What's Your Niche?

If you think you don’t need a niche for your product or service, think again. In a recent Wall Street Journal article about the fashion industry, I read about a couple of guys who started a very, very niched business. No, they aren’t fashion designers. Previously in jobs that were peripheral to the fashion industry, they saw a need that fashion brands had and figured out a pretty slick way to meet that need.

James Nord and Rich Tong founded Fohr Card and launched it in January 2013. It’s a database of fashion bloggers who have successfully engaged their readers (see my earlier blog post about engagement) to the point where they have significant and measurable influence in their market. These bloggers sign up to be included in Fohr Card’s database, signing over the login information so Fohr Card can collect actual, real time data on their influence using social media and other statistics.

Brand companies like Juicy Couture, Samsung, and Kate Spade pay handsomely ($1000/month) for access to this measurable data. Prior to Fohr Card, they had to rely on bloggers volunteering their stats, and trust that the bloggers stats were true.

Congratulations to these successful bloggers for creating a niche for themselves. And congratulations to the founders of Fohr Card for recognizing the market’s need and carving out a small but powerful niche for themselves.

What’s your niche? How did you find or create it? How’s it working for you? Lessons learned? We’d love to hear about it, the good, the bad, and the ugly!