It really is advice of the “business 101” sort that you need a niche if you’re going to run a successful ecommerce retail business. At this most basic level, a niche is nothing more complicated than a group of people – whom you hope to reach – and who express a specific interest in your type of products.
To take an example, Plurawl are a company producing socially conscious Hispanic T-shirts and Spanish prints for the American Latino community. That is a very strong niche, and a clear group of people who occupy it. Everything else in business follows on from this, including marketing (reach and content) and what type of inventory is needed.
The Most Important Things About Niches
When trying to find a niche, an important balance needs to be struck. If a niche is general and broad, then it isn’t a niche and the limitless number of people that might purchase your products is so large that you risk being completely invisible.
On the other hand, create a niche that is too small, and you are going to have dedicated customers all right, but hardly any of them and they might even be difficult to find in the first place! You need to find your ideal customers – but enough of them.
And the last fundamental to mention about niches is that they are related to trend – they are inherently fashionable – and therefore they change all the time. And new niches open up all the time and are discovered by canny businesses.
Consider a niche for antiquated tech – this changes the more tech becomes antiquated. Consider the niche of politically conscious clothing products – this changes with current political events. Some niches have great longevity and are less subject to fashion than others, but few niches are truly stable.
New Niches in Ecommerce
But how do niches change? To know this, you need to look at the ecommerce scene within your industry area. A successful ecommerce business always has an eye out for these developments.
There are countless niches out there, so it is impossible to give a broad ecommerce-wide run down of the newest ones. Nevertheless, here follows a list of some of the latest niches to get in on.
CBD Products
There has been a veritable explosion in the niche for CBD products, which is a recent phenomenon and is still ongoing. The causes have been an increased legality and awareness of CBD’s benefits, and the result has been an explosion in new CBD products – from CBD gummies to cooking oil to, well, almost anything. Come up with your own CBD product, and you could be in luck.
Socially Conscious and Eco-friendly Beauty Products
Across the board, products with the “environmentally friendly” stamp have become very desirable. Or rather, it is the lack of such credentials that can actively harm a product. Particularly within the massive niche of beauty products, those which are all-natural and sustainably sourced are becoming popular.
“Buy it For Life”
This isn’t one type of product, but it’s a niche which revolves around the ethos of buying reliable versions of traditionally disposable products that you never need to replace. The actual products vary a lot, think replacement household batteries that you can charge and never need to replace.
Smartphone Accessories
It is natural that this should be an ever-changing niche. After all, smartphones themselves are high fashion products and are being developed all the time. Riding on the coattails of the massive interest in the latest smartphones, you could sell innovative products to go along with them.
Knowing that you need a niche is basic business sense. Finding that niche is a task of an ever-changing nature.