. Determine trends by talking to trade suppliers about what is selling well and what is not. Check out recent copies of your industry’s trade magazines. Search the Business Periodicals Index for articles related to your type of business. Step 2 Establish the approximate size and location of your planned trading area. Use available statistics to determine the general characteristics of this area. Use local sources to determine unique characteristics about your trading area. Estimating the number of individuals or households can be done with little difficulty using Statistics Canada or U.S. census data. Step 3 List and profile competitors selling in your trading area. Get out on the street and study your competitors. Visit their stores or the locations where their product is offered. Analyze the location, customer volumes, traffic patterns, hours of operation, busy periods, prices, quality of their goods and services, product lines carried, promotional techniques, positioning, product catalogues and other handouts. If feasible, talk to customers and sales staff. Step 4 Use your research to estimate your sales on a monthly basis for your first year. The basis for your sales forecast can be the average monthly sales of a similar-sized competitor’s operations who is operating in a similar market. It is recommended that you make adjustments for this year’s predicted trend for the industry. Be sure to reduce your figures by a start-up year factor of about 50% a month for the start-up months. Consider how well your competition satisfies the needs of potential customers in your trading area. Determine how you fit in to this picture and what niche you plan to fill. Consider population and economic growth in your trading area. Using your research, make an educated guess at your market share. If possible, express this as the number of customers you can hope to attract. You may want to keep it conservative and reduce your figure...
