How can I be sure that a competitor is a direct competitor?

The final stages of week 2 are dedicated to choosing your winning niche and identifying your future suppliers. A very important part of this process is to identify your direct competitors. This will enable you to locate your future suppliers who will be the most simple to sign so that you can start making sales as soon as possible.

There is lots of advice and tips for how to be confident whether a competitor is a direct or indirect competitor within the program. Essentially you are applying the detective skills taught in these modules to the competition you have located in your niche until you have a list of direct competitors. Use these ninja detective skills and you can be confident in your list.

For some competitors it may be more difficult to discover whether they are direct or indirect. Perhaps you can see that they have a physical location that is not a home address but it may just be an office address.

A useful tip to be aware of which can help you to discover this is to search the limited company name on the Companies House website. On there it may tell you the nature of the business e.g. if it is ‘retail sale via the internet’ or ‘other retail sale not in stores, stalls or markets etc’. This might help to give an indication as to what type of competitor they are (i.e. direct or indirect).