"A few blocks from my home sits a small Japanese grocery store that has been in the neighborhood for years. It's the kind of place that once felt irreplaceable-carefully sourced ingredients, shelves stocked with items I couldn't find in mainstream supermarkets, and an owner who knows her regulars. But much as I love this store, it has been in steady decline for a few years now."
"What happened to that shop isn't really about Japanese groceries. The same story is playing out across sectors as the mass market parts of many businesses are being swallowed up by bigger players. If a small business competes on anything that a large company can copy and make money from, you can bet your bottom dollar that a large company will eventually start providing those goods or services."
Local specialty retailers are losing customers as large chains and online platforms begin offering formerly niche goods, making convenience and "good enough" choices dominate consumer behavior. Globalized supply chains and rapid information flows enable big companies to quickly copy profitable offerings and scale them into mass-market solutions. Small businesses cannot sustainably compete on broadly replicable products or services alone. The viable defensive strategy for small firms is to narrow their focus significantly and emphasize uniqueness, relationships, or experiences that larger competitors cannot easily replicate, though narrowing can be difficult during challenging economic times.
Read at Fast Company
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