There are a lot of things you can learn about business from Chinatown.

Entrepreneurialism is very evident among the Chinese business owners here. It’s very interesting to look at the shops and theorize what the competition must be like. You can see where the introduction of a new product to market raises the opportunity for profit and competition. You also notice many of these same principles in Internet marketing

A lot of the stores sell the same things.

While this is probably good for the distributer, it seems like a lot of competition for the same market. You have to wonder if selling the exact same trinket as the business next door is selling is a great business model. While a restaurant or hair salon can make a difference in it’s product or service over a neighbor business, does a store mid block have a chance at selling the same thing as one near the corner or parking lot?

Yes and no.

You can compete by price to get a customer share or you can market your business better than your competition. My guess is price is what most tourists are going to look at most among a bunch or stores selling tourist trinkets. Once a tourist realizes that the same thing is in every store, they are going to shop price. Judging from some prices, my guess this is what usually happens.

The best way to create sales in this type of business is by marketing your business and products instead of trying to compete on price alone.

I did not see too much of this happening for the most part. Most stores are small and difficult to get through. A few stores (even on the main street) were so full that there was no clear way to even get to the merchandise without squeezing through racks of clothes risking the you break it-you bought it line. Stores that were reasonably easy to move through and look fun to shop in are going to get more customers. At the same time, you give potential customers a clear reason to even notice your business over the others.

How about your website or blog?

Do you have something very different to offer? Are you competing with basically the same product? Are you marketing and promoting your business effectively? By that I don’t mean just anonymous back links. One way to separate yourself from competition is by developing relationships with your potential clients or readers.

No seamonsters though.

What is your business model built on?

One of the first places we went to in Toronto was Chinatown.

While there are several Chinese communities in Toronto there is one not too far from the CN Tower that most resembles what most people probably think of.

It forms a "T" at the intersection of two roads. I forget which roads now. I made a joke of mispronouncing the main road so I could remember it and now I can’t remember the correct or incorrect name.

*The main road is Spadina (I was calling it Spiderman)*

You can tell when you reach Chinatown since all the shops have Chinese signs.

Lots of restaurants. Lots of souvenir shops which sell nearly anything. Several Chinese grocery stores. There are also two indoor malls full of Chinese and Asian shops.

My wife’s favorites are the grocery and produce shops.

Everywhere we went my wife wanted to visit the Asian grocery stores. She does this every time we travel. We do not have a large Chinese or Asian store near where we live so I guess maybe that is why she likes to see them. I don’t really get it though. The picture above was taken outside one of the produce stores.

The Chinese shops in Toronto have several fruits that I have never seen before. I have not seen them in Chicago either, so I wonder if they are imported into the US. Some of them are pretty strange looking to me. My wife loves them. On our way back to the US she was busy trying to finish what she had in the car before we got to the border. They didn’t check our car after all.

Beware – Pirates!

I was amazed to see how blatant piracy was in Chinatown. You can get 7 DVD’s for $20. If you don’t mind a bit of smudge on the label. Exchanges are only if the DVD does not work in their player.

Nearly all the movies and CD’s that appeared to be pirated here were Chinese or Asian.

While at the Pacific Mall (I plan to talk about this in my next post) you could find a DVD of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie that was just released in theaters that weekend. Some stores here were so blatant that they had blank empty DVD cases under the displays. They do not accept Visa there apparently (I tried to buy a DVD player).

You may have to walk the plank

I was told that, occasionally, officials do come and when they do they arrest not only the business employees but also any customers that happen to be in the store also.

I really do not believe any business model built on piracy or theft is a good plan.

In addition to the legal issues, I don’t see how it can last from a business point of view. You copy a movie, the business next to you copies your copy and his cost is now less (or you both download it). The customer gets a poor quality product (that is if it works – often there is no way for the customer to even get a refund if it doesn’t work). I do not see how anyone really wins with this business model. I am sure not all the customers know that they buying a pirated movie or CD. I did see one person trying to get a movie that did not work replaced. I’m kinda glad they did not take Visa – what if the DVD player gets the same customer service?

What about online piracy and your advertisers?

I am going to complain about Clickbank here. Not about get rich quick ebooks, but about promoting piracy networks. While there is an attempt to look legit, I find it hard to believe that any of the sites claiming you can download all the latest movies and music you want for a low monthly fee are honest. The customer is either going to have to pay more for a real download (like iTunes) or the site is promoting a file sharing network (and the customer is being duped into paying for something just as illegal as if they did it without paying a monthly fee).

Think your not a pirate?

Running Adsense? Think all those download sites are really honest? A lot of them are simply promoting the same sites from Clickbank. It is very hard to find good advertisers if you are looking in certain niches. You can try not to promote piracy, but it is difficult. It’s depressing if you want to work in the iPod niche. You have iTunes (and who with an iPod would not already have that) and not much else that shows up looks legitimate.

For a slightly John Chow moment:

My wife and I had Dim Sum here at the Rol San Restaurant one afternoon. My wife liked it which is a good sign. She is very hard to please when it comes to eating out. It was right on Spadina Rd.

No pirates but there could be seamonsters in the bathroom.

My next post about Toronto will be about the Pacific Mall.

One of the coolest malls I have ever seen. I think it is an interesting business concept (despite the pirates).

Boy, did I get lost!

My wife and I had a great time in Toronto and Montreal.

At least she did. I spent most of the week either driving or watching her shop. Actually, I had a good time too.

Next time, I will invest in a GPS unit.

I figure, I would have saved about 8 hours of our vacation not being lost if I had a GPS system to guide me. AAA maps are really not very useful anymore. A slight misunderstanding had me thinking my wife wanted me to get direction maps at AAA. Using Google Maps or any of the online maps is much better if you are looking for maps to follow on the highway.

What I do not like about AAA maps.

They do not warn you about which exit to take. They do not show all roads (some pages have fold out maps with details though). They do not stay oriented to north, but always stay vertical for the highway (this can be really annoying). Also, St Catherines (where we stayed near Toronto) was not on the AAA map to Toronto as well as Niagara Falls. I admit I did not ask for a map to St. Catherines, but it is really close. I did notice this before we left and made a Google map and directions of that section of our trip.

The AAA maps were right about the construction zones.

Yep, there was construction in Chicago. Not much you could really do about that anyways, but it was good to know it was coming. Chicago on the way out (we hit it about 7:00pm on a Friday night) was about the worst traffic we had due to construction. We had a few backups during the week on the way to Montreal where the construction was also. All right where AAA marked them.

In all, I got lost 6 times.

The first was somewhere in Indiana or Michigan. I misread a sign and got off I-94 on a tollway. We had to pay the toll twice at the same booth as we turned around at an exit. This was my fault for not reading the map closer. What was really annoying is there was no exit to get back on I-94 in the direction we were going. I am not sure why you can only get off in one direction and not get back on going in the same direction from the same highway.

The second time I got lost was just before the bridge to Canada.

We wanted to get gas before crossing the border. We stopped one exit too late and were unable to get back on the highway before the ramp to the bridge. Even worse, the gas station did not have a rest room open. It took me about 15 minutes to find a ramp going back on I-94 so we could then get another ramp going in the right direction.

The third time I got lost was just after the bridge to Canada.

Our map did not have directions for getting on the main highway to Toronto. It was just not easy to read this part of the map (and the detail section did not help). There were no good road signs pointing to the highways either. I got on the wrong highway. It was a good hour before the road got smaller and the number of stoplights made it clear we made mistake. We went all the way back to the border and still could not find directions to the highway we needed (401 East). We finally found a sign leading from the tunnel into Canada. We had a similar experience coming back to the USA through the tunnel. I either missed the sign or there was none telling the way to I-94 from the tunnel. Next time, tunnel to Canada, bridge to USA.

The other time I was lost was on one of our day trips to one of the Chinatowns in Toronto.

We could not remember the right exit to get off and got off a few exits early to get to the Pacific Mall. We did find it eventually, it just took a lot longer. The way back was where I really got lost. I got 401 East and West mixed up in my head (they all look like North and South on my AAA maps) and it was overcast so I did not have the sun to go by and I took 401 West. We were a good way towards Montreal (I recognized a service center we had stopped at on the way back from Montreal) before I had a clue we were going in the wrong direction. I was wondering why there was no sign for Hamilton or Niagara.

Finally, as far as I can tell there is not sign for 401 East from Niagara on QEW.

I did not miss this by much, but it did add a bit of time to leaving. This was the part I had Google Map directions for the trip coming, I did not think I was going to have a problem leaving.

I can see why GPS is a great time saver.

Had this been a business trip, it would have been even more important. I also wasted a lot of gas, which was $1.06 a liter most of the time in Canada. I’m moving a GPS unit to the top of my list of things to buy for myself.

We had a great time in Canada.

Ontario is very beautiful and we are already looking forward to going back sometime and spending more time in Montreal.

I’ll be making some more (hopefully shorter) posts about the trip. I hope to make them a bit more on topic with this blog look at some business aspects I thought about during the trip. Especially in Chinatown.

There be pirates there.