Yes I Know It But.

[yougivemebaby]

Why do you see ALL the same $hit in the booths near the highway.

They are selling ALL the same stuff. How does this make any sense? Everything i mean EVERYTHING is the same. How do they survive and what makes them think this is a good business plan?

Wondering if anyone knows.

Thank you

[zzaa09]

It's all part of the plan.

Keeping you and others confused and misdirected.

Clever Thai.

[soundman]

One owner, or a co-operative.

Sent from my HTC One X using Thaivisa Connect App

[MaxwellsDemon]

I don't know what booths you're talking about, but I understand your point!

How do the 500 T-Shirt and Mobile Phone vendors in MBK survive? Or IT Plaza, or Panthip, or Fortune, or even Chatuchak?

Beats me.

[Farma]

Some areas have a reputation for a certain item. The little booths rely on that reputation and travellers passing through.

Ayuttaya for candy floss, an area east of Khon Kaen for sticky rice in bamboo, Phibun Mangsahan for steamed buns etc.

[Banzai99]

You will see water melon stalls in an area that grows water melons, pineapples in a pineapple producing area, Tamarind in a Tamarind producing area etc etc.

[Jangot]

Yes, must be the way my mind works, but when I saw the last 2 words in your title, I assumed you were talking about female appendages - so thought you were on about either the windows in that street in Amsterdam - or the betel nut seller girls in Taiwan.

[Shot]

I like tit and butt The more the better

[aussiebebe]

Two different questions, really;

How do they survive and what makes them think this is a good business plan?

The economic principle which explains why businesses should be as similar as possible is Hotelling's law; the best place for a booth on the highway will gradually become the one place that every business wants to occupy. This isn't useful for customers who would rather have them spread out, but this would only be possible if a single owner had a monopoly.

How they survive is rather trickier to explain; quite often I chat with shop traders at an outdoor 'plaza' next to my local Tescos, they are always struggling with rents and most have partners or spouses who tide them over financially-difficult periods.

[besth]

That also happens in Bangkok. Streets full of shops selling exactly the same stuff (any kind of products from food to construction materials). I don't quite get the logic of it, but it seems to work here. Some places probably get a good reputation/customer loyalty. If the product is not available at a certain time it is convenient for the customers to check other places nearby. Same can work for all sellers in the area. Just an untested theory.

[wana]

in a western densely populated city , if you sold hammers ,you would do your best to be at least 5km away from the next hammer stall

not in a car park crammed with 400 other stalls all selling the same hammers

no use to apply logic to any situation in thailand you dont understand ,better to just crack open another beer and dont mull over it too long

all your conventional western thinking and common sense will get you no-where understanding thai culture and business practices ....

[Tep]

It seems counter-intuitive but there apparently is some sense to this. It is called Hotellings Law - "Hotelling's law predicts that a street with two shops will also find both shops right next to each other at the same halfway point. Each shop will serve half the market; one will draw customers from the north, the other all customers from the south" Wikipedia. Google it or check out Wikipedia for further explanation.

[StreetCowboy]

If the shops were scattered randomly, you would need to rely on knowing where the specific shop you wanted was located, and it still being in business when you went there.

Luckily, when the need arises, in Bangko (and in HK, and other places) you can go to 'bent nail street' whenever the need arises, and if business is good, uyou will be offered a choice of dozens of places selling the same over-priced identical product at the same price, whereas if business is bad, there may be only a single merchant gouging as much as he can from the occasional sale...

SC

[cooked]

..probably related is the fact that if you grow a crop that nobody else grows and make a good profit, the next year you had better plant something else as everyone else will be growing it and driving down the price. I can't quite put my finger on it but it maybe has something to do with a lack of innovative spirit?

[David48]

Their business principles work for them, why worry about it?

You think to much.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Ayuttaya for candy floss, an area east of Khon Kaen for sticky rice in bamboo, Phibun Mangsahan for steamed buns etc.

I thought Phibun was only good at selling Visa Extensions!

[daoyai]

I have alway heard that the best place to put a shoe store was next door to a shoe store. (western marketing also).

[aneliane]

It goes the same with fashion. everyone wear the same thing!

[Payboy]

I have alway heard that the best place to put a shoe store was next door to a shoe store. (western marketing also).

Quite logical considering people always need a pair.

[StreetCowboy]

I have alway heard that the best place to put a shoe store was next door to a shoe store. (western marketing also).

Quite logical considering people always need a pair.

[EDIT: Accidental double quote deleted]

Now you're being silly. No-one in their right mind would buy their shoes from two different shops. If you like the first one, surely you'd go back to the same shop to get the other?

[robblok]

I have alway heard that the best place to put a shoe store was next door to a shoe store. (western marketing also).

Quite logical considering people always need a pair.

[EDIT: Accidental double quote deleted]

Now you're being silly. No-one in their right mind would buy their shoes from two different shops. If you like the first one, surely you'd go back to the same shop to get the other?

You are being too logical.... females shop too. My mother for instance goes through all the shops every time for her and other females its great if shops are bunched together.

Actually i love pantip plaza for all its it products and go there, but i don't always buy at the same shop.

[Ron19]

One owner, or a co-operative.

Sent from my HTC One X using Thaivisa Connect App

Yes this is what I have been told.One place in the Singburi area sells dried fish and a stall we stopped did not have the type of fish my wife wanted.The young lady behind the stall pointed to the next one 1/2 km up the road and said her mother there has that type of fish.

[zzaa09]

Their business principles work for them, why worry about it?

You think to much.

Some concern themselves to the point of nausea.

If something doesn't seem to fit into their nice little Western logic and reasoning, there must be something wrong.

[Berkshire]

..probably related is the fact that if you grow a crop that nobody else grows and make a good profit, the next year you had better plant something else as everyone else will be growing it and driving down the price. I can't quite put my finger on it but it maybe has something to do with a lack of innovative spirit?

So tell me something, where on this planet does someone produce a successful product that doesn't get copied?

[SimonD]

I remember * 'durian season' on soi Khao Talo in east Pattaya there would be half a dozen pick-ups selling the same obnoxious delicacy within the space of two hundred meters.

My TGF would religiously inspect the wares in each truck while the proud fathers' looked on in eager anticipation of a sale. After much poking, squeezing, eyeballing and, finally, sniffing, she would pronouncing (with a delicate wrinkle of her educated nose) whether the fruit was 'baby durian', 'grandpa durian' or 'okey dokey durian'. They all looked exactly the same to me.

This was, however, still only half the battle. The selected item now had to be labouriously cut open for further detailed inspection, more often than not to be discarded. I don't know how the sellers had the patience to put up with it (or what they did with the eviscerated failures).

I've seen her spend far less time choosing shoes.

edit: * word 'during' deleted on poetic grounds ( I don't have a licence).

[Hostile17]

usualy its one owner for the whole lot and they hire people for peanuts.

Or they rent their areas to non-savvy people, just like people renting bars to dumb farangs in pattaya and phuket.

In phuket, all the boots at central and tesco are owned by the same few people. they hire girls for 3-5k baht per month

[samsiam]

in a western densely populated city , if you sold hammers ,you would do your best to be at least 5km away from the next hammer stall

not in a car park crammed with 400 other stalls all selling the same hammers

I'd sell nails.

[StreetCowboy]

in a western densely populated city , if you sold hammers ,you would do your best to be at least 5km away from the next hammer stall

not in a car park crammed with 400 other stalls all selling the same hammers

I'd sell nails.

But why would you go to the hammer market to buy nails? Surely you'd go to Bent Nail Street? While one's wife got a manicure at Broken Nail Street. If people started opening up shops willy-nilly all over town, we'd not know which way to turn, depending on what one understood by 'willy-nilly'.

So anyway, she went down to the local industrial equipment and machine-tool shops in the village, but couldn't get nails anywhere - a language problem, I believe, and ended up buying them in town in a fashionable Japanese department store; I was recounting this tale to a colleague and he said "Why didn't she just go to Bent Nail Street?"

"Aye, now you tell me. Its not called "Bent Nail Street" on the map, and there's not a marking saying "'Nail and tack market'"

"Aye, well everyone knows where Bent Nail Street is."

"Now they do, but until recently, there was one exception - me!"

Similarly, if one wants bathroom fittings, one turns left out of the go go bar as the sun comes up (or right, depending on which side of the street the bar is on); to be honest, I always had trouble with directions in Wan Chai, and had to imagine holding a map, and then turning it upside down, in order to get my bearings

SC

EDIT: typos corrected, for all the good it will do

[menostay]

For what it is worth consider this: In the days of guilds a person would learn his trade in an area of the city. He would live there with others who worked in the same craft. He would go to the temple in his guild's area. Life and leisure were conducted in that small area. He and his business were safe there. When you wanted a leather product you would go to the area that the guild operated in as that is the only place that leather goods would be manufactured and sold in the city. For silver...the silver guild's area....for metal or wood products.....their area.

Many cities in Asia still are organized after that fashion.

Perhaps that partly explains the duplication that makes sense to local people but not at all to foreigners.

[yougivemebaby]

usualy its one owner for the whole lot and they hire people for peanuts.

Or they rent their areas to non-savvy people, just like people renting bars to dumb farangs in pattaya and phuket.

In phuket, all the boots at central and tesco are owned by the same few people. they hire girls for 3-5k baht per month

This seems the most logical. It's the market right near Galaxy on Sukhumvit in Bang Saen Chonburi. Each stall is literally identical to the next one. I can understand the Law that people were quoting on Wikipedia. However I don't think it would be included in this type of venue. Yes if there were two stores next to each other logically they could compete with each other and have a lot of the market from the north and south. But I'm sure they would also have different shoes and have competitive pricing. All the pricing is the same. All the crap is the same.

I'm not cutting them down because obviously it's working out for them. There is a ton of stuff I see happen here that makes zero sense. I see this one almost every day so I had to see if any veteran expats knew. I've only been here for a year. LOVE IT.