pro Shop might be on this list.
- Close competition – These are businesses that do close to what you do, but not the same. These might be screen print shops if you do embroidery.
- Direct competition – Companies that do almost exactly what you do, such as a company that sells DTG one-off shirts, when you offer the same thing.
Make a list and categorize them.
Gather Information
Info – The Basics
- All competition – What might someone buy there? How much is it? What is it like to shop there?
- Close competition – What do they offer? Why might someone shop there?
- Direct competition – This one is where you actually want to spend time. You should be looking deep.
- What do they sell?
- What prices do they advertise?
- Do they appear to focus on any niches?
- Is there anything they do that you can learn from?
- Read Reviews
Info – Social Media
For basically everything below, don’t bother with the All Competition and try not to focus too much time on the Close Competition. You really want to put the effort into Direct Competition.
- Review all their social accounts
- Look for how they post
- Don’t focus on the number of followers, but posts that get interaction
Info – Websites
- How do they look? on your desktop and on your phone
- What info do they show?
- How does it compare to yours?
- Is there anything you don’t like?
- What can you learn about their size, age, pricing, products, niches
Info – Shop Them
This work can be done by yourself or someone you trust.
- Call them, what is that like?
- Ask for a quote
- Find out delivery times
- Look for ‘hidden fees’ (set up, art, etc.)
- Get details on what they will or won’t do (will they do the art? How much? Will they let you provide shirts? what brands do they sell?)
Analyze
Now it’s time to step back and look:
- What are they GREAT at?
- What are they good at?
- What are they weak at?
If you compare yourself, where can you shine? Look at their weaknesses and find where you can be stronger.
Maybe they cannot deliver anything in less than 2 weeks, but you can do next day.
Maybe they only offer really cheap shirts they stock, but you offer higher-end apparel.
They might advertise low prices but have lots of hidden fees.
They might appear to be a very diverse shop, but they really only focus on a couple of niches.
Create Your Competitive Plan
FIRST – did you determine that it’s REAL competition? If so, then…
This is where you can make it a point to show off your strengths that your competition doesn’t have.
- Advertise these strengths on your website and social media
- Mention them in phone calls and meetings
- Do email blasts or local ads
“Can deliver shirts in 2 days”
“Top quality apparel that won’t shrink after one wash”
“High-end art services included in the price”
“Full-color prints – print your dog, baby, or anything else on a shirt”
Be sure to repeat this process often and don’t be intimidated. There will always be competition, but smart business people can always find a way to stand out. If you are ahead of them, you can always come out successful.
Transcript
Mark Stephenson:
Hi, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast. Trying to say it different every time now, it’s weird. This is Mark Stephenson.
Marc Vila:
And this is Marc Vila. And today we’re here to talk about analyzing your competition.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes, we are.
Marc Vila:
Yes. This is a great topic. This is just something that comes up so often in our Facebook groups, when we’re doing sales demonstrations, when somebody just calls us up and is asking for marketing advice. People are always concerned about competition. And I think that it’s worthy of an episode. I mean, I always say this because it’s true, but after you listen to this episode, you’re going to take something out of it that’s going to get you more business.
Mark Stephenson:
Hey, this one will, or at least maybe it will bring down your blood pressure a little bit.
Marc Vila:
Okay. Yes.
Mark Stephenson:
Give you some hope if you’re not selling as much as you thought you might, or if you’re just just getting started. If you haven’t gotten your machine yet, or just looking at the business, man, I think you should listen to this episode multiple times, because frequently, it’s just, you have perceived competition, and we’re going to talk about that. You’ve got perceived competition, it’s not real competition, so you’ll be sweating stuff that you don’t need to worry about at all.
Marc Vila:
Right. I consider it two kinds of competition. There’s anxiety creating competition. And this is just signs that you see, something you heard of, a website you may have visited, and you are just very concerned that this is the competition that’s preventing you from growing, or they may be coming after your customers, and nothing has happened yet, or maybe it happened one time out of a hundred. And that’s something that you’ll learn about in this episode. Then the second is your actual competition. These are folks that frequently you run into and your potential customers saying, “Oh, I’ve also talked to so-and-so.” And every once in a while, you lose a job to them.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I mean, that does happen. We’re not going to sugarcoat that at all. It just happens a lot less than you might think. And one of the points that I’d to get across in this particular episode is there are a lot of people who look into and really are interested in getting into the custom t-shirt business, for example. And they use competition as an excuse not to. So, they’ll see somebody selling $10 t-shirts in their area, and they’ll use that, “Well, I can’t find a way to make money selling t-shirts for $10, or for $8.” Or they’ll look at the numbers that we talk about in our podcast and online, and they’ll say things like, “No one can sell for that price. I obviously can’t get into this business.” So, please keep these things in mind when we’re talking about analyzing competition, whether you’re in business or not.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. This is something you do before you’re in business. This is something you do when you first get started. And this is something that you should be doing reasonably frequently, whether it’s every six months, or every year, or every quarter. I mean, that’s going to really depend on your business, but you should be looking at your competition. And we’re going to talk a little bit about why you’ll stay ahead if you’re doing it on a regular schedule, because a lot of businesses aren’t.
Mark Stephenson:
Yep, I agree. And there are some ancillary benefits to doing this competitive analysis, that you’ve got pinned out here, Marc. And one of them that I like is, you really have the opportunity to improve what you do when you look at the competition. That’s one thing that we’re going to go over. Also, you can be sure you’re actually charging enough for the products if you do this. And you get to know your strength, where are you better than everybody else?
Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. And the amazing thing is, I’ve done this plenty of times for ColDesi and other businesses that I’ve worked with or for, and a hundred percent of the time, there are two or three or more things in the business that are so strong or so great that you’ve never given yourself credit of. And these are the things that you should be shouting constantly. And we can get into examples later. But if you’re really good at one thing, whatever that might be, customer service, or art, or providing a quality product, or a hundred other things, that should be something you should be talking about every single time, especially when you do some competitive analysis and realize that this is a strength of yours.
Mark Stephenson:
Agreed. And I’ll give you a quick example. Just this morning, I was chatting with a customer on Facebook, and a ColDesi customer. They bought things from us in the past. And they were looking at a new direct-to-film printer. And they were surprised at the price that we charge for our direct-to-film printers versus one that she sees on eBay that you can buy directly from China. And that’s a circumstance, “Well, yeah, that machine is a lot more expensive, a lot less expensive.” And that actually gave me the opportunity to recognize, again, to list out the reasons that you want to buy from ColDesi. And just go through like, “These are all the reasons.” By the end of the chat, she was like, “I’ve got a lot to think about,” because the value scenario makes it worth it. I mean, totally worth it. So, as you go through these two, I mean, keep that hope in mind.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. I had a separate example, but similar. I had a landscaping company that I worked with. And he, “What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I do marketing. Oh, I’ve been this, that, and the other.” Essentially the conversation just got into, I said, “Well, what are you particularly good at?” Like, “Why do you think customers stick with you?” Because I said, “There’s a million landscape companies. How can anybody stay in business?” This is like the concept, how can anybody stay in business? How can anybody beat the competition? And so he sat there, and I said, “Because honestly, like you have a nice mower. You know how to trim well.” Like, “I mean, so what is it?”
For him, he said, “I am really diligent about calling my customers back, and texting them, and emailing them. So, if they email them, I definitely will reply to that email sometime during the day. Between stops, I stop and I answer texts and phone calls.” And he said, “Because people have a lot of questions or they’re worried about a lot of things. And I just always reply to them.” And he said, “Everybody that I talk to always seems to stick around.” And I was like, “That’s it?” I was like, “That’s your thing?” And I said, “You should just talk about that all the time. If you meet somebody, you should just say, ‘Listen, have you ever had a company that you’ve worked with before? Like, you feel you can never reach them? Not me. You text me, I will respond to you within, if not right away, within hours.'” And he was just very encouraged by that. And he said, “All the time, I was focusing on all these other things when the strongest thing I had, I was already doing. I never really talked about it.”
Mark Stephenson:
That’s great.
Marc Vila:
So, let’s get into it then. What are the steps to creating a competitive analysis and doing something with that?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I mean, you should write this down, of course, when you start doing this, because you’re going to identify your competition, all of it, anybody that you can think of, that you would consider competition. And you could even ask your customers whether or not they’ve shopped at any other places, and what that competition might be.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And we’ve put competition into really like three categories, right? So, there is all competition. So, if somebody is going to buy a shirt, where can they buy it from? We’re going to specifically talk about local business here, I think, right, Mark?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I mean, although, I think Walmart is a good example.
Marc Vila:
Yeah.
Mark Stephenson:
Just to get it out of the way.
Marc Vila:
Right. And they’re local because somebody could drive there.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. Right. As opposed going online.
Marc Vila:
I’m speaking of, not in terms of all competition could mean every website that sells t-shirts, right?
Mark Stephenson:
Yes, which is a lot. It’s more than seven.
Marc Vila:
You’ve got to do a little bit of knowledge of saying like, “Am I a local business? Am I a niche business? What’s my niche? Is it fishing shirts? I’m just going to look up fishing shirts.” But you also might be a local business, and you focus on locally, so what’s all the local competition? Walmart, Bass Pro Shops, right? I mean, these are places where if a small business, if there’s a golf course in your area and they want all their employees to wear white golf shirts, they could go to Bass Pro Shops or Walmart and buy white polo shirts, right?
Mark Stephenson:
Yep. If you use fishing as an example, I actually used it in the ColDesi playbook that I’m working on right now. And you can buy a fishing-themed t-shirt for $11 and 64 cents at Walmart right now. And then you can go buy a shirt with a similar design at Pilages or Pilagos or something, it’s a very high-end fishing store, fishing accessory store. You can buy a very similar shirt, same number of colors, same quality for $36. So, that’s your competition, that would be the Bass Pro versus Walmart for just a simple fishing shirt.
Marc Vila:
There you go. There you go. It’s a good point. So, all competition is just everywhere. What’s if we’re going to say local, local for t-shirts and polos, and this could be for anything you could sell, home decorations promotional items, somebody could go to Target and buy a bunch of pink mugs there, and that’s what they’re going to use to give their customers, right? So, that’s all your all competition. Then there’s your close competition. Close are businesses that do like what you do, but not the same of what you do.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. You have to expand on that one a little bit.
Marc Vila:
Yes. So, if you do direct to garment printing, a close competition could be a screen print shop, okay? If you sell custom mugs and tumblers, a close competition might be a place that sells other gift items like that, that could be customized. But maybe they don’t do anything that, maybe they just do apparel, or they just do home decor. But somebody could choose, if you pick some avatars in your head, which we’ve spoke about, some of my potential customers, and if one of my potential customers is people planning birthday parties, right? Actually, before I get into it, let’s just say direct competition quickly. Direct competition are people who do exactly what you do, like almost literally.
Mark Stephenson:
Someone else with another DTG printer.
Marc Vila:
Yes. Yes. They sell the same exact product. They have the same offering. So, in this case, partygoers are my customers. All competitions like Target, Walmart in my area because somebody could go there and they can buy… They want to give a party gift, and they can go there, and they can just buy a bunch of pink mugs and fill them with candy, and that’s the party gift, right? Close competition could be, there’s a store down the road that sells like coasters, and hats, and stuff like that with custom stuff on it. So, they could go there and they can buy a coaster and a sun visor with their initials on it or something, right? Direct competition, because you sell mugs and tumblers that are customized, would be another shop locally that specifically sells customized mugs and tumblers.
Mark Stephenson:
Yep, I got it.
Marc Vila:
Okay. So, we identify this stuff and then we make a little list and categorize them. Don’t go crazy because you could also say that a completely oddly off-the-wall business could also be competition for you.
Mark Stephenson:
They could decide not to do the party favors and just rent a clown for the day.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, yes, right.
Mark Stephenson:
So, we can do that. The clown guy is not your competition. Don’t worry about his pricing.
Marc Vila:
Yes, exactly. You just use some logic, and this is going to be so different for everybody. It’s really hard to narrow it down, but hopefully in that example it’s good enough to get you in the thought process. You make a list and categorize them, all, close, direct.
Mark Stephenson:
Yep. I think that makes sense. And I would start with the direct myself, if you can find them.
Marc Vila:
Right. This is just an exercise you should do. You should spend an hour, you’re not gathering too much information yet, you’re making a list, you’re Google searching, you’re asking friends, you’re driving around. This identification process could be a short-term thing that you’re doing behind your desk, and it can also be a long-term thing that you just pay attention as you drive around town. And as you attend parties, ask people, “Where’d you get that?” stuff like that. So, this isn’t something you do once and you’re done with. So, now that you’ve made a list and you’ve categorized them, we want to start to gather some information.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. And so, I would say the basics for all competition… So, what is the competitive item that they might buy there? So, for example, if you’re using the party favor thing, then, heck, a Walgreens might be your competition if you’re in a small town. And what would somebody buy there? If it’s a Target, if you’re demographic everybody shops at Target and you sell party favors, what would they buy at Target? And just get a general idea on what those items are and how much they cost.
Marc Vila:
That’s great. And then you move into your close competition and it’s similar, just like you put in the example, what else do they offer? Why somebody might choose to go there instead of even shopping at your place or calling you up? What’s their offering? What would somebody spend there? What would they get for their money?
Mark Stephenson:
That should be pretty easy the closer to your direct competition that you get. Earlier you used the screen printer, right? They would be close competition, because if you’ve got a DTG printer, they’re not going to sell five shirts to anybody, but they’re still in the shirt business. You’ve got to know, why would somebody buy from a screen printer in general? What is that pricing like? And what is the experience like? What is that customer experience?
Marc Vila:
And you can use a dollar amount as well. During this analysis, you could say, if we’re talking a party planner, as the example, what could they get for $300 here?
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. I like that.
Marc Vila:
So, what could they get for $300 at the high-end shop that sells coasters and hats? Well, maybe they’re particularly expensive. Very, very nice, maybe they’re doing rhinestone hats and coasters made out of aluminum, gold plate, and beautiful things.
Mark Stephenson:
Gold-plated coasters.
Marc Vila:
For 300 bucks though, they may be getting one coaster for each guest, right? If they go to Target, they may get a bunch of little things that are not that interesting. And if they go to your direct competition, well, they can get the custom mug with a custom hand towel stuffed in it, and a pen or something of that effect.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. And that’s when you get into the real details, you want to dig in as much as you can, find out what they’re offering.
Marc Vila:
Yes. And when you get into the direct competition level, when you’re getting the basics, really start to get into what do they sell? What prices do they advertise? Do they focus on particular niches? Is there anything that you see that’s obvious that stands out, that they push, that they sell, that they offer, just in general? And we’re not in comparison mode yet. You’re just gathering the ideas, and you want to learn as much as you can. When we’re talking about gathering information, you should spend probably the least amount of time on the all competition, just get a basic idea. A little bit more on the closer competition. And majority of the time on the direct competition.
Mark Stephenson:
when you are looking at direct competition, Marc, and just getting the basics, what do they sell? Are you talking about the kinds of t-shirts that they sell, the kind of decoration that they offer? Give me an idea of what you’re looking for in each of these.
Marc Vila:
Okay, great. So, nothing specific, and just everything in general that you can gather without doing a deep dive yet, because we’ll do a deep dive later. So, what do they sell? They sell t-shirts, mugs, signs. What prices do they advertise? No advertised prices. Do they appear to focus on any niche products? There’s a lot of sports stuff on their website. I’m not really seeing anything besides sports stuff. Is there anything you can see that you can learn from them. They put a lot of focus on creating custom art for you. [inaudible 00:19:10].
Mark Stephenson:
Oh, that’s a good, what’s their main thing. Yeah. It’s kind of, what’s their main thing. Right.
Marc Vila:
Right. So, then when you start to look at this, that you may come to the conclusion in the end that, “I’m not going to dive much deeper into them, because I’m selling to partygoers, and to birthday parties, and bar mitzvahs, and wedding type of things, and these are all the things I’m doing. And this one particular competition, everything seems to be sports-centric, and I’m not really doing sports.”
Mark Stephenson:
Got you. “I’m events, they’re sports.”
Marc Vila:
Yeah. So, maybe or maybe not, they might not be really anybody worth going deeper into, but this is part of it. Now, in a small town or an area where there’s not many places to go, they may focus on sports, but they may do anything, so you may run into them. In a bit larger area, you may just eventually push them to the side and say, “I’m probably never running into them.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yep. Okay. I like that. That makes sense.
Marc Vila:
Next, we are going to gather information on social media.
Mark Stephenson:
So, a good place to start is if they’ve got a website. You can look at the bottom or on one of the sides and just look for their social media icons. You can Google their Facebook page, basically. See if they have an Instagram account, TikTok, things like that. And really, that’s a great place to find out what kind of a relationship these people have with their clients, because a lot of times the reviews will show up on their social accounts, so you’ll get a better idea of what they’re to do business with. And you’ll also get a sense of how involved they are in that particular media, like how often do they post? Do they answer anybody’s questions? I know you shouldn’t focus on the number of followers they have, but you can look at the numbers and just see, like, if it’s seven, then no one goes to that page, then they’re not actually using it. If it’s 10,000, then they probably have a lot of fake followers. But at least they’re active. So, you’ll learn a lot from some people’s, some company’s social media pages.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And this is a great opportunity to learn from them, for one, what do they post? What image do they show? Again going back, do they appear to show any prices online? Do they appear to have any niches that they work with? And really, one of the reasons that in our notes we say, “Don’t look at the number of followers,” is you can easily get swallowed up in these numbers. You go to a competition, “Oh, my gosh, they have 20,000 followers. I have 19, 17 on my family.
Mark Stephenson:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Marc Vila:
There’s no way I can compete, right? So, look at their posts. What’s the interaction like, is anybody ever responding or liking? So, if you going into their post and they have one, two likes, almost no responses, who cares about those followers? Nobody’s looking, nobody’s liking, nobody’s interacting, nobody’s saying, “Great job.” Nobody’s saying, “This is a really cool shirt. I can’t wait to get them.” If none of that’s really happening, then I just wouldn’t be focused on that number of followers, I would look at interaction. Conversely, if you see every post they’re having lots of conversations happening and you’re brand new to social media, then this is a great opportunity to learn from them. What are they doing? What are they saying all? What are they asking?
Mark Stephenson:
There’s also a magic little spot inside if you’re doing research on Facebook where it will actually show you if they’re running Facebook ads, and it will let you look at those ads. So, you probably won’t see many, but there are definitely people out there that are doing okay with Facebook ads. And you can see what the competition is doing if you look.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, it’s great. And it is just a great opportunity. Just again, you’re just learning from them. What’s a little bit of information about them? And how can you use this later on?
Mark Stephenson:
And also by the way, I mean, don’t assign any judgment here. So, if you come across somebody and you go to their website and it’s okay, and then you get to their Instagram account and it’s amazing, professional models, and great t-shirts, and just everything looks great, don’t close your shop, because you’re going to go to Facebook, or you’re going to go to the web, or you’re going to go to a different niche, you’re going to walk into their store and see a different story. There’s opportunities all over the place. It’s just good to know that maybe social media profiles, Instagram, they do a fantastic job. What can I especially learn from that to try to compete.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, it’s great. It’s great. And we’ve mentioned that you may have already found them on the web, or you found their website through social media, or you found them, their website in the first place. But the next place you’ll want to go, not necessarily in this order, by the way. We chose social media and websites, you could do the opposite. But you’re going to want to gather some information off their websites, too. And this is similar to social media gathering. How does it look?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Marc Vila:
What’s the quality of it? Like what are they showing? What are they showing off? You could do a little bit of, how does this compare to mine? Don’t get swallowed up in it again, plenty of websites. There’s website that sells holiday decoration stuff, and Mark Stephenson know that every year, I’m a bit obsessed with it, but this year’s a new venture for me. And this one particular website, the quality of the site is not that great, not that great. Customer service A+, pricing A+, quality of product A+, website not that great. Another company out there, their website is super clean, beautiful. You could tell they just revamped that like yesterday. Forums and reviews, nobody likes doing business with them, only if they’re the only one with the item in stock. Okay. So, they may be really good at sourcing products, that’s how they stay in business. So, it’s just something to consider. Don’t beat yourself up about it, but learn from it, okay?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I also think when you’re doing this, it’s important to look at both on the desktop and on your phone.
Marc Vila:
Great.
Mark Stephenson:
So, when you’re looking at somebody else’s website, they definitely can behave differently. And some people even still have completely different websites from scratch, on- that they have designed for mobile versus on the desktop.
Marc Vila:
Great point. It’s important to look at both. And while you’re online, what can you learn about them? How big’s the company? How long have they been around? Do they have pricing online? Do they have any niches that they offer? What products do they sell? Are they already aware of what they’re really good at? And are they already shouting that out at the top of their lungs? Like we mentioned earlier about the communication with the landscaping company, do they already know something about that, that they keep repeating over and over again on their website, that they know is a strength of theirs? They’re telling you their strengths right there, so make sure you write that down. Anything that you see mentioned multiple times is definitely worthy of a little bit of note and a little bit of paying attention.
Mark Stephenson:
And I think also it’s important for your competition when you get down into direct especially is to make notes of whether or not they show prices online. I found a lot of local t-shirt shops here in the Tampa bay area just don’t, like you have to fill out a form to quote. And others are more the DTG model where they’re happy to take one order and you can upload your artwork. So, depending on your business method, you could easily find what everybody’s charging for stuff in your area and what that experience is like, because it’s all online versus, “Okay, if I want to order something, how crappy is that form you have to fill out?” And it’s usually pretty bad.
Marc Vila:
You got me thinking about something here, actually. With the social media and looking at websites and getting into this analysis, I would really probably not bother with the all competition much at all.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay. Yeah. I Agree.
Marc Vila:
Outside of just, “I sell polos. And I want to know how much Walmart sells PO moisture-wick polos for? I mean, yeah, do that, but I mean you don’t need to go to their social media and look how Walmart does social media.
Mark Stephenson:
Oh, right, absolutely.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, you don’t need to go into their website and deep dive into all the offers, because they’re not super competition. But maybe just knowing, “Okay, how much is a golf style shirt at Dick’s Sporting Goods, that’s a Nike, how much do they sell it for? How much can I buy a Nike or a generic brand that’s very similar? How much can I buy that for and decorate it and sell it to my customer?”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.
Marc Vila:
That’s good knowledge to have, because you can turn that into a sales pitch later on.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I like that. And I do have one burning question though, all of a sudden. And that is, does Walmart corporate have an Instagram account that everyone follows? Are there a lot of people out there that are waiting to see what the new release at Walmart is going to be?
Marc Vila:
Yeah. I would say that the answer that I do know is most, just about every major brand out there, recognizes they need to have some sort of a social media presence. I’ve not heard much about Walmart and their Instagram, but I do know that they focus a lot on their LinkedIn. We’ve discussed this in the past. They spend a lot of time focusing on their employees, and their technology, and why Walmart is a good place to work, and why Wal Walmart is a good place to invest your money.
Mark Stephenson:
Interesting.
Marc Vila:
So, they’re not necessarily selling t-shirts on there. This is a complete side note, but it’s interesting. They’re not selling t-shirts on there, but they’re… but they are selling “why would you want to have a career at Walmart?” Because not everybody, I guess, I mean, surprise, not everybody that works at Walmart stock shelves.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. Somebody should write that down and share it with their friends.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. They have marketing professionals, they have sales development people, they have people who are engineers at trucking routes. So, there’s very high-end careers, and they want to appeal to those people, and LinkedIn is a place they do that.
Mark Stephenson:
I’m glad you clued me in. I was going to call them and see if they wanted some help with their pay-per-click advertising.
Marc Vila:
Okay. Yes. They don’t have anybody that does.
Mark Stephenson:
I guess it’s already filled. I guess they probably got that worked out.
Marc Vila:
So, but digressing back, don’t spend a lot of time looking at that. Now, you can learn from those brands, of course. There’s always knowledge to be gained, but really, at this point in time, we’re focusing on who is the direct competition and potentially some close competition.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. And just to go back through the websites, for example, since I trailed this off a little bit. How do they look on your laptop, desktop, tablet, phone? What information do they show on the website? Do they display pricing, and shipping times, and things like that? How does all of that compare to what you show? Is there anything that you can learn from it? Is there anything you don’t like about their website? Is there anything that you really love?
I like the idea that the website and the social will also reveal their niche and what their focus is. Like Marc Vila said, if somebody has your exact equipment, same storefront, same marketing budget or whatever it is, but they’re focusing on high school sports and you’re focused on the event market, then you’re not going to run into each other. If they’re closer, then you should see how big is the company. How long have they been around? Is there a personal story about the owner or the employees? Are they really community oriented? Do they have all of the same t-shirt products? Or do they sell the same mugs? What’s unique?
Marc Vila:
Yes. And one important thing to mention, where we are now, is we’re not getting too deep into comparing ourselves yet. We’re information gathering. We’re still in that stage. So, you can have in your head, “Oh, I wish I would’ve done this. But I’m not there yet. I’m gathering information.” There’s a reason for that. What you want to do is theoretically you’re going to have five companies, two companies, whatever the number is that are your close competition, and you’re going to have notes that are in order, social media notes, website notes, reviews.
By the way, we didn’t say reviews, but reviews are part of this, as well. You mentioned it earlier on, social media, but Google Reviews, Yelp, I mean, that’s part of the search on social. Then you get to stand up and look down at the table with all of your notes. And now you have a bird’s eye view of everything. Then that’s where we’re going get into the analysis. So, I think it is important that we’re still gathering information. And there’s one more thing we need to do for gathering information, and that would be the shop up, secret shop up.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I like that a lot.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. And this is, it could be done by yourself or someone you trust. You could pay somebody or it could be somebody, but it needs to be a trusted person who’s going to do it well. And you contact them, fill out the form on the website, give them a call, ask for a quote, find out how quick can you deliver. Look for hidden fees. Is there a set of fees? Is there an art fee? Is there a screen fee? Is there a delivery fee? Is there a first time customer fee? Find that out. And the reason I mention that is, there was… Gosh, this is probably 2019. We were looking at blinds and prices of blinds with Brian in the office. Him and I were his office or mine.
And we were looking at this, and he’s like, “Gosh, I can’t believe that this company sells a completed hat for $19, one hat.” And he said, “This particular hat, our cost is $17. How do they even do it?” And we’re thinking “Oh, it’s a loss leader product or, oh, maybe they have a direct connect with the manufacturer.” We’re getting into all this stuff. And I said, “Oh, I’m just going to buy one and get it.” So, I go to buy it. There was a $25 art fee by the time we got into the basket. So, the hat wasn’t $19, the hat was… And then there was something, it was like some fee for each hat. That was a like $2 fee for each hat. So, the advertising made it look like the hat was $19. But the hat was actually 19 plus two, so the hat was really 23 or 24. And then they were charging an art fee and all this stuff. So, in the end, that singular half that looked it was $19 was actually like 45.
Mark Stephenson:
Geez.
Marc Vila:
Which, okay, now we can understand how somebody can sell one hat for $45.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Right.
Marc Vila:
So, you want to look at that with your competition. Find out, are there any hidden fees or extra costs versus what they advertise online, and you just straight up ask. I went, “Oh, I went on your website and I saw you would do 50 shirts for this amount of dollars. Are there any other fees I should be considering when I’m making a budget on this, for art or anything else like that?” “Oh, yeah. You don’t have your own art, no. I just know that we need like a bulldog and it has to say ‘fighting dogs.'” “Okay. We would charge $50 for that art,” or whatever the number is, right?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I like that. I also think that you should try to shop them in multiple ways. Like you said, if you’re on the website and they have a chat icon, chat with them and see what that response is like. See if anyone responds. Fill out the contact form, and see if anyone ever gets back to you. If it’s on Facebook, go to their Facebook page, go to their Instagram account, and just send them a message and see if they respond. And because it’s not just the product and the price, it’s also the experience in doing business with them. Like in Mark’s story, how likely are you going to be to go back to that company with the not $19 hat? Probably not. It was too much effort to find out how much you were actually going to spend. And make sure that you ask questions about minimum quantities. If you’re going to be great at selling one shirt yourself, then see what they charge for one shirt.
Marc Vila:
Right. And, and any other detail you can, “What kind of shirt are you using? I’m really concerned about shirts that shrink.” Oh, whatever. I mean, this is going to be all unique for you. You have to consider what your own questions are going to be. “I’m concerned what shirts are going to shrink? How are they going to be?” See how they answer that question? “Oh, well you know, all shirts shrink.” If that’s their answer, then you know they’re probably selling a really cheap shirt. So, that’s a piece of information. “Oh, no. We make sure that we only sell shirts that are… I mean, yeah okay. If you put it in the dryer on high heat, we might see some shrinking. But for the most part, we never get that complaint.” Okay, they probably are selling a really nice shirt. So, if you can find out brands, delivery times, all that information, gather what you can and learn what that experience is going to be if you were a customer.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. By the way, I just want to say, if they respond with, it’s a three and a half ounce tri-blend with 50% cotton, 30% poly, the rest in rayon. If they respond with details or using a good shirt.
Marc Vila:
There you go.
Mark Stephenson:
They’ll definitely do that.
Marc Vila:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And this is all just great information to gather. And you also will learn a little bit about their sales process, about customer service. And I also am a fan of rating that yourself. If you’re going to shop five people, make a little scale, give them stars, and write questions that are good for… Hopefully, you’ve listened to a bunch of episodes of this podcast and you’ve heard episodes where we talk about how to answer the phone and how to reply to emails, because we’ve talked about that stuff in the past. So, maybe you put on your notes for business that, “One thing I’m going to do is, I’m going to make sure I’m super friendly when I talk on the phone.” And you’re thinking that, so put that as a rating for them. How well do they answer the phone, and give them stars, t-shirt shop.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
I mean, I’m not going to give them one star, because at least they said they were a t-shirt shop.
Mark Stephenson:
They didn’t say this is Bob.
Marc Vila:
Two star. Yeah. Yeah, I forget what business I called recently, and the guy just goes, “Y’ello.”
Mark Stephenson:
Green.
Marc Vila:
It was friendly, but I was like, “I’m trying to call such and such.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Oh, I hate that.
Marc Vila:
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” And I said, “Okay. Is that you?” “Oh, sorry.” And I was like, “Gosh, one star.” Like, I mean, come on. I mean, I guess he was friendly, but… So, star all this stuff, how friendly were they in answering questions? How clear were they about pricing? Were they trying to rush you off the phone? Just find all that out and rate it.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And you know what, if you want to go the extra step and you want to invest a little money in the process, go ahead and order the shirts. If it’s a close competitor and everything seems good, then maybe have someone else buy two shirts with a specific design on it, so you can see how’s the delivery experience? Did they ship on time? Is the quality as good as it sounded like they were going to send you? What’s the quality of the print? How does it feel? When you create your competitive plan later, it gives you even more ammunition, because you get to say things like, “You know what, I actually ordered two shirts from them and they were pretty good. Not as good as mine, which is why mine are a little bit more expensive. But I’m holding one in my hand right now. And here’s what I about mine better.” So, you can add it into your competitive plan later on if you go through the whole process.
Marc Vila:
Right. And you do or do not have to buy things.
Mark Stephenson:
Right, you don’t.
Marc Vila:
I want to be clear that if you’re shopping for 50 shirt, 50 hat orders, I don’t expect you to spend $500 to test your competition, right? So, that might not be your niche. If your niche is DTG printing, as we mentioned with selling one shirt. Buy a shirt, spend 30 bucks, see what it’s like, see what they deliver. Make those calls on your own. There’s no right or wrong way to do that, you have to decide.
Mark Stephenson:
Agreed.
Marc Vila:
So, now that we’ve gone through and you’ve gathered as much information as possible, hopefully you’ve got it in an order, in maybe even a spreadsheet, something where you can look at it and know where everything is. Now, it’s time to analyze this. I would put an analysis section at the bottom, like a summary. So, what are they great at? What are they good at? What are they really weak at? What was your favorite thing that you dealt with them on, or you saw? What was something that you really didn’t like or you think customers wouldn’t like. Right?
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I think it might even be good to rate yourself next to it.
Marc Vila:
Okay, great.
Mark Stephenson:
In other words, if they’re really great at the website, they get five points. And your website right now is three points. So, go ahead and rate yourself in comparison, so by the time you’re down to creating your competitive plan, it’s already mapping it out for you. You can look, “Oh, here are all the areas. It looks like I’m consistently bad over here.” You can identify that as a place to improve.
Marc Vila:
Right. And you can even do like a little versus chart, if you want, with check marks, website, them, social media, me, pricing. And you can go back and forth, and maybe you put a check for both because it’s equal. And what I don’t want to happen is you can get sucked into a mental black hole here when you look at some of these companies, right? They’re going to be website better, social media better, pricing better, offer better. Customer service, A+, delivery fast. It’s going to be like, you may run into those and it’s going to be scary at that point in time.
If that does happen, then the last thing you always have when analyzing your competition, that nobody can ever be, is you’re the only you, right? They never have you. So, if they win all the check marks, you, a hundred percent the time, get me. And you just know if you’re a pretty cool person, or a nice person, or friendly, or you have a bunch of friends and relatives. People are just going to do business because it’s you. And then you can improve all those other check marks over time.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. So, I mean, and lots of reasons not to get blacked out. First of all, if you do find somebody that’s significantly better on every front, congratulations, you have a lot to work on. And also, not 100% of the people looking for a custom t-shirt in the area is going to call up.
Marc Vila:
Right.
Mark Stephenson:
Okay? I am confident that while Marc Vila really likes his lawn guy and he does a good job, odds are he’s not the absolute best optimal lawn guy within a 50-mile radius of Marc’s house.
Marc Vila:
Right.
Mark Stephenson:
Right? How did you get the lawn guy? “I saw the ad. He was across the street. We started talking.” That’s how most people choose. So, you don’t have to be better in all these categories because you’re not actually in real life competing with everyone 100% of the time.
Marc Vila:
Right. And this is a funny thing, but there is, in lawn, we’ll use that, there is a company who’s been in business 10 years that consistently is one of the worst lawn companies to do business. I mean, this isn’t a real company. Somebody’s got to be the worst, right? If you rank, if you pick a hundred ways to rank lawn companies and you gave them all points, somebody has to come in last. And that person who comes in last doesn’t mean they’re at a business next year, you know what I mean?
They may have been in business 10 years, and they’re just always towards the bottom. You know why? It’s just, they work in an area and they happen to be there, and they’re in business, and that doesn’t make them necessarily great at anything. And chances are, they’re not doing any of this competitive analysis, they’re not listening to podcasts and how to get better, they’re not taking training on equipment and how to make things better, they’re not improving themselves. So, you’re already doing something better than the worst mug or t-shirt maker in the area that’s still in business.
Mark Stephenson:
Right. All right. So, let’s talk about creating your competitive plan.
Marc Vila:
Right? As you’re writing this stuff down, I want to make sure that we… I just have a couple of examples. I want to make sure we read through. So, what are some things that you can write down that are important notes to make about these companies, right? Maybe they don’t deliver anything in less than two weeks, but you can do it in a day or two days. Maybe they offer really cheap shirts that are in stock, but you offer higher-end, better-quality stuff that it takes you a few days to get. Maybe they advertise really low prices, but they’ve got a ton of hidden fees, so actually, your prices are the same. They might appear to be a very diverse shop by the name of the company, but when you look at their social media, they’re really just focusing on a single niche like sports.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
So, once you learn all this stuff, about everybody and take as many notes as you can, then you can actually create like a real competitive plan on how you’re going to find your space in the competition. Not always beating the competition or going up against them, but finding your space in the pie of business that’s to be had in your area.
Mark Stephenson:
Hey, you know what? I just want to mention one more thing that I almost forgot in that is, while you’re doing the competitive analysis, if they have the opportunity to talk to people, ask them if they produce that stuff in-house.
Marc Vila:
Okay, good.
Mark Stephenson:
Because that could be a very important competitive advantage to you. If you go to a screen print shop and you ask about just getting one or two shirts and they say yes, then ask them if they print that in-house, too.
Marc Vila:
And watch for tricky answers, “We do. Our warehouse is actually located in Lakeland.”
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
“Okay then. Well, I’m in Orlando Lakes, that’s almost an hour away” So, there’s something to be said about that.
Mark Stephenson:
Yep.
Marc Vila:
Okay. So, first things first, at this point in time, you should know who the real competition is. You’ve scratched off that company who, after diving deeper, they just only do sports.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
I know it’s nothing in their name. They don’t really describe it that. But every single example, picture, social media, thing on their website, even words they use, “Knock it out of the park with our hats,” they’re focusing on sports. I’m not.
Mark Stephenson:
Or they, it turns out to be a screen print shop and they don’t want to talk to anybody that’s not going to order at least 48 pieces of anything.
Marc Vila:
Right. Right. And you’re going to do small stuff. So, knock out some of those and try to just focus less on them. You’ve learned lessons. You’ve learned things about how they do things on social media or website that you want to do one day yourself or right away. But they’re not really a competition. And then now, you’ve also pulled out some strengths, like you mentioned before. One of your competition who seems direct advertises really low prices, but you know there’s a ton of hidden fees, so one of your things is transparent pricing.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. No hidden fees.
Marc Vila:
Right. So, if this is one of your strengths, you shout it out everywhere. On the front page of your website, “Great quality t-shirts, transparent pricing.”
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I like that a lot.
Marc Vila:
You also might be able to deliver quicker. Again, you shout that out. You can put it on your website or maybe you don’t write that down, but you talk about it. Every time you have a phone call with somebody or an email, “By the way, one of the things that’s great about when you work with us is, we make it a point to deliver things quickly. So, we deliver 90% of our orders within three days,” or whatever the number, “And the other 10%, we deliver one day longer than that.” One of the things that I did when I wanted to start this business was I was sick and tired of everybody having to order things a month in advance. Because some of these companies will say, “Most of the time we deliver in two weeks, sometimes it’s three or four.” To me that says you deliver in four weeks every time.
Mark Stephenson:
I love that. I love that, like the idea is that you find those advantages, you make it a keystone of your website, if you think they’re real competition. I love the idea that you’re going to mention it in phone calls and in meetings. You could even add that to the way you answer your phone. It could be, “Hey, thanks for calling Bob’s T-shirts, where we deliver in two days.”
Marc Vila:
Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And whatever, it might be, you could talk about your niche. If you know that you have a unique niche in the area and nobody else is really focusing on it, you dive deeper into the niche. All of this information could be shared on your website, on your social media, you could do email blasts, you could do local ads. We’ve talked about doing all that type of advertising and such in other episodes of the podcast. But talk about that you sell shirts that are top quality. “A home of the shirts that don’t shrink.” Talk about how you do digital prints, “We do full-color prints. What’s that mean? Print your dog, print your baby, print anything.”
Mark Stephenson:
Cool. I like that each one of these advantages that you say very obviously plants the idea that other businesses don’t do that. ColDesi is very proud of the fact that they do, “We’ve got the best self-paced online training program in the industry for each one of our products.” And we talk about our training and our support all the time. And when we do that, in this case it happens to be very true, everyone else assumes that our competition does not provide training, and in many cases, it is true. But it’s just, when you say something, if I point out that I can deliver a shirt in under three days, if it’s an order for under 10 pieces, then it just assumes, well, I’m going to call everybody else and it’s going to be a week.
Marc Vila:
Right. No, the best part about it is, if you’ve done research and you know that everybody is really slow in delivery and you’re fast, then you create an assumption. And some people might just stop and just say, “Okay, great. I want it in two days. I’ll work with you.” Other people might say, “I’m going to shop.” And then they call, “How quick?” “Two weeks.” “He was right.” And the thing about ColDesi in training is, I mean, it’s been a decade almost, probably, where we started offering online training. And it was part of, we just realized that nobody else really has this. And it’s every day, basically, since that past 10 years, there’s been something new added or changed or updated on that online training. And we have such a diverse amount of products that it’s not just really easy for our competition to just say, “We’re just going to make online training for 20 products,” because it’s thousands of hours of work.
Mark Stephenson:
It’s a Project. It’s hours, yeah.
Marc Vila:
And you can do that stuff with yourself, too. So, if you’re really developing a niche and you, “Okay, I want to focus on high-quality polo shirts. How am I going to do that? Well, first, I’m going to go to my wholesaler and I’m going to buy, like… I’m going to call. I’m going to ask them, ‘I want the best shirt you have.'” “Okay, these are our top five.” “I’m buying all top five. I’m going to put them on my embroidery machine. I’m going to put them in the wash. I’m going to wear them. I’m going to ask people, ‘Which one do you like this?’ There’s going to be a friend of mine has a small business. I’m going to give him one. Which shirt do you like better, A or B?”
And now, you’ve spent time learning about the best polo shirt. And now you have three keystone shirts you sell, the cotton one, the moisture-wicking one, and the luxury one, these are the three you sell. Then you start pushing this, “Luxurious, the best shirts, premium polos. Nobody beats our polos,” all that stuff, right?
Mark Stephenson:
“Ask me how I know.”
Marc Vila:
“Ask me how I know,” exactly. And then if your competition decides they want to get into the premium polo thing, you’ve been doing this research now, since before you started for months, and now you’re in business a year, you’ve got a year’s worth of research on these shirts. You found out this one that looks great. The collars do all like this after a bunch of washes and they curl up. So, you know that that shirt is a great out-of-the-box shirt, but not a great three-month shirt. And your competition’s going to take three months to learn that.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, I like that.
Marc Vila:
So, great. and then I guess the wrap up on it is, as we started saying, this is ongoing. You repeat it. You do it again later. You don’t just stop. Your competition will get a new website eventually/ they’ll change some of their policies and prices. So, you keep up. Really, most businesses don’t do this.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I mean, almost no businesses do this.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. And the reason why they don’t, well, a couple things, I think at least. There’s a lot of business out there, and a lot of people can just get overwhelmed busy, and then they don’t have to do any of that.
Mark Stephenson:
Right.
Marc Vila:
They get stuck at a growth point and they’re there. And that’s good for you because they’re full. You can analyze all you want about them and all that stuff, but they can’t really take many orders, unless it’s booked a month out. And you’ve just learned that. So, that’s one reason, another is that it just takes time. But if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably looking to grow your business. And this is one of the ways that companies that achieve great growth are doing.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And I think if you’re willing to invest the time in educating yourself, by listening to stuff like this, by reading business books, by finding out more about e-commerce or marketing or inventory management or how to handle a customer, if you’re doing any of that stuff, this is the logical next step. And when you do this, if you do a constant survey of your local competition or your direct competition, you’ll also know when there’s new players in the market and how you may have to pivot or who else is new that you can learn new things from and copy.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. It can be a lot of fun, honestly. It’s really good. It can be great for your business. It’s great for your mind. One of the big takeaways is, you can’t obsess over it if you think somebody’s better or you think somebody is potentially dangerous to your business because, “They’re a new player and oh, gosh, they’re going to beat me.” So, don’t get caught in those traps. But also on the flip side of that, turning your head and putting blinders on doesn’t keep you safe from the monsters either. You’re not a kid where you put the cover over your head.
Mark Stephenson:
Now you’re freaking me out. Now you’re freaking me out.
Marc Vila:
Yeah. The boogeyman can’t get me if I hide under the covers, that’s not true either. So, oftentimes the boogeyman is not as scary as you thought he was, or isn’t even a threat at all. It’s important to just go out there and look in. And I think that there’s a lot to learn. If you do this exercise, couple of things are going to happen. One, you’re going to learn something from your competition that you’re going to change in your business immediately.
Mark Stephenson:
Yes.
Marc Vila:
You’re going to say, “I’m going to start changing this tomorrow.” And two, you’re going to learn about, you’re probably going to build up some confidence in some things that you knew you were really good at, that you never gave yourself enough credit for.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I like that. I think this is super useful episode. Hope you listen to it more than once and share it with other people because this podcast applies, I don’t know if you could tell or not, to more than just the custom t-shirt business. I think that anyone that runs a local business could benefit from, in particular, this episode. I think analyzing your competition is not done enough, and your business will be a lot better for it.
Marc Vila:
Great. Great. All these notes are in customapparelstartups.com. So, if you go to the website and you find this episode 182 Analyze Your Competition, you’ll see that we’ve put a bunch of the notes and maybe some other things in there as well so you can write this down. And feel free to contact us and share some things that you’ve learned and some competitive analysis. We’d love to talk about it with you.
Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Love it. Okay, everybody, thanks for listening again. This is Mark Stevenson.
Marc Vila:
And Marc Vila.
Mark Stephenson:
You guys, have an amazing competitive business.