Who, chapter three

Know the room

Across Price Range Story Convenience

Up Price Range Story Convenience

Where I placed each company, out of 10. All five are invented; the scores are my judgement from the evidence on each card, not data.
Company	Price	Range	Story	Convenience
Kiln	7	3	9	4
Brightwater	2	8	2	9
Corner Cup	5	6	3	8
Ferro & Ash	9	4	9	5
Mill Lane	6	7	5	4

A positioning map for Kiln, an invented coffee roaster, and four invented rivals. Pick the two things to compare, and the empty regions glow as white space; the brightest is the biggest gap. Placing Kiln comes first: read its evidence, put it where that evidence says, then show the room and see where I put it on the same evidence. Drag any point, or focus it and use the arrow keys, and the white space moves with it. Turn any company over to read its SWOT. Every position is my judgement on invented companies, not data. Not every gap is worth standing in: nobody sells coffee that says nothing and takes a week, because nobody wants it.

The company does not need a new strategy. It needs its existing one to show.

My summary slide for a small merchandise start-up, 5 June 2026.

The idea

I think a competitive analysis is how you find the space nobody is standing in. Compare like with like: the direct competitors who sell what you sell, and the indirect ones who solve the same problem another way. Look at what they sell, how they sell it, what they publish and who actually engages with it. Then write a SWOT for yourself, and be as honest about your own weaknesses as you were about theirs.

The hard part is that last step. It's easy to be sharp about a rival and generous about yourself, and then the gap you find is one you only imagined. And the room changes, so I'd redo it every quarter rather than once.

Where I used it

A group audit of a small merchandise start-up. The competitor comparison and the SWOT were teammates’ sections. My part was the recommendations and the summary built on them, and that is where the room mattered: the company already had a position its rivals didn’t, and its site didn’t show it. Group work, my section
An in-class comparison of three project-management tools: what each sells, to whom, at what price, and a SWOT for two of them. Class exercise.

What I’d do now

Redo that project-management comparison in my own words, as a worked example, with each tool’s current public pricing and plans checked on the day I write it. I’d also put each tool on a map like the one above, with the evidence for every placement written next to it, and place the one I’d recommend last.