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Think about an established farmers market with an established customer base.

Everyone shopping at that market has their preferred vendors.\xa0 They buy lettuce from this guy and they buy tomatoes from that girl week after week.\xa0 They don\u2019t switch it up.

If you then enter that market as a new vendor, how do you knock someone out of the preferred vendor spot in a customer\u2019s mind? How do you get the customer to switch to buying lettuce or tomatoes from you instead of that guy or that girl?\xa0 Because that\u2019s really what you need to do.\xa0 Either you need to get existing customers to switch or you need to pick up market share from new customers. The bad news is that once a person commits to a particular product or brand in their mind it\u2019s very hard to get them to switch. \xa0

Look no further than you own habits.\xa0 How often do you go to different grocery stores or gas stations by your house or how often do you change brands of laundry detergent or ketchup?\xa0 Probably not very often.\xa0 You made a decision long ago, and as long as things do change, why switch.

Given that, how do you compete in a crowded farmers market?\xa0 Why is a farmer\u2019s market customer going to choose your booth versus the booth that they always shop at?

You have to be unique..

Again, look at the landscape of the market, if there are already 5 vegetable vendors at your market more or less growing what you grow, and they are established, then you either have to be unique enough to go in and compete with them hand try to knock one of them out of the top 5 in terms of market share, which is hard, or you have to be unique enough so you don\u2019t actually have to compete against them.\xa0 Instead positioning yourself in the customers mind as the preferred choice.

How do you do that, make yourself unique?

One way is to specialize in something. \xa0

Part of that specialization might mean differentiating your product so you position yourself as the category leader; a category that you own; one that you create.

For example, say a lot of vendors are selling loose leaf lettuce.\xa0 There\u2019s already an established hierarchy there in terms of market share for the category of loose leaf lettuce.\xa0 How do you compete? \xa0

You don\u2019t, avoid competition, and you create your own category. Maybe that category is head lettuce or romaine.\xa0 Or maybe it\u2019s organic lettuce.\xa0 Or living lettuce with the roots still attached.\xa0 You differentiate your product just enough to move it to its own category.\xa0 Then you become first to market in that category and have an competitive advantage.\xa0 That\u2019s a far cry from going into a competitive market and competing on price.\xa0 And when you think about it it wasn\u2019t really that hard.\xa0 You didn\u2019t have to create or invent anything new. You just supplied an in demand product to a market that wanted it, but didn\u2019t have anyone to buy it from.

That\u2019s one of the many benefits of specializing in a product.\xa0 And it\u2019s that benefit and the many others that we will be talking about today, on The Urban Farmer.

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer

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