Starting a Business? Avoid These Common Traps

Whenever the global economy enters periods of uncertainty, people from all walks of life start thinking about opening their own businesses. It's a natural human response to a risky job market, rising inflation, and political unrest. If you are one of those entrepreneurial types who is seriously considering starting a company from scratch, it makes sense to review a few of the most dangerous pitfalls that first-time owners encounter. Simply knowing what they are is often protection enough against the common traps that appear along the road to success. In no specific order, here are several obstacles that thousands of people face when attempting to unleash their creative spirit on the marketplace of ideas, goods, and services.

Not Researching the Competition

Far too many prospective owners spend little time doing in-depth research on their competition. Again, this mistake can be chalked up to human nature because it's easy to spend hundreds of hours writing business plans, designing products, assembling mailing lists, and essentially focusing on getting the company's doors open. What often falls by the wayside is opposition research, the investigative phase of any competent startup operation. Take the time to identify every viable, potential rival in your niche. Study their websites, prices, special offers, shopping carts, advertisements, ‘About Us’ website sections, and more.

Ignoring Potential Sources of Financing

Unfortunately, too many stop before they start, assuming they don't have enough financial resources to sustain the months it can take to get a company off the ground. Most working people have more available capital than they at first suspect. Among the many hidden sources of financing for a young business, one of the most overlooked ones is life insurance.

It's worth remembering that you can sell almost any type of life policy you currently own. Check the fine print to discover how you can sell the contract to a third party for cold, hard cash. The best way to begin is to review a complete online guide to the subject that explains everything you need to know. Plus, once you sell your policy, you can use the money for any purpose under the sun, and that includes financing your brand-new business.

Assuming You Need to Rent Office Space

In your mind's eye, you've probably envisioned yourself sitting behind a desk in a rented office, working away at the keyboard and telephone. In reality, most new organizations don't need dedicated, rented office space for the first few months of their existence. As an alternative, use an extra room, corner of the garage, or an attic loft as a temporary headquarters until you acquire enough regular customers to support the expense of a more formal office. And there are plenty of ways to track employee performance when working from home as you expand your team or outsource work.

Doing Your Own Books and Taxes

Unless you have a degree in business administration and know enough about accounting, finance, and tax law to do your own books and file tax returns, hand the job over to someone else. Fees are very competitive, and you'll have the peace of mind that comes with having all the financial statements and tax issues in perfect order.

How To Do A Proper Market Analysis For Your Startup

 

Before you even start a business, it's important you spend some time researching the market to understand its ins and outs. This will put you in a position to formulate a proper strategy that ensures your business can survive in a highly competitive environment. A market analysis is also vital to figuring out the best way to serve your customers.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, conducting a proper market analysis might seem daunting. However, it's actually simpler than you might think.

Here's a guide on how you should do a proper market analysis for your startup: 

What's A Market Analysis?

A market analysis is a detailed quantitative and qualitative assessment of the prevailing market conditions in a particular industry. The main objective of the market analysis is to examine the different market dynamics to get the answer to questions such as;

·      Who are your potential customers?

·      How big is your target market?

·      What are your customers’ buying habits?

·      Who's the competition?

·      What are your competitor's strengths and weaknesses?

Answering these questions will give you a much better grasp of the market conditions and your prospective customers. If you need any help, you should visit infinigrow.com or other similar websites to get help from professionals.

How Do You Conduct an Exhaustive Market Analysis?

Conducting a market analysis isn't complicated, but you have to spend some time researching thoroughly. Here are the steps you should follow during this process;

1.  Determine Your Purpose

Start by finding out the real reason for conducting a market analysis. Some of the reasons include creating opportunities, assessing business threats, and minimizing problems. It's crucial you know this right from the start because it helps stay on track the whole time.

You'll need to determine if the market analysis is meant for internal or external purposes. Internal purposes include business operations and improved cash flow while external purposes can be to request a business loan. Knowing the exact purpose is what will decide the amount and research you'll need to do.

2.  Research Your Industry

The next thing you should do is carry out in-depth research of your industry to understand it better and gauge the direction it's heading. You must always do this regardless of whether you're starting a large or small company. A comprehensive market research, will help you identify several essential industry metrics such as;

·      Projected growth rates

·      Prospective customer demographics

·      The market size in various locations

·      The industry's major trends 

You should frequently conduct market research to see whether investing your time and money in the industry is worthwhile. If so, the comprehensive market analysis will also help you identify the competitive advantage you have over your competitors that you can offer to your target market.

3.  Pinpoint Your Target Market

One fact you'll need to accept when starting your business is that your products or services won't appeal to everyone. You shouldn't waste your time and effort trying to convince uninterested parties to buy your products or services. Instead, you need to identify your potential customers. This part of the process is known as target market analysis.

To know your target customers, their expected buying habits, and how many of them are out there, you need to assess factors such as;

1. ·      Gender
2. ·      Age
3. ·      Education level
4. ·      Income
5. ·      Occupation
6. ·      Location
7. ·       Needs and interests

Factoring in all of these will help you design the ideal customer persona. In most cases, you'll have different personas that you should use this to help you pinpoint your typical customer. Once you do this, you'll be able to efficiently and easily cater to the needs of your potential customers.

4.  Research Your Competitors

Your market analysis won't be complete if you don't take time to examine your competitors, and this includes;

1. ·      Their main objectives
2. ·      Their strengths and weaknesses
3. ·      Their market saturation
4. ·      How they differ from you
5. ·      Their marketing strategies

You should also write down a list of your competitors and rank them based on their strengths and weaknesses. You can get most of this information from news and media sources, as well as your competitors’ physical store locations, websites, and social media pages. With all this in mind, you'll know how to differentiate your startup from the rest by filling any gaps left by your competitors.  

5.  Predict Your Market Share

The final step when doing a market analysis is to create a prediction of your prospective market share. This entails determining the percentage of the market you'll have in your control. Using this, you'll be able to figure out your projected revenue, pricing structure, and whether you need to get a business loan.

Takeaway

The goal of market analysis is to know everything possible about the industry you're planning to enter. This might sound somewhat intimidating for first-time entrepreneurs, but it doesn't have to be that way with the help of this guide.    

 

 

 Expanding a Business Overseas: 3 Key Factors to Consider

Lots of business owners have dreams of expanding their businesses internationally. Expanding this way not only helps them enter new markets and gain new customers, but it can also be a key strategy in increasing revenues and profits. When doing so, there are some challenges that businesses have to overcome and some factors they have to consider. Each of these challenges and factors can make a huge difference. It is, therefore, important to take a closer look at what businesses need to consider when expanding internationally.

Business Registration

The time it takes to register a business as well as how complicated the process is are huge determinants of how quickly a business can get going in a new market. The time it takes to complete a business registration varies by country and businesses should do their research to find out what the timelines are like.

Once registered, businesses have to also think about how long it takes to get the business doing. Other factors like space availability, additional licenses, technology, living quarters, and others will affect how long it takes to do so.

Cultural and Language Barriers

It is never a good idea to start a business in a country that is not ready for your products or services. When expanding internationally, therefore, it is important to understand both the business and consumer culture. One way to overcome cultural barriers is to use a registered entity that acts as both a legal representative and employer on record on your behalf. This way, there will not be any clashes between your business and the local culture.

Language is another important barrier that businesses expanding internationally have to overcome. Businesses have two main options here: hire locals to help you with translations or hire a translation company to do it for you. Hiring locals is a great idea because they will help you with both the cultural and language barriers you might experience.

While it is great to hire locals to handle day-to-day translations for you, things can get complicated when it comes to technical translations. Technical translations are an important part of introducing new products into the new markets you are entering and have to be done right for product launches to be successful. A company like International Language Services provides technical translation services to support your international business while ensuring the technical translations are done right and promptly.

Political and Economic Stability

Political and economic stability is a lot more important than many of the other factors that businesses have to think about. Even when all other factors like finding the right talent and being able to register a business easily align, all of it can be wiped out in case of political or economic instability.

It is often best to do thorough research and be cautious when expanding into countries and markets whose economic and political stability is unknown or cannot be trusted. Businesses can also use an employer on record arrangement to rest the waters.

While expanding a business internationally has become easier in recent years, there is still a lot business owners should think about before doing so. Thorough research as well as testing the new markets before entering them are both very helpful steps.

 

Mirantis Partners with Westcon-Comstor, to reduce Kubernetes Complexity for Customers

The open cloud company Mirantis has announced that it has partnered with Westcon-Comstor for a distribution agreement across APAC that will simplify Kubernetes for its customers. This partnership will help Westcon's partners to ship code faster across Asia-Pacific.

This distribution partnership means that Westcon is now the Mirantis distribution partner in Australia, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

"Mirantis partners with the world’s top cloud infrastructure providers that Westcon-Comstor has extensive experience working with," said EJ La Fontaine, VP and region director APAC of Mirantis. "Westcon-Comstor works with Mirantis’ solutions to eliminate Kubernetes complexity with one consistent cloud experience for app and devops portability, a single pane of glass, and automated full-stack lifecycle management."

A global technology distributor that operates in over 70 countries, Westcon-Comstor creates business value and opportunity by connecting IT vendors with a channel of system integrators, service providers, and technology resellers.

Commenting on the partnership, Patrick Aronson, the Westcon-Comstor executive VP of APAC said that this partnership will help its partners eliminate Kuberenetes complexity for its customer and provide them with a single "consistent cloud experience."

 

The retail segment will have to wait a little more to recover from covid impact completely

Following the completion of the company’s massive expansion plans in May, the Javits Center in Manhattan managed to host its first trade show since last year’s pandemic lockdowns. From 8th to 11th of August, buyers and wholesale vendors convened at the trade show. Various consumer products were featured in the event, and it was sorted and put into ten sections like handmade designer-makers, artisan resource, accent on designs, home design with tabletop, gifts with stationery, luxury wellness, and lifestyle.

By looking at the feedback given by the participants of the trade show, it can be intercepted that almost every business was in some way affected by the pandemic — both negatively and positively. The ongoing pandemic has proved that the retail segment is resilient against any adversaries, and it can step up its game and recover. Many digital-first brands also have managed to open new in-person stores, and the wholesale sector has also come up with new competitive products. To cater to the customer’s need effectively, the retailers must deliver their best and create better offerings. As of now, it is very difficult to predict when the retail segment will completely recover because of various unpredictable and unknown factors.