How to see a competitor’s new products as soon as they launch

Why launches are worth watching

A competitor’s new product tells you where they think the category is going. It can also take sales from you directly if it lands next to one of your best sellers. Hearing about it on launch day gives you time to respond. Hearing about it from a customer a month later doesn’t.

Four places a new product shows up

1. The “new” collection

Most stores have a collection for new arrivals, linked from the main menu. Its address is usually something like:

The store chooses what goes in it, so it can be out of date or miss quiet additions.

2. The full catalog, newest first

Most Shopify stores have a page that lists every product. Adding a sort option to the address puts the newest at the top:

This catches products the store hasn’t promoted yet. Some store designs ignore the sort option, in which case the order won’t change.

3. The public product list

Many Shopify stores publish their product list at a public address, and each product in it carries the date it was published. That’s the most exact record of what’s new. The free store snapshot reads this list and gives you a summary of the catalog:

4. Email and social

Sign up to their email list and follow their main social account. Launches are announced there, though often a day or more after the product is live on the store.

Signs a launch is coming

• A “coming soon” page or a waitlist sign-up
• A new category appearing in the main menu
• A new product listed as sold out before anyone could have bought it
• New ads for a product you can’t find on the store yet. Meta’s Ad Library shows any brand’s active ads

What a launch tells you

When you spot a new product, note four things:

1. The category. Is it in a category you sell in, or a new one for them?
2. The price. Is it above or below their usual range, and where does it sit next to your closest product?
3. The launch offer. Full price, a launch discount or a bundle?
4. The stock. If it sells out within days, demand is real. If it’s discounted within weeks, it probably isn’t.

Get told on launch day

Trailwatch reads each competitor’s catalog every few hours. When a product appears that wasn’t there before, you get an alert with the product, its price and its category. Your Monday briefing then puts the week’s launches next to your own products.