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Inventors Find Your Niche

Seth Tibbott remembered in his college years that granola and yogurt were considered fringe items, but in less than ten years grocery stores were packed with those products. Being a vegetarian, Tibbott knew about tempeh, a soybean dish common in Southeast Asia and used in the West as a meat substitute, and he thought that it might also find the same kind of acceptance and success as granola and yogurt has. For the next 15 years, Tibbott slugged it out trying to make tempeh successful, and his company profitable, and then he had his revelation: Tofurkey.

Thanksgiving is a difficult time for vegetarians and even harder for vegans. Turkey of course is out, but so is gravy and stuffing (if cooked inside the turkey). For vegans, who don’t eat dairy, even things like mashed potatoes, bread, and pies, if not prepared right, are out. Tibbott decided to fill that gap and he created Tofurkey in 1995.

Tofurkey was an instant hit with the media, who every year give the product millions of dollars worth of coverage for free, sometimes as a special interest story and maybe more often as a joke. No matter what kind of coverage Tofurkey receives, grocery stores all want to be fully stocked and many vegetarians can’t image Thanksgiving without it.

Not surprisingly, after Tofurkey became a huge success, some of the big players in the food industry have started creating their own Turkey substitutes, but Tibbott is able to stay competitive and gets a huge amount of recognition, and sales, for being the first one in the market. Also his great name, Tofurkey, and the instant recognition it gets, helps a lot.

What can inventors learn from Tibbott’s story? Tofurkey is the perfect example of which markets are the best for inventors to target: niche markets ignored by successful companies already in the broader market. Most inventors don’t think much about which market they are targeting; they just get an idea for a product and follow up on it. While this can end up in success, inventors are much better off targeting a niche market that is ignored by major market players. Sometimes these markets are too small to be profitable for larger corporations and sometimes they are huge opportunities that are just overlooked. Either way an inventor on his or her own, or with a small company, can carve out a nice income targeting these small niche markets.

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