All around us big vanilla businesses and corporations are struggling to understand how to connect with customers and give people what they want. Businesses like McDonalds are ‘resetting’ and trying to find new ways to improve speed and affordability of their core offerings. Their strategy is to become even faster and cheaper. Meanwhile Mexican food chain Chipotle’s revenue jumped by 24%, it turns out that some people (not everyone, but enough to matter), are willing to pay more for sustainable food that’s produced with integrity.

Just thirty years ago operating in a niche was risky—far better to make a product or design a service that appealed to most people. But the problem with the strategy of making something for all of the people is that you end up not being able to really matter to any of them. If you don’t become part of your customer’s story then you are just another replaceable, transactional brand.

Today niche businesses thrive by making values their compass, knowing the customers they want to be loved by and adopting a strategy of enough.
And they understand that you don’t need to matter to everyone to succeed.

Image by Bon Adrien.