“Business Is Saturated: Private Label Product Edition”
So a while back, I wrote about how dropshipping is too competitive unless you’re not a moron.
Today, we’re going to talk about taking it a step further.
Let’s say you think, “Dropshipping isn’t for me… I have some money to spend and don’t want to compete with all the people that took James Holt’s course and are now running successful dropship stores.”
Let’s say that you want to create your own products and you understand your way around ecommerce.
Maybe you’ve even read the blog and so you’ve got a handle on direct marketing principles and you want to put your skills to the test by selling your own products.
Let’s say you’re sitting at your desk and a lightbulb moment comes into your mind. You think, “Jesus… I never realised it but there are luxury products that have huge mark-ups sitting right on my desk and they look like the sort of thing a manufacturer probably whips up for brands all the time.”
And so you think, “I’m going to look into this. I’m going to see what the costs of setting up my own private label in this industry are and what the margins are and what goes into this sort of business.”
And you think, “I’m going to start my own product line and run an actual business.”
But the little devil sitting on your shoulder says, “[Your Name], you know if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it!”
And so you go back to your boring life and think, “Will I ever make it? Will I ever find that one idea that nobody has done before?”
But curiosity gets the better of you. You hit Google, and you think… “How do I start an X Business?”
The Lack Of Competition Is A Slap In The Face
So this happened to me today. It’s happened to me before.
Everyone wants to start a dropshipping company. Everyone wants to get on that online guru thing. (I guess I’m guilty of that – being so obviously guru-like in my sage wisdoms.)
And for every one person who says, “I’m going to do that!” there are a hundred that’ll tell you that every conceivable niche is done. It’s finished. It’s over.
But to be honest, the well isn’t anywhere close to dry, and with private label products, the whole thing is practically untouched. There are some competitive niches: you only have to look at electronic products on Amazon to see a million variations on the same Beats knockoffs and neon-coloured wireless earphones.
And other areas like watches and accessories seem over-saturated to the untrained eye (though I know multiple people making an absolute killing selling clothing accessory stuff. 6-8 figure businesses.)
But outside of those few niches and really low end consumer products, (who wants to start a brand selling $1 products anyway? There are untapped niches where you can make $100s per item,) there’s little competition anywhere.
This is to the point where you can put in a total n00b question like, “How to start a golf club business?” and get no answers.
Niche It Down: Useful Information
Outside of the newbie questions, you realise the lack of competition the minute you try to find actual, tangible and practical information.
Let’s say you want to private label a product. You find a supplier on Alibaba. Side note: Can you imagine being a Victorian or something? They had to travel for weeks to get to far off locations in order to source products and then wait years until manufacturing was viable.
You get a minimum order quantity figure of five-hundred or so.
You think, “OK. What are the hidden costs of this?” or “Can I sell these to the USA/Europe without legal stuff getting in my way?”
Even things like, “How do I go about finding a company that’ll create branded packaging” return you very little useful information.
Which means either there’s a secret cabal of manufacturers hiding the means of production from us proles or nobody is even trying.
As much as I like a good conspiracy theory, it’s most likely the latter.
As With All Businesses…
The most difficult part of the business life cycle is getting started up. We live in a Golden Age for this. Stuff like Alibaba makes it easy to buy huge quantities of stuff for very little.
Dropshipping and other internet money means you can build capital to start.
And the archives of this site mean that you can hit the ground running with sales, advertising, branding and more.
And the competition is too busy asking questions like, “Can you make money online?”
Very few niches have even been explored; the information isn’t out there and you know that if someone had found some super niche, they’d brag about it because that’s what people do.
So when it comes to creating private label products, there’s no such thing as competition in most niches.
And even if there were, if you are a direct response guy, it shouldn’t bother you anyway.
P.S. WARNING
If you’re new to online business, this probably isn’t the place to start. I recommend learning copywriting, and then testing the waters with dropshipping before you start trying to run a business with your own products.
The best place to start with physical product ecommerce businesses is to take James Holt’s course. And the best time to get on that course if you’re serious about physical products is in the next 24 hours or so.
Why? Because James is running a 4th July sale. This isn’t fake scarcity – he literally tweeted me this news as I hit publish on this post.
If you want to grab his course at a steep discount, then Click Here before the end of July 4th, 2018.