How to Execute a Market Flanking Maneuver
By Brad Jarvis
Just as importantly, if we could establish ourselves as an RFID Market Leader we felt we could increase brand awareness in the overall thermal printer market. The team decided that RFID label printing leadership was going to be our competitive differentiation in thermal printers. To establish leadership we would become a center of knowledge, and that knowledge would be a key part of the solution, reducing early market risk for our customers to begin working with RFID.
Strategy
The early RFID printing market consisted mainly of pilot evaluation projects to sort out the specifics of applying the technology to consumer packaged goods (CPG) sold at retail. To beat all thermal competitors to market with RFID printing, our top priority was to provide a solution for these technology pilots. Rather than completely redesign our printer, we developed the Smart Label Developers Kit (SDLK) quickly and packaged it with software and supplies from leading technology partners to enable supply-chain RFID testing. In fact we surprised the main thermal printer competitor by scoring a major win with the market leading software partner, gaining exclusive RFID co-branding during the launch of our solution.
