Have your own market

A FEW WEEKS ago, my desktop PC almost gave up on me. First it was the power supply, which had to be changed. Then the video card refused to work. I had to have that changed too. Then the PC would reboot automatically several times while I was working, making me frantic to save my document more often. It turned out I had to change the memory too. So while the computer was in the shop for a few days, I had no choice but go to an Internet café to meet my deadlines. At first, I went to a neighborhood Internet shop near a school, a few minutes away from our house. At P15 per hour, it was a good deal, I thought. It was okay for the first 20 minutes, until the owner’s young daughters came and made the place their playroom. Then my seatmate started chatting to her boyfriend abroad and I couldn’t wait to get out of the place. The next day I went to another Internet café on the main road nearby. They had more computers, and the place was a “serious” Internet café. The rate was P20 per hour. But then a barkada of gamers came and they were cursing and shouting like there’s no tomorrow as they machine-gunned people onscreen. So it was a relief when I went to the mall the day after that to Netopia Internet café. It’s well lit and quiet, a nice place to write and work. The rate of Internet usage is higher than that of the mom-and-pop Internet cafes I visited, but I had a better experience here. That’s what makes them different. “We’re on the quiet side,” says George H. Tan, president and CEO of Digital Paradise, Inc., operators of the 161-outlet Netopia Internet Café chain. “The bulk of our clients are Internet users, a lot of them centered on socializing.” According to Tan, 30 percent of their clientèle are Internet users into Friendster and the like, 35 percent use Yahoo and Yahoo Messenger to chat, and no more than 12 percent of their clients play games. Given this profile, Netopia focuses on giving clients a lifestyle experience. “You can’t compete with mom-and-pop shops on price, but you can compete on value-added service. We sell the total experience: convenience, comfort, safety, and speed,” says Jose Maria A. Grau, Jr., COO of Digital Paradise, Inc. Netopia decided to cater to a market that would prefer to work, learn and socialize quietly in an Internet café. To boost their value-added service, Netopia partnered with other corporations to give clients more: job application to call centers can now be done right at Netopia, and one can do online review courses for government exams, and online free e-learning courses from Microsoft right here. So in a sea of Internet cafes in the Philippines, Netopia cornered a market for itself. Rather than compete with the others, it chose to tap a wider unknown market—a blue ocean strategy. Are you battling it out with the competition for the same market? Maybe it’s time you created a blue ocean of your own.