Concept development is a critical phase in creating a new enterprise.  A strong, well-articulated concept defines who you are in the marketplace and will guide you in writing your business plan, seeking funding, and setting up your enterprise’s operations.  It will also aid you in making decisions about the look, feel, and experience in your enterprise, from design and décor to service style.  In this month’s retail spotlight, we highlighted Williamsburg bakery Bakeri, whose concept is both authentic and clear.  But while developing your concept is an exciting and necessary step, it can also be challenging.  Below, we discuss one of TaraPaige Group’s methods for developing new concepts with our clients—a market tour.

A market tour is the perfect first step to defining your concept.  After all, if you want to define yourself in the landscape of your market, you have to know what else is out there.   To build a great market tour, create a list of enterprises that are similar to the one you envision.  Then consider enterprises that differ in a specific way— perhaps they are in a different neighborhood, have a different service style, offer different products, or have a slightly different target market.  By creating a diverse list, you give yourself the broadest slice of your potential inspirations and competitors, allowing yourself to learn from their successes and their missteps.  You may find in the course of your tour that your concept changes and adapts from what you originally envisioned, or you may have your original ideas confirmed.  Either way, seeing a varied group of enterprises will give you guidance on the direction of your concept.

Furthermore, by seeing many different concepts and discussing them, you will also make sure that you and your business partners or team are thinking similarly about your concept.  What one partner means by “simple breakfast items” or “open layout” may differ from the rest of the team’s interpretation.  Seeing concrete examples of different spaces, products, and service styles will open a constructive dialogue amongst your team.

Most importantly, a market tour will allow you to determine the size and scope of the general market, including generating revenue estimates, determining traffic, discovering trends, and finding unmet demand in the marketplace around you.  Maybe, for example, there are very few coffee shops near a major university, or a lack of made-to-order sandwich enterprises near a large office building, or not enough authentic ethnic food enterprises in your city to meet the demand.

By discovering a need in the market, you begin to define the key descriptor of your enterprise—your mission statement.  Your mission statement answers three questions: why does your enterprise exist, for whom does it exist, and what need does it serve?  When you have discovered the answer to the final question, the other two will fall more easily into place.  Moreover, by addressing a clear and demonstrable market need, you give more weight to your business plan and show investors the market potential for your concept.  The additional data you can gather about market size will further serve to underscore the strength of your proposed enterprise.

Beginning your concept development with a market tour is a fun, effective, and productive way to kick off the important work of positioning yourself in the marketplace.

Happy touring…TaraPaige Group