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Niche market. Wanted
Message
From
10/11/2008 12:23:05
 
 
To
10/11/2008 11:37:59
Victor Chigne
Inteliventas
Peru
General information
Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Category:
Other
Environment versions
Visual FoxPro:
VFP 9 SP2
OS:
Vista
Network:
Windows 2008 Server
Database:
MS SQL Server
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01360921
Message ID:
01360945
Views:
13
>Hello all.
>
>I have a big problem. We are in a niche market, our vertical application is software for massive sales. You have 100-200 salespeople who visit customers and returns with orders to be batch proccesed and dispatched the next day. So far so good, we are THE SPECIALISTS in that niche and now we get good cash on it. The problem? The market doesn't grow. It's hard to export to other countries (It took us 2 years to get our first big customer and we need to have a support staff on site, big costs). Also, developed countries usually have solved this problem having the customers ordering via phone/internet, so the sales people doesn't work the way the system works. Also, there are market leaders already.
>
>I think in 3-5 years our target market will decrease. As you can see, we now have cash but can't reinvest in our core business because the target market is too small. I'd like to invest into development of another fast growing niche market application who can support my company in the future. Any ideas?
>
>TIA

You say your target market is going to decrease - perhaps because of changes in your customer base or in the technologies that are available to them for purchasing. Perhaps you should focus on ways you can benefit specifically from those changes or even guide them. For example if web will increase - or there will be an increasing demand for computer infrastructure to support that you might want to have a clear transition path for your customers that involves continuing to get whatever technology or services they will need from your company. Give the customers of your successful business a way of continuing to stay with you.


Charles Hankey

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin

Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
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