SWOT analysis example for a small business

A SWOT analysis is a one-page look at your business: what you do well, what holds you back, and what is happening around you. It takes an hour, and it is most useful when it ends in a short list of actions.

The four boxes

• Strengths: what you do well, inside the business.
• Weaknesses: what holds you back, inside the business.
• Opportunities: changes outside the business you could use.
• Threats: changes outside the business that could hurt you.

Strengths and weaknesses are things you control. Opportunities and threats are things you do not, but can prepare for.

A full example

Here is a SWOT for a made-up small bakery in a growing neighbourhood.

Strengths

• Bread baked fresh each morning, often sold out by early afternoon.
• Strong local reputation and many repeat customers.
• Owner with years of baking experience.

Weaknesses

• Only one oven, which limits how much can be baked.
• No online ordering, so customers cannot reserve bread.
• The owner works six days a week and cannot take time off.

Opportunities

• New apartment buildings opening nearby.
• Local cafés asking about wholesale bread.
• Rising interest in local, slow-made food.

Threats

• A supermarket bakery opening two streets away.
• Rising flour and energy prices.
• Possible roadworks on the shop's street next year.

Turn it into actions

This is the step that matters. Match the boxes against each other.

• Use a strength to grab an opportunity. Use the local reputation to win wholesale orders from cafés.
• Fix a weakness that blocks an opportunity. Add simple online ordering before the new apartments fill up.
• Use a strength against a threat. Lean into freshness and the personal service a supermarket cannot match.
• Reduce a weakness that makes a threat worse. Train one person to bake, so the owner is not the only one who can.

Pick three actions at most, with an owner and a date each. There is a method in how to set business goals.

Tips for a useful SWOT

1. Be specific. "Good service" is vague. "Same-day replies to every customer" is specific.
2. Use facts. Sales numbers, reviews and customer comments beat opinions.
3. Ask others. Customers and staff see strengths and weaknesses you miss.
4. Keep it short. Three to five points per box is enough.

Look outside properly

For the opportunities and threats boxes, look at what competitors are doing. There is a simple method in competitor analysis template. Talking to customers helps too. Their problems are your opportunities.