One of my entrepreneurial mantras is to know your competition. I make it my business to glean every little bit of information I can about any competitor however big or small. So when we decided in 2007 to enter the steel wheeled bin market I made a point of learning whatever I could about Taylor who were (and are) the market leader in the steel 1100 litre wheeled bins.
What had made me raise an eyebrow is the new Taylor advertising campaign where they call themselves the world leader in waste containtment & recycling solutions. I was interested in what it took to be the world leader and so I took a look at their accounts.
Results have been published to 30th June 2008 showing turnover of £26,213,951. Of this £565,540 were sales to Europe - just over 2%, and £40,644 elsewhere in the world - just 0.2% of turnover. So how can a company that sells 97% of its output in the UK be the world leader?
Taylor claim to be the biggest manufacturer of metal wheeled bins in the world. This may well be true, but these are only one small part of the market for waste containment and recycling containers. The plastic wheeled bin market is bigger in the UK alone, let alone globally.
What had made me raise an eyebrow is the new Taylor advertising campaign where they call themselves the world leader in waste containtment & recycling solutions. I was interested in what it took to be the world leader and so I took a look at their accounts.
Results have been published to 30th June 2008 showing turnover of £26,213,951. Of this £565,540 were sales to Europe - just over 2%, and £40,644 elsewhere in the world - just 0.2% of turnover. So how can a company that sells 97% of its output in the UK be the world leader?
Taylor claim to be the biggest manufacturer of metal wheeled bins in the world. This may well be true, but these are only one small part of the market for waste containment and recycling containers. The plastic wheeled bin market is bigger in the UK alone, let alone globally.
Anyone scratching even slightly beneath the surface will see from Taylor's published accounts that there is virtually no activity outside of the UK. If their position in the UK market affords them the position of world leader in metal wheeled bins then this loses something in the spirit of what is actually conveyed through the language used.
But the world leader in waste containment and recycling solutions? That is a very different proposition and would appear - so far a I can see - not to be the case.
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