In order to accurately assess the potential of your idea you need competitive products with similar benefits to compare to your product. The products you see in or on a TV ad are typically just a small percentage of the products available. You’ll want to investigate all products. Products that aren’t selling well tell you just as much about the market as products that are selling well, as they indicate what features aren’t valued by the market. There are many ways to locate competitive products.

Patent Searches. Article21 covered how to find patents on similar ideas and how to contact the patent holder for more product information. If you have trouble getting a company or individual’s address or phone number you can usually get the information by going to a larger library and using an American Business Directory or other similar directory. Just ask the reference librarian what directories they have.

Catalogs. Most new products, especially from smaller companies, are first sold through catalogs. Libraries will typically have several books that lists available catalogs by product type and you can also find them with an Internet search on Google, Yahoo, or most other web searches. Once you find a catalog that covers the products you want, you can simply call the catalog company and request a catalog. Another good source of catalogs is looking at direct mail lists you can buy from list brokers.

Trade Magazines. A trade magazine is geared towards companies or businesses rather than consumers. A trade magazine might be targeted at a group of retailers, such as toy store owners, or towards a particular job classification, such as cutting tool engineers or accountants, or towards a type of business such as plastic fabrication shops. Press release about new products typically makes up 5 to 20 percent of the content in a trade magazine. Next to trade shows, press releases are the best source of new product information. Trade magazines also frequently publish directories that list the manufacturers producing each category of product.

Trade Shows. Manufactures plan most of their major product introductions around trade shows. Bigger libraries will have directories listing the major and minor trade shows for virtually every industry. You can also find many trade shows with Internet searches. The directories will list the name of the show promoter for each trade show. You should call them up to get information about attending the trade show. Most promoters will also have last year’s directory. These will list exhibitors by product category and you can find out who was introducing or exhibiting products similar to yours.