Learn the industry

In order to create the best conditions for your company, you should be well prepared before starting the business. Try to find as much information as possible about the industry and study similar companies, think about what makes some successful and others less successful. Write down and find out everything you can about the industry and use for your own planning.

Study others

If there are similar companies in the same industry, you can start by studying them – what sets them apart? Think about what issues are important to your business. Here are some examples:

• Why are some companies more successful than others?
• What is a good venue like, where should it be located and what characteristics should it have?
• What are the challenges in the industry?
• Which concepts work and which ones are less successful?
• What does your competitors' marketing look like and can you learn something from it?
• Pricing, what works and what doesn't?
• Which providers do other companies use and how does it work?

There are many more questions that can help you in your mapping, and which ones are relevant to you depends on the type of business you will be conducting. Also, don't forget to visit other companies' websites to get an idea of how they profile themselves there.

Other information

In addition to collecting information from other companies, you can also collect information from for example:

• The business register (Näringslivsregistret), where there are about one million Swedish companies registered. Simple searches can be done for free, but if you want more in-depth information, there is a cost.
  Näringslivsregistret at bolagsverket.se (in Swedish)
• Statistics Sweden (Statistikmyndigheten, SCB) has statistics on most things, among other things you can find facts about companies divided by industry.
  Statistics Sweden's website
• The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket) has a lot of statistics, divided into industries for example.
  The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth's website
• The municipality's business office often has extensive knowledge and local knowledge of what business life looks like in your particular municipality.
• In many municipalities there are local business associations that are most easily found via internet searches.
• Different industry associations have information about their industries, do a search via the internet or read more on the page What applies in your industry.
  What applies in your industry

You can also visit trade fairs, to get an opportunity to be inspired by players in the industry and gather knowledge for your business. In addition, you can collect product catalogues, price lists and other things that are good for starting a business.

What do you do with the information?

Once you've mapped out the industry and similar companies, you should review what sets them apart. What separates the successful companies from the less successful ones? Include the information from visits to the company's premises and their websites, which procedures they follow, how they are as an employer, how they work with marketing, and so on. Use all this knowledge to understand why one concept works better than another. Is there something distinctive about successful companies that you can use in your own business?