Choosing a category is more important than choosing a product. As the saying goes, men are afraid of entering the wrong profession, and women are afraid of marrying the wrong man. The same is true for choosing a category. How to choose a category? It is not about which category makes money, which category is a blue ocean, or which category others do well. It is not like that. The category you choose must be related to yourself. It is what I want to do, not others. At the same time, it also depends on your own ability, your own R&D strength, your own financial strength and whether your interest is here, whether you can persist and love it in the next 3 to 5 years. In the next 3 years, if the financial strength and R&D strength cannot make this brand the first in this category, it is better to give up.
We have made a major category analysis of the market. For example, mobile power is a major category, and power strip is a major category. After analyzing the major categories, we found that any category will have its characteristics. Let’s take a look at the results of the usual analysis. There are mainly three types of market representatives.
First, there are many brands in this market, but their competition is very scattered. In other words, this market is still in a relatively scattered competition. Such a market is the best market. In fact, as long as you work hard and put your products on the market, you have a good chance to make some achievements in this market.
Second, there is a situation in which the market is divided into three parts. There are three brands doing very well in this market and this category. We can see that in the mobile power category on Amazon, brands like Anker are doing very well. Is there a chance to eat up that market at this time? In fact, there is. Why? After all, there is no brand unicorn in this category. If it is just divided into three parts, you still have a chance, because Anker and Zebao will not unite to suppress you because their strategies are different. At this time, what opportunities do you have to leverage such a category? It is R&D, using strong R&D to form huge differentiation, and using the differentiated characteristics of the product line to leverage such a category.
Third, there is already a unicorn in this category, and its market share has reached 50% or even 70%. For such categories, it is better for ordinary small and medium-sized sellers to avoid it, because the fact that they can achieve such a large market share means that their products and operational capabilities are stronger than yours. When will there be an opportunity to leverage this category? That is, when there is a technological change in this category and this industry, the entry point is the same as the starting point of his category, or even better than his.
For example, Nokia used to have the largest share in the mobile phone market. When Android smartphones developed and led the new technological trend, Nokia had a huge burden, so its transformation and upgrading were very slow. In this case, some new companies and new brands will have more opportunities. This is my point of view, you must first choose the category when selecting products.