At the most recent InnerCity Entrepreneurs (ICE) meeting we had the privilege of hearing thoughts from Joe Goodman, a co-founder of Bob’s Discount Furniture. Since the company started in 1991 they have grown from 8 employees to over 2,000 and now run a very successful furniture business across the Northeast. Furniture is a tough industry and this growth is no small feat, so naturally we wanted to know how Joe and the team did it.

One consideration at Bob’s was how to address “free” offers from competitors - such as “free” delivery and “free” financing. They decided they would not offer the same thing. Delivery and the interest on “free” financing are actually costs the business incurs, so they get built into the price of each product. Nothing is ever really free.

This has developed into the policy at Bob’s to educate customers about the cost of services like delivery and clearly separate those fees from the cost of products.

Joe advised us to try this exercise to find ways to differentiate our businesses. “We looked at what our competitors were doing and moved in the opposite direction,” he said. This led to key insights during the founding of Bob’s and many of the resulting policies stand to this day. Looking at the competition and considering opposite policies set them apart in real ways.

This is a wonderful lesson for any fledgling business: look at what your competition is not doing and consider that as a way to stand out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Business, ICE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.