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There are about as many ways to approach a business as grains of sand on a beach, and in the pioneering world of technology, new methods are being discovered all the time. While many successful companies have zeroed in on a single issue and solution, others have chosen to hit as many market areas as they can, but this has proven more complex a task than many have anticipated.
The Success Stories
When you think of companies with a broad market range, Amazon is the prime example as they cover retail of virtually every kind. In their case, the expansion from what was essentially an online bookshop took a long time to establish, gradually adding new markets until its reach became one of the widest in the world.
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Source: Unsplash
On a smaller scale is the online casino industry, with casino sites also favouring a wide range of product and service types at once. The standard site covers everything from slots to bingo, and often even a mix of slots and bingo in the form of Slingo games. The largest sites have found success in carefully choosing and limiting what they offer, making sure that although it's a wide selection, everything appeals to a similar kind of customer.
The Horror Stories
There is never one specific individual reason for a business to fail, and any business disaster can usually be mitigated when it comes by itself. However, selling with a broad business model can be a significant contributing factor in some cases, such as in the case of an early pet e-commerce attempt, Pets.com.
The company faced a wide variety of issues common to the early Internet such as a lower interest in e-commerce, but many of their issues came down to an inability to stock and supply the wide range of product types. They had tried to cover all the things that a regular pet store would, from cat and dog food to bird supplies, equipment, medicine and more, except on a national scale without the infrastructure capable of supporting it.
Lessons To Learn
The core takeaway of this is that clearly, a broad approach to products and markets can absolutely work. Even outside of Amazon, huge names like Walmart show that you can feasibly stock everything and be successful, with a product range that is still expanding today. They can manage this on a national scale and supply thousands of products, both big brand names and even their own product lines.
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Source: Unsplash
The key is logistics and infrastructure. Thanks to starting smaller and building up their supply networks over a long time, these companies have been able to gradually add product lines and new areas of business with a solid base underneath them. A new startup should be extremely careful of spreading themselves too wide, too soon, and nailing down one market at a time.
In the end, there is rarely any guaranteed failure or success in business, and for every Amazon or Walmart, there are hundreds of similar businesses that have fallen by the wayside.