Do Good, Serve Well, Become Successful All in an Underserved Market

Cater to a niche market for rewards on many levels. Dr. Kandor, founder and president of Enabling Devices, has used his background as a biomedical engineer to help him design toys for children with a range of special needs, according to “Toys for Disabled, Step 1: What Can a Child Still Do”, reported by Charkes in The New York Times,. As the number of children with special needs grows, the need for appropriate toys increases. Other toy companies, such as the New York-based Toy Industry Association are also beginning to acknowledge this trend. However, Dr. Kandor’s company is the only one in the field who solely creates toys for children with special needs. The company sells approximately 100,000 toys and devices per year to schools, institutions and families, while predicting revenues of $6 million for the 2006 fiscal year.

Finding an untapped market can build a stronger business.

Membership Has Its Benefits

How can you show auxiliary benefits of being a customer? According to “For Card-Carrying Members, Lounging at the Mall” in The New York Times, The American Express Members Lounge, at the Mall in Short Hills, provided respite to holiday shoppers between November 7, 2006 and January 14, 2007. Ralph Andretta, senior vice president and general manager of membership rewards for American Express explained that “this [was] a test, our way of demonstrating why it’s important to keep that card in your wallet.” This was American Express’s first attempt at "customer-coddling,” outside a trade show venue. This way-station gives American Express members a second wind for shopping.

Build a stronger business by meeting the secondary needs of your clients.

Go Slightly Off the Beaten Path to Find Opportunities

You can find terrific sources of movie reviews sites other than the greatgrandfather site, Internet Movie Database, aka IMDB. Here are three other movie review websites:

• Rottentomatoes.com
• Moviereviewintelligence.com
• Metacritic.com

These sites are gathering momentum because they offer features that differ from the market leader, and you can take away a lesson in this strategy. When you are building a stronger business, understand what the competition is doing and find a way to differentiate based on an underserved market or overlooked feature that you can exploit to your advantage.