The power of the brand

My lovely wife (whom I’ve mentioned twice on this web site today) runs her own web site business.

When she set up the site she adopted quite a dynamic strategy. The web site originally sold the products of one manufacturer in a niche market.

Now, she had a couple of choices on how she was to develop the site.

# 1: Push the brand of products

# 2: Push herself as an expert on the niche

She chose to brand herself as an expert via a pretty strong education strategy and it’s paid big dividends.

She is now widely recognised as an expert with the industry and people buy the products she sells, not because of their brand but because of her brand. And because she recommends the products.

Which leaves her great scope to grow that business. She’s not stuck with the one- (1) product. She hasn’t imited her business to the whims of the manufacturer. My wife has all the power in terms of being able to discontinue product lines if she wishes, without it affecting the success of the site.

She can also add additional products and brands as she wants

All that sounds nice. But in reality it’s more than nice.

The manufacturer of the product she sells once put up the prices by about 33% because, in his words, “You’re making more profit than anyone else.” The price rise was just for her!

Now there are a million reasons why the manufacturer shouldn’t have put the prices up, but the lesson was this. Businesspeople sometimes make stupid and illogical decisions.

You have to protect yourself from that.

Think strategically about your business. Think about what could go wrong. And plan your strategy accordingly.