07/ 26/ 2005
by Lena Basha
You can never know enough about your competition. That's what Holly Bohn said before opening her specialty office supplies store last year. Bohn, owner of Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based See Jane Work , spent two years studying her competitors before launching her online specialty store.
"I really wanted to be prepared," says Bohn, who considers her competitors to be any retailer that sells office supplies as well as ones that sell high-end products. "We did everything from calling up and placing orders to going to the stores to touch the products. I'd watch people to see what most were interested in. I'd even ask customers what they thought." Some of the managers at her local big boxes know her by name.
All of this research was to find out where her competitors were failing. "I knew I couldn't compete on product availability or price point," she says. "I needed to know where the gap was and then try to fill it."
Here are three things Bohn learned from studying her big-box competitors:
1. Consistency. "No one wants to buy 10 lime green binders to find out next year that the color has been discontinued," she says. "You can count on us to have a consistent product line." In fact, one of Bohn's biggest vendors brought back a discontinued color exclusively for See Jane Work.
2. Inventory. "When I'm shopping at one of my competitors, I can't always find the same style, or they run out of something and there's no one around to tell me when new inventory will arrive," she says. Bohn's customers can find out exactly when a product will be available again, thanks to Bohn's commitment to being responsive.
3. Attention to Detail. One thing that struck Bohn during her two-year research period was her competitors' quality of packaging—or lack thereof. "One day I said to my employees, ‘You’re all getting a gift today so we can look at our competitors' packaging," she says. "What we found across the board was that the packaging wasn't perfect. I wanted mine to be perfect." Today, See Jane Work is inundated with compliments from customers about the perfect packaging.
Even now that her online store has been open for a year, she still keeps a close eye on her competitors—and the hard work has paid off. Sales have tripled most months, which Bohn attributes to not being afraid of getting close to her competitors and learning from them.
"There are no original ideas. If you're watching and listening to what everyone else is doing, you are going to learn what to do—and what not to do."
