@moffintosh @kaia @dushman @Moon @Hyolobrika It's only an example, but if you think that you need to compete with Ikea or Wayfair to have a successful furntiture business I think you are not understanding several things. For one, the market for hardwood furniture doesn't directly overlap with the pressed sawdust market. There are enough people who work on commissions and make completely custom furniture to know there is a market for it.

Another misunderstanding is you don't need to beat your competitors entirely to produce value for yourself. You simply need to compete well enough to produce the value you want. There are several local plumbers that exist in spite of the fact that rotorooter has a market presence here. Sometimes a local plumber will even recommend you go ahead and call in the big guys, but they coexist just fine. This might not be true of retail, but the only "value" a retailer is providing is access to goods so the larger retailers with more access to goods and lower prices are going to take a lot more business from the small guys.