Polish company Netwise S.A. joins the collana Group
Home / Polish company Netwise S.A. joins the collana Group The
Paul M.
13 August 2026
At last, your product or service is selling like hot cakes and has become a real bestseller in your portfolio. Customers love it and your market share is growing. But what comes next? To further build on your business’s success and hold your own against the competition in the long term, you’ll need some clever strategies.
Whilst a single bestseller won’t guarantee your market position in the long term, it can help you to further develop and expand your product portfolio. In this article, you’ll therefore find some tips to help you pave the way for brand growth and product innovation – through portfolio analysis and well-considered strategic decisions!
Over time, every company builds up a product portfolio comprising various products and services. However, this is anything but a static offering. It grows and changes with every new launch, every shift in market position, and every development within the company and in customer requirements.
A bestseller helps you to further build on your success in your sector and to develop strategies for new products, services and market growth. Before doing so, however, companies must consider how they can gain an overview of the situation.
Among other things, it is possible to distinguish between products, product ranges and variants:
A company’s product range also varies in terms of Product range depth and the range of products. With a wide product range, a company stocks numerous product groups side by side. A deep product range, on the other hand, refers to a situation where there are many varieties within a single product group.
A bestseller alone is usually not enough to ensure that a company remains the market leader in the long term. After all, products go through a life cycle. This ranges from market launch, through growth and the maturity phase, to the saturation phase and ultimately a decline in profits.
Any company wishing to achieve long-term success must therefore, sooner or later, expand its product range. This offers many opportunities – such as new target groups, greater sales potential and a stronger market position. At the same time, however, expanding the product range also presents challenges: from increased coordination efforts to the risk of cannibalisation.
| Benefits of expanding the product range | Challenges of expanding the product range |
|---|---|
| Increase in turnover: With more products on the market, you can boost your company’s turnover. | Lack of resources: Start-ups, in particular, often lack the resources to expand into further business areas when they first begin. Developing new products can be very costly. |
| Strengthening our market position: Companies are given the opportunity to strengthen their position in the market segment or to break into new markets. | Missing data: Companies need to plan market growth and their expansion strategy carefully. This requires data and analyses that are not always available. |
| Customer satisfaction: By developing additional products or extensions, you can meet your customers’ needs and enhance their experience. | Market dynamics: The market and customer requirements are changing rapidly, which means that market leaders must demonstrate a high degree of flexibility. |
| Market growth: As your product range expands, your business and your brand can benefit from this and achieve greater brand awareness and a higher market share. | Storage capacity: An e-commerce shop must take its spatial constraints into account and, where necessary, make use of different types of warehouse. |
| Risk diversification: Don’t rely solely on a single bestseller; spread the risk across several products. That way, other products can offset any decline in market share or turnover experienced by another. | |
| Building competitiveness: You can set yourself apart from the competition and make your business even more appealing to customers. |
However, the challenges and drawbacks are not reasons to avoid expanding your portfolio. You should, however, take them into account in your strategies in order to pave the way for your company’s growth in the market.
Before you rush straight into producing new products, you should plan and prepare thoroughly for the expansion of your portfolio. You should therefore answer relevant questions about the company, the brand and market growth. You should also take a close look at key performance indicators and your target audience. A portfolio analysis will then help you to define a strategy and position yourself. However, the marketing and management of your product range also contribute to future success in the market.
How does this work in practice? We have put together a handy guide for you, including a few examples.
Even market leaders started small. And right from the start, companies should consider a few key questions.
Are you wondering when the time is right to expand your market share? This depends on several factors:
Your bestseller should therefore, if possible, not be in a phase of decline, as fewer resources are available during this period. You should also ask yourself whether the expansion really makes sense and will contribute to long-term growth in the market, or whether you are only expanding because you have to.
You can only secure and expand your market share in the long term by bringing products and services to market that are in keeping with your brand. This is how you gradually build up your image and strengthen brand awareness.
This question also involves deciding whether you want to expand your product range in depth or breadth. Do you see yourself as a specialist in a niche market, or as a generalist with a broad product range?
To answer this question, you must not lose sight of your brand vision. Where do you want your business to be in five years’ time? How do you want your customers to perceive you?
Make the most of cross-selling and upselling too. An example? With cross-selling, you sell customers an additional product that complements what they’ve already bought. For example, you could offer a pillowcase to go with a pillow, or a matching case for a smartphone.
With upselling, you sell a higher-value product instead of the original one – for example, one with better specifications or more features. You should therefore also consider which cross-selling and upselling opportunities are available for your best-seller and which additional products you could introduce to take advantage of them.
Before you expand your product range, you’ll also need to clarify the general framework. For example, it makes sense to introduce a few special features into the shop.
Among other things, recommend a new model to customers whilst they are looking at an older one. An overview of products that complement it well is both practical and helps to boost sales.
When it comes to warehousing and logistics, however, the aim is to put the right conditions in place to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Do you have sufficient storage capacity? And if not, what options are still available to you to make this a reality? You might want to consider using a third-party warehouse or another type of storage facility.
You need a suitable IT environment to manage your stock and analyse data and key performance indicators. ERP software, for example, can provide real-time data on turnover, costs, profitability and other key performance indicators.
This provides you with a sound basis for decision-making. At the same time, it gives you an overview of sales, stock levels and other processes.
Here’s a tip: For start-ups and smaller e-commerce shops, the cost of a complex ERP system usually outweighs the benefits. In such cases, it is worth opting for a readily available SaaS solution. The provider delivers the ERP system via the cloud, which means no adjustments to your IT infrastructure are required and costs are reduced.
Key performance indicators help you to determine the right time to expand, assess the success of your products in the market and manage them over the long term in order to gradually increase your market share.
Among other things, the following key figures play a role here:
If you use an ERP system, you can view many of the key performance indicators directly in real time or have them calculated automatically. This information will also be of benefit to you in other processes and in portfolio analysis.
There are a number of methods available on the market for identifying which new products have potential and are suitable for expansion. These range from competitive analyses and pilot sales to SWOT analyses, which can reveal strengths and weaknesses as well as risks and opportunities.
As companies increasingly expand their portfolios, the BCG matrix model is particularly well suited to this purpose.
The BCG Matrix is a portfolio technique developed by the Boston Consulting Group that has proved its worth in practice. With this method, you divide your product portfolio into a matrix comprising four categories.
To do this, create a diagram with two axes: the The y-axis divides market growth into a high and a low value. The The x-axis shows the relative market share, which may be high or low. The matrix thus forms four quadrants, for each of which you can devise different strategies:
| Category | Explanation | Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Question Marks | Question Marks are products which, although they have a small relative market share, operate in a high-growth market. This is the case, for example, with new products that have a certain amount of potential. | To identify the right strategy for ‘Question Marks’, companies need to ask themselves one question. Can they make the necessary investments in marketing and so on to turn the product into a star? Or should they withdraw the product and promote another one instead? |
| Cash Cows | Although cash cows have a high relative market share, they operate in a market that offers little scope for growth. These are often products that used to be bestsellers. | Companies should skim off the profits generated by cash cows and capitalise on those profits for as long as possible. |
| Poor Dogs | In the BCG Matrix, ‘Poor Dogs’ have a low relative market share and low market growth. | It is often not worthwhile for a company to continue stocking ‘Poor Dogs’ in its range. |
| Stars | Stars are the top performers in a portfolio. They have a high relative market share and the market offers significant growth potential. However, if the market becomes saturated over time, stars can turn into cash cows. | It is worth investing in celebrities and further promoting the products’ profile. |
Always keep the Boston Consulting Group’s BCG Matrix up to date. This is because the market is constantly changing and products can move between categories over the course of their product life cycle. For example, Question Marks can turn into Stars, Stars can move into the Cash Cows category and suddenly become Question Marks. If your overview is up to date, you will always be able to identify the right strategy.
Among other things, you can adjust your portfolio using the following strategies:
Next, we’ll look at market positioning. For example, do you want to use pre-orders, launch limited editions, or start with a low introductory price to penetrate the market? Carefully consider what best suits both your brand and your target audience.
Have all the decisions been made? If so, the next step is to draw the attention of potential customers and those who might be interested to your new offering. After all, nobody knows yet that the new product is now available in your shop.
It’s worth getting your message across via several different channels at once. For example, post a product video or a post on social media and run adverts tailored to your target audience.
You can, however, also reach existing customers via the newsletter. For example, you could send out a special newsletter to everyone who has purchased a particular item. This target group will be particularly interested to hear that a complementary item or an extension is now available.
Always make sure you highlight the benefits your customers will gain from it. Why should they buy it? What problem does your product solve?
Engage with your followers, respond to comments and questions, and represent your brand authentically to build brand recognition. Discount vouchers issued on specific occasions are also well received and can serve as a sales promotion tool.
Finally, it is a question of organising the product range in a clear and structured way and managing it in practice. As already mentioned, customer data, stock levels, sales figures and other key performance indicators can all be consolidated within a single system. An ERP solution can therefore reduce costs in the long term, minimise errors, ensure optimal stock levels and create streamlined, automated processes.
An example? If you scan your stock every time it moves, whether in your own warehouse or a third-party one, the data can be fed into the ERP system. The system then calculates the optimal stock level and, if required, automatically triggers a reorder. At the same time, you have access to a wealth of real-time data, allowing you to identify bestsellers and underperformers at a glance and adjust your product range accordingly.
Home / Polish company Netwise S.A. joins the collana Group The
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Thanks to centralised data management, integrated analysis functions and automated processes, you can keep track of everything at all times – from product development right through to marketing. This ensures that new items not only fit into your product range but also make good business sense.