57. Go where the action is

57

GO WHERE THE ACTION IS

There is a classic piece of retail advice: If you want to open a shoe shop, open it next to the other shoe shop.

You might think that it’s best to go somewhere completely new, somewhere that doesn’t already have what you are offering. But in the words of the extremely successful strategic operator, Rupert Murdoch, “There might be a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?” He said this about Sir James Goldsmith’s failed news magazine, Now!, in answer to Goldsmith’s persistent claims that the UK was ready and waiting for his great idea.

Sometimes there is a gap in the market, but often there is no demand at all. If there are a couple of successful shoe shops in a street, then that’s where people are going to buy shoes.

The idea Places have reputations for specialising trades or products. This can date back several hundred years to times when businesses will conveniently located by a railway station, or the port, or in the case of London, granted the rights to practice certain trades in a specifi c location. Ealing, West London, became the centre of the UK’s perfume industry, dating from the time that William Perkin synthesised the fi rst copy of a natural scent molecule, courmarin, at his Greenford works in the 1860s.

In London, Harley Street is the place where you expect to fi nd medical specialists. However all you need to practise there is the

money for the rent, not a medical qualifi cation. Senior consultants with private practices are still found there, but so are many other people who wish to bask in the refl ected glory that comes from the Harley Street brand identity.

In practice • Location is part of your brand positioning, literally and fi guratively. Physically placing yourself at the heart of your industry will add credibility to your brand. • If you do position yourself geographically amongst your competitors, be clear about how you are going to position your brand differently. • Bring something new and better, so that your brand gives people an extra reason to visit the area not just more of the same.