Playing to Win

Where are we playing?

How do we win?

So many businesses these days don't see to really be able to answer these questions. Now, while they seem straight forward and simple, they are actually extremely powerful questions and answering them properly requires quite a bit of work; but for the companies that can answer them properly, they are successful in what they do.

Businesses of all sizes struggle with really understanding where to play. A company that tries to be everything to everyone while being everywhere is a great example of a company that doesn't really know where to play (and how to win).

The underlying premise of those two questions is to really understand where or what your competitive advantage is.

For anyone who wants to read more, please see: Competitive Advantage.

Simply put, a competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices (cost) or by providing greater benefits (differentiation) and service that justifies higher prices (Michael Porter).

So much of eCommerce D2C (direct to customer) brands suffer from absolutely no competitive advantage, and for some that might have something they either don't leverage it well in their approach.

The likelihood of a D2C brand being able to compete on cost performance is not high versus the scale and technology of major organizations.

The best bet is to work towards creating differentiation in a way that large companies simply will not see the benefit of doing, or the inertia of their size will make it hard for them to respond.
If you have a wild new product innovation that you can patent, congratulations, this will be your differentiation and you can run with it; for most brands however differentiation will have to follow other means.

This is one of the reasons I often advocate evaluating the "where to play" question for new brands. The internet makes it possible to be everywhere pretty easily, as long as a customer is willing to pay for shipping, you will be able to get it to them.
The challenge with this however, is that D2C brands often lose the ability to create stories and momentum by having tight knit communities of people that support them (their raving fans).

Don't discount the power of your initial market, that niche space that others may not want to address in a deeply intimate way because there is not enough ROI in it for them. The goal for new startup brands these days really should be to focus on the minimum needed market in order to be successful in what they do, and slowly build from their.

Keep tight contact with your community, appreciate that you need to follow them, and they shouldn't be following what you are pushing to them. When you are pushing out, you are most likely benefiting from being a FAD ... and most FADs burn out.