Survival of the fittest

Week 12.2 Survival of the fittest

Previously, there are not so many PM sellers. Life is good and I used to run out of stock. Now more seller coming on board, life is tougher, margin and profit is getting thinner day by day. It‘s not known how will the battle be fought. Let look at some scenarios,

Big fish eat small fish

A big fish come into the market with capital of RM10 – 100 million. Silvermalaysia will be gone by then, nobody will want to buy from me already as I will not be cost competitive.  I’m just like an old sundry shop competing with a big hypermarket like Tesco, Giant etc.

Many small fishes (piranha) eat a big fish

Some time ago, a friend of mine told me that he set up a restaurant in Puchong before. His food was better and cheaper than an established restaurant there. After a few months, profit was good and the established restaurant closed down due to competition. Later on within 1 year, a new nearby hawker center was opened with more than 50 hawker stalls. Each of them is an individual stall where if their food is not tasty and cheap they will be out of business and nobody will pity at them. It’s like a strong resistance fighter. He later told me that his business suffered a tremendous lost and on some days not even one customer visited his restaurant. He later closed down the restaurant for good.  He told me if there is 2-3 arrows (competitor) shooting at you, you can still block it or avoid it, but if there are 50 arrows flying to you, it’s a death penalty.

For this to happen, many of you need to be more braves and less chicken.

Outcome

In the river of Amazon, there will always some big fishes and some small fishes. It’s an eco-system where each of them will balance each other.