Finding your niche can be life changing. It can transform your failing restaurant into a bustling microbrewery, your boring band into a chart-topping hit machine, and even your debts into profits. Many business owners make the mistake of trying to market their product to absolutely everyone when they should really be tapping into a high-demand niche market instead. Finding that focus could be the exact thing you need to separate your brand from the crowd. Need a little niche-finding inspiration? Check out the highly specialized and successful products below.
When the Competition Goes Right, Go Left – Did you know that lefties die, on average, nine years earlier than their right-handed counterparts? Why? The jury’s still out on that one, but it could have something to do with all the right-biased products out there. After all, a lifetime of smeared ink and finger calluses doesn’t do much for blood pressure levels.
Luckily for lefties, more and more marketers are beginning to offer products designed with left-handers in mind. In fact, Lefties in San Francisco sells products specifically designed so that left-handed people won’t feel … left out. Whether you’re looking for sewing sets or pink guitars, you’ll find a left-centric version at Lefties. It’s an enormous niche market.
Three Times the Fashion Fun – If you’re the parent of triplets, you never buy just one of anything. So what do you do about baby clothes? You either luck out and find the same design in three different colors or you dress each baby in identical outfits. Thankfully, the designers at one baby clothing company have come up with a solution.
Naomi Catalina, co-founder of Wordsation, says, “We offer several collections of designer baby onesies, and they all come with three unique variations on a theme. These collections are the perfect way keep your triplets looking their best while highlighting their individuality at the same time.” Wordsation clothing is for individual babies too, but notice how sometimes a few marketing tweaks is all it really takes to draw in a totally different crowd. The stroke of insight is, more often than not, the realization that such a niche exists.
A Breakthrough Brew – Over two million people in the U.S. suffer from celiac disease. That’s two million people who can’t consume gluten, a common ingredient found in everything from cereal to salad dressing – and yes, even beer. It threatens the very idea of America to think that until recently, millions of citizens were denied the joy of a frat-house power hour or the simple enjoyment of a cold one during the Super Bowl.
For celiac sufferers, those days of social exclusion are now over. Gluten-free brews are popping up all over recently, and Bard’s Beer is one of the best-known. Their sorghum beer allows millions of celiac sufferers to play flip-cup or battle it out at beer pong (or you know, drink slowly like mature adults). But whatever the drinking style, one thing is clear – Bard’s made a name for themselves by satisfying the needs of a true niche market. And because their product is cold, delicious beer, they top this list of the top niche prospectors in America today.
There’s a lesson to be learned from these niche-cornering products. When your brand is struggling to find its footing, unfocused marketing could be to blame. If your product already exists, identify your real niche. If your company is just getting started or if you can branch out a bit, look at your options. Specialize in cosplay costumes for dogs instead of boring sweaters. Create a new line of three-person sleeping bags. Design an entire fashion line that makes it easy for color-blind fashionistas to coordinate their clothes. Do what you need to do to separate yourself from the pack. When you do, you’ll find your place in the market, and you’ll make it easier for your consumers to find you.