Reverse Engineering Opportunity in the Shopify App Store

Or how to use data to look for potential

I recently came across a blurb about BarkBox’s product strategy for Amazon and found it quite interesting. They were considering launching a new set of products on Amazon, so they set up an internal team to analyze the “pet” category on Amazon. The analysis looked for products that were high volume and high margin and then used machine learning to go through the reviews looking for opportunities. As their CEO was quoted as saying, they basically tried to “reverse engineer” the listings on Amazon to figure out what products they should create and launch on the platform.

“The idea was to reverse engineer our products to find out where the most opportunity for product development was, and then build the line out from there.”

— Bark CEO Matt Meeker

I found this approach pretty ingenious. It’s not the right approach to use if you’re looking to create a new product in a new market. But if you’re looking to enter a market that already has established products in your category, it wouldn’t hurt to do this kind of research to at least understand what your competition is and where the best opportunities lie.

Of course, time will tell how well this strategy ends up working in the long run but if you take BarkBox’s word for it, it seems to be…