Background to Niche, Inc.

Luke Skurman and Joey Rahimi established Niche, Inc. as College Prowler in August

2002. The company was then spawned out of a project in their entrepreneurship class by students

at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. Luke Skurman, like most high

school students, had no idea where to start when it came to selecting a college. "I went to my

guidance counselor and perused the conventional guidebooks and college brochures. But I had

no idea what life would be like," he explains. He and a group of pals at Carnegie Mellon came up

with the concept of a college guide "written by students for students." Skurman used

unconventional methods to succeed in the absence of funds. The guides are written by students,

who learn about "guys and girls, the drug scene, nightlife, and, of course, academics." Skurman's

Web site sells his books, which are printed on demand. Skurman increased his company's college

scouting to 200 in 2004.

In 2005, he also secured a distribution contract that will see College Prowler appear on

the shelves of Barnes & Noble and Borders. Fill up the blanks with whatever phrase the youth of

days choose to describe "cool." In 2013, College Prowler renamed itself Niche and began

covering K-12 school districts with federal, state, and user-generated data. Niche received

500,000 user ratings on half of all high schools in the United States within months of releasing

the K-12 product (www.bizjournals.com). Following the move to the new business model, the

majority of revenue was generated by partners who assisted institutions in marketing and

advertising to prospective students (Windish, 2008).

Niche is the industry leader in school search for K-12 and college. Its goal is to make

finding schools and enrolling in them as simple, clear, and cost-free as possible. Niche assists

millions of people in finding the ideal school for them by providing in-depth profiles on every
school and institution in the United States, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search

tools. Niche also aids thousands of institutions in attracting more best-fit students by

emphasizing their strengths and making it easy to visit and apply.

Niche, Inc. Evolution – Growth, Share

In 2018, Allen & Company and Grit Capital Partners led a $6.6 million Series B round of

investment for Niche. Paul Palmieri, the General Partner of Grit Capital Partners, has been added

to the board of directors of the company (AP NEWS. 2020). Niche intends to use the funds to

further the platform's position as the go-to place for users to manage their school search

experience, making it easier for students to handle the entire application process. Niche has over

1,400 school clients as a two-sided platform, including Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard

Westlake School, Boston University, and k12.com, and will use the cash to work with thousands

more schools. Niche has established itself as the go-to recruiting tool for the education sector in

the United States, especially in this uncertain time when students and institutions are solely

online.

Niche Inc., on the other hand, is building technology-enabled firms that change

industries, and Niche is doing just that with its modern approach to school enrollment

marketing," stated Weston Gaddy, Partner and Co-Founder of Radian Capital. As a result, Niche

is redefining school search and will pave the way for the future of recruitment as it continues to

grow at a rapid rate." Over the past year, the Niche Inc. has grown at a rapid pace while being

capital efficient. Niche grew its ARR by more than 100% and its client base by more than 60%

year over year in 2019, and the company was cash-flow positive for the most of the year. Niche

has also increased its personnel in product, engineering, marketing, and sales by 60 percent.

Niche's value proposition of pairing high-quality individuals with the proper school gives a good
return on investment for educational clients, since schools have been under greater pressure from

tighter budgets and higher student acquisition costs.

Niche Inc. Audience-Target group(s)

Niche is revolutionizing how prospective students and parents find the best-fit education

alternatives and genuinely experience a school or institution beyond its academics by combining

the finest of both qualitative and quantitative student experience data with thorough academic

information. Over 130,000 in-depth profiles on colleges and schools, as well as over 140 million

evaluations and ratings from students, parents, and graduates, are available on Niche's website

and native app, providing powerful user search tools and resources to utilize during the school

decision process. Niche's platform received more than 100 million visits in 2019, and more than

one in every two college-bound high school graduates has registered on the site and is utilizing

the company's discovery tools to pick a college or university. Practically overnight, tens of

millions of students across the country switched to online classes, standardized testing was

canceled, and school tours went virtual for the foreseeable future,” said Luke Skurman, CEO and

founder of Niche. “Students and families need a reliable way to research and authentically

connect with schools online (Sert, 2017). Schools need a better way to connect with millennial

parents and Gen-Z students in this mobile-first, digital era.

Niche has accelerated the roll-out of many additional free features to benefit schools who

have been impacted by closures in response to COVID-19 and to further Niche's aim of

improving ties between schools and students. Niche is upgrading its platform in response to the

shift in virtual schooling to make it clearer for students which schools offer online coursework

and degrees. Niche is now allowing colleges to put links to their virtual tours on their site

profiles, allowing students to virtually tour campus life. COVID-19 has also been studied in
depth by the firm, which polled over 50K students and parents to see how it affects school

communities, students' academic success, and college plans.

Niche Inc. Product/Service

College Prowler began as a business that sold instructional booklets about colleges that

looked like a cross between CliffsNotes and a Zagat guide. It sold hundreds of thousands of

copies and generated millions of dollars, but it then had to deal with the 2008 financial crisis and

devise a new marketing strategy. Niche now collaborates with colleges and schools to deliver

information to prospective students, following a few pivots. According to founder Luke

Skurman, the aim remains the same as it was in 2002, with the goal of making the college search

process more transparent and student-centered.

Consider Niche to be a focused platform for students to assess their college options

without having to manage a complex spreadsheet or multiple internet tabs. It allows users to

compare parameters including prior acceptance rates, cost, and post-graduate earnings, as well as

topics like majors and campus life. Niche assigns a rating to each school based on the

information provided, and it also includes reviews and links to comparable institutions. In

addition to a college-by-college examination, Niche features ranking lists on topics like finest

dorms and most diverse universities.

Niche Inc. Pricing

Skurman and the CollegeProwler team, which included fellow Carnegie Mellon

graduates Joey Rahimi and Christopher Mason, as well as Christina Koshzow, a Carnegie

Mellon graduate currently studying at the Heinz School, traveled from Pittsburgh to Salt Lake

City in September to officially launch their company at the National Association for College

Admission Counseling (NACAC) Conference. They came away from the conference with over
700 business leads, including those from college admissions offices, high school guidance

counselors, and big publishing houses. On its website, www.collegeprowler.com, the company

now sells over a hundred college guidebooks. The price of the guidebooks is $5.95 each.

Niche Inc. Positioning

Sprout Social, Speakr, Apex Learning, Collective Bias, and Shmoop are some of

Niche.com's competitors. Comparably, Niche.com is ranked third among its competitors in terms

of CEO Score. With CEO Rankings, Overall Culture Score, eNPS, Gender and Diversity Scores,

Niche.com compares to its competitors.

Marketing Communications and Brand

According to Davis (1992), a retailer's brand should serve four purposes: (1)

differentiation, (2) commanding a price premium, (3) having a separate existence from the

business, and (4) providing a type of mental value to customers. In a congested market, retailers

must use branding to set themselves apart from their competition. The term "brand orientation"

has a number of different definitions. "A kind of institution in which the corporate brand

expressly works as the cornerstone - and, moreover, the centripetal force - that informs and

directs the company, especially in connection to its basic philosophy and culture," defines

Balmer (2013). "An method in which the organization's processes center around the creation,

development, and protection of brand identity in an ongoing engagement with target customers

with the goal of establishing lasting competitive advantages in the form of brands," says Urde

(1999).

Brand orientation is defined by Bridson and Evans (2004) as "the degree to which the

company values brands and its actions are geared toward establishing brand capabilities."

Distinctiveness, utility, value addition, and symbolism are the four attributes that establish brand
orientation. Fashion merchants, according to Birtwistle and Freathy (1998), must transform their

basic principles into a cohesive brand strategy in order to sustain a competitive advantage. The

larger the retail offer advantage over competitors, the more brand-oriented the fashion retailer is

(Bridson & Evans, 2004). Retailers may benefit from brand orientation in a number of ways,

including improved trade formats, customer communication, customer service, and merchandise

(Bridson & Evans, 2004).

Companies perceive niche markets as a viable possibility beyond crowded mass markets

because consumers are increasingly demanding products that are unique (Schaefers, 2014).

Niche brands stand out because they "embodie a specific product philosophy and consequently

appeal to specialized consumer groups" (Hendarwan, 2002). Toften and Hammervoil (2010)

looked at how specialist marketing can help companies develop strong strategic competencies.

Niche enterprises concentrate their strategic expertise on three areas of the value chain: inbound

logistics, production, and marketing & sales. The study also stressed the importance of having

access to and high-quality materials in order for niche firms to deliver high-quality products to

customers, as well as having a "close" and "personal friendship" with customers that allows for a

long-term relationship built on "trust, reliability, honesty, alliance, and commitment" (Toften &

Hammervoil, 2010).

The fashion communities that surround style and brands are another potential source of

competitive advantage for retailers. Marketers, customers, and bloggers constitute a community

that shapes the brand and its perceptions, thus they must be managed by marketers (Pihl, 2014).

The higher the fashion retailer's retail offer advantage over competitors, the more brand-oriented

it is (Bridson & Evans, 2004). Gromark and Frans (2011) wanted to know how brand orientation

affected financial success. Their findings reveal that there is a considerable positive association
between brand orientation and profitability, with the most brand-oriented companies virtually

double the profitability of the least brand-oriented enterprises in this sample. Customers and

other stakeholders who have an emotional attachment to a company's brand give it its genuine

value (Balmer, 2013). Custodianship, or managing the brand, credibility, or living and releasing

the brand, and calibration, or preserving and evaluating the brand, are three duties proposed by

Balmer for the organization to retain a strong brand orientation (2013).

Because user image congruity and use image congruity are key markers of brand loyalty,

marketers should constantly maintain their brand personality and brand image (Liu, et. al., 2012).

As a result, brand loyalty is defined as the "ultimate dimension of consumer brand resonance,

signifying the consumer's ultimate engagement with a brand" (Erdomuş & Büdeyri-Turan, 2012).

In such a competitive market, brand loyalty is an important feature that is constantly analyzed. It

is necessary to get a competitive edge and ensure profitability.

As a result, in just a few months since its release, the K-12 product has received feedback

from half of all high schools in the United States, totaling over 500,000 user-generated ratings.

One million reviews have been submitted to College Prowler by its users. Skurman wants to

branch out beyond K-12 reviews and rankings into verticals that might assist people in deciding

where they want to work and live. He stated, "We believe we can be one of the largest content

organizations in the United States, if not the globe." The company's 21-person staff is being

expanded in order to get there. Skurman is seeking a director of sales, a director of marketing,

analysts, and software developers, among other positions. Skurman says the company is cash

flow positive and doesn't require funding right now, but "we are reviewing all possibilities right

now."
 Mass markets cater towards an entire market, whereas niche markets target a small

subsection of consumers in a market. Niche markets target a specific consumer segment with

specialised, unique wants and needs. Mass markets target the entire market and do not focus on

specific subsegments of a market.