They Wanna Eat Too!

What happens when you have the best product available paired with the best service around? If history teaches us anything, it’s this – having the best is not enough. The competition will not stop coming for you.

Competitors will copy your formula for success. They will improve one cog in your machine and then call it their own. Hell, they will even copy your literal recipe.

Take 2 and Call Me in the Morning

Bayer, for example, obtained a patent in 1899 for acetylsalicylic acid, using the name “aspirin” for it. It originally came in powder form but later developed into tablets in 1915. Then Bayer’s patent expired in 1917, and aspirin became public domain for anyone to produce. And so they did.

Another famous story involves Coca-Cola. There were plenty of imitators early in Coke’s history. Several knockoffs sold syrup to soda fountains (for soda jerks to mix and sell) under names like Koka-Nola, Toka-Cola, and Koke. Then Coca-Cola decided to innovate—big time.

They decided to set themselves apart by making a bottle so distinct it couldn’t be confused with other sodas. And better yet, the design was patentable. It wasn’t long before bottled Coke became more popular than sodas at the fountains and soon became the most popular soft drink in the nation.

Going, Going, Gone

And sometimes the employees you hired will break free and start their own companies. Let’s look at one of the most famous and influential stories, with an honorable mention going to Apple vs. Microsoft.

Thomas Alva Edison held over 2,000 worldwide patents in his lifetime. He is most famous for creating a practical incandescent light bulb that could burn much longer than prior bulbs. He is said to have failed the first 1,000 times before arriving at the perfect iteration. He went on to build an electrical system to provide power to his own residence. This encouraged him to bring electricity to homes and businesses, creating his first plant in Manhattan in 1882.

Light ‘Em if You Got ‘Em

Edison’s DC (direct current) electricity was a success but with limitations. It could only provide power up to a few blocks away before it lost too much voltage. Around that time, a gentleman named Nikola Tesla emigrated to the US and met with Edison. Tesla was initially hired to repair power generators on the SS Oregon, a ship that had been outrigged with lighting. He completed the work remarkably fast. He then began work on improving the delivery of Edison’s DC electricity.

Over the next year, Tesla created a much better solution called AC (alternating current) and presented it to Edison. Edison had a lot of money and time invested in his DC system and could not afford to pivot. He rejected Tesla’s ideas, and the two parted ways.

“The War of the Currents” came next. It’s a fascinating story of two competing ideas and systems in a race to provide electricity to cities worldwide, with Edison on one side and Tesla (and business partner Westinghouse) on the other. Tesla’s AC system would eventually win out and is still the default electric system used today, over 100 years later. But it took a long time to build systems that were duplicatable on a mass scale. And it wasn’t until 1925 that half of American households had electricity—no more lighting by gas light and candles as the default.

Tesla vs. Edison is an example of what can happen when someone wants to improve your idea and breaks away on their own to do so. Someone will always be there to give their spin on your product. They may even redesign it all together into something else.

Ricky Bobby

Competition can be good. It can keep you from becoming complacent. It can break up a monopoly where one company gets all the business because it’s the only one in town. Competition can force you to improve your product and, more importantly, your process. When you look back, are you the same company you were 10 years ago? Hopefully not.

Do not fear competition.

Competition can seem scary when you have mouths to feed. But it will drive you to increase your presence in the community and look deeper into every phase of your business.

If you refuse to evolve or innovate when necessary, you will not remain in business for very long.

Are you familiar with your competition? Their local presence? Their online presence? Their social media? If not, isn’t it time you were?