Many offline businesses remain offline simply because companies and industry leaders fail to shape the internet. For this reason there are still many under competed markets online. Textile assemblies and custom textile assembly manufacturing is one example of a large industry under achieving in the online space. The internet is like a giant wiki. Millions of individual publishers work autonomously to create websites and pages that are all interconnected and centralized through various “portals” such as search engines and directories. Unlike wiki volunteers publishers create content motivated by commercial or personal gain; facilitated by “know-how”. It’s easy to understand why some less lucrative verticals are over competed and other more potentially profitable niches are under competed. In the case of textile assemblies, online opportunity exists but is coincidentally ignored.

Although many of these “gaps” online exist, they don’t go ignored forever.  I chose textile assemblies as my prime example because I was recently approached to look at the competitive landscape for textile manufactures and assembly solutions online for a prospective client. Some people might assume that there is little value to online marketing where competition is less saturated. A concept based on the logic: That since a large commercial presence doesn’t already dominate SERPs when searching for “textile assemblies”, probably no one searches it. Obviously this is not true, and soon after the first company taps into the wealth online, his competitors will follow!

Don’t be fooled by an under competed vertical. It’s not telling of its true potential and typically won’t last forever; not for textile assemblies or many of the other examples I’ve seen.