T-Shirt Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other t-shirt businesses.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes other types of shirts and apparel items.

With regards to direct competition, you want to detail the other t-shirt businesses with which you compete. These are other types of t-shirts your target customers purchase.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

• What types of customers do they serve?
• What products do they offer?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide superior t-shirts?
• Will you provide t-shirt options that your competitors don’t offer?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.