How to Find Fragmented Industries

     So I have written about fragmented industries being good opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs to build sizeable businesses in. However, some may be wondering, how exactly does one find or discover fragmented industries? Well with the Internet today, this is a lot easier than it probably used to be, but the way I search for them is to do the following:

1) Check industry reporting services such as IBIS and Hoovers, which are usually good sources of industry reports on the basics of an industry (usually they will tell if an industry is fragmented or not).

2) Randomly Google (or search) to see if discussions about an industry are brought up. For example, if you say are research the plastic bottle manufacturing industry, you could Google "plastic bottle manufacturing fragmented" or "plastic bottle manufacturing concentrated" and see what comes up.

3) Find public companies in said industry and read their annual report. Usually, the annual report has two sections at front, titled "Business" which gives a description of the type of business the company is in, and "Risk Factors" or "Risk" which gives a description of the risks the company faces. Usually somewhere in these is located a description about whether the industry is fragmented or not, what/who the competitor companies are, and so forth.