A Framework for B2B Operators and Investment Teams Navigating Categories, Channels, and Applications With No Established Data Trail
Most market sizing work begins with a reasonable assumption: the market exists. There are trade association reports, analyst estimates, and category revenue figures that can be refined, triangulated, and translated into a credible TAM. The primary job is to size it accurately.
But some of the most consequential sizing questions don’t have that foundation. The category may exist in fragments, in adjacent channels, or in laboratory compounds. But the actual market (as the client needs to enter it) has never taken shape. There is no established data trail to follow, and secondary sources are either absent or unreliable. So, the standard playbook, which assumes a category you can measure, simply doesn’t apply.
We encounter this problem regularly. And over the course of engagements that required us to build a market that had no clean precedent, a consistent set of principles has emerged. Two recent projects illustrate both the challenge and the approach.
Two Different Problems Wearing the Same Name
The phrase “the market doesn’t exist yet” is used to describe at least two distinct situations, and conflating them produces the wrong methodology.
The first is what we call the channel gap – demand exists, buyers have a need, and products are being purchased somewhere. But the specific commercial channel a company wants to enter has never been systematically activated. In one recent example, a leading manufacturer of tire repair products faced this exact scenario. They held a dominant position in retail channels and was seeking growth in commercial segments. Those commercial channels (tire shops, oil change shops, agricultural dealers, industrial equipment dealers, and commercial trucking accounts) had never been approached in a structured way. Some of them were already buying competitive products through Amazon or farm supply retailers, but there was no established channel, no distribution infrastructure, and no category data that captured commercial demand for these products. The market existed in scattered form. The channel the client wanted to build did not.
The second situation is what we call the application gap. The product, or in this case the molecule, is real, but the most valuable applications for it are hypothetical or nascent. A sustainable biotech manufacturer assessing the commercial opportunity for four specialized bioactive compounds faced this challenge. For some of the compounds, small markets already existed. But the most significant opportunities were contingent on clinical validation, regulatory evolution, and adoption decisions that had not yet happened: pharmaceutical applications, hair regrowth formulations, advanced materials uses were all still speculative. You cannot size a market that is waiting on a discovery. But you can model it.
Each situation requires a different approach. Treating them the same, either by defaulting to secondary data that doesn’t capture the reality or by refusing to commit to a number because the market is uncertain, leads to analysis that is too thin to inform real decisions.
Building a Market from Its Components
When a channel doesn’t exist, top-down sizing is not an option. There is no market revenue line to carve a share from, no CAGR to apply. The only viable path is bottom-up: identify every constituent segment, estimate the addressable endpoints within each, and validate demand through direct contact with the buyers who would populate that channel.
For the tire repair engagement, that meant disaggregating the commercial opportunity into six distinct segments: tire shops, oil change shops, agricultural dealers, industrial dealers, commercial truck accounts, and industry experts. Martec conducted 50+ primary interviews that served two purposes. First, they validated whether demand actually existed: did these segments want the products, would they carry them, and under what conditions? Second, they provided the inputs to build the size estimate: how many units might a typical shop carry per week, at what price point, with what purchasing frequency?
The resulting TAM, a nine-figure market across automotive and industrial commercial channels, did not come from a research report. It came from triangulating three independent lines of evidence: what potential buyers said in interviews, what competitors already selling in adjacent channels reported, and what secondary data about the underlying vehicle and equipment populations could verify. The Serviceable Available Market, accounting for channel dynamics and realistic product fit, came to roughly half of that total. The realistic near-term opportunity for this specific company was a fraction of the SAM — a 6x to 8x multiple of what their current commercial channel business produced, but a genuine starting point rather than an aspirational ceiling.
That near-term number is not just a starting point on a growth curve. It is an argument, supported by specific segment-level evidence, about what is actually reachable given who the buyers are, how they currently purchase, and what barriers to adoption exist. That distinction has significant implications for go-to-market planning. A nine-figure TAM with no channel infrastructure behind it is a very different asset than a nine-figure category in which you already have distribution.
Sizing Around Scenarios, Not a Single Number
When the application itself is hypothetical, the problem is different. Producing a single TAM is not just imprecise — it is the wrong output. A number without conditions attached is not useful for decision-making; it just gives the client false confidence in a future they cannot actually predict.
The right framework for nascent-application sizing is scenario modeling tied to specific market catalysts. Each scenario represents a distinct future state, and the market size estimate associated with it is explicitly contingent on conditions that can be monitored and updated.
For the specialty biotech engagement, this meant building three scenarios for each compound. One of the compounds had an established but modest current market. The base case assumed stable category growth and no major application breakthroughs, projecting a 1.5x to 2x expansion over a five-year horizon. The growth case, incorporating clean beauty channel penetration and continued expansion of skincare and anti-aging formulations, pointed toward a 2.5x to 3x multiple. The transformational scenario, explicitly contingent on clinical validation of hair regrowth applications and the entry of major consumer brands into adjacent health categories, represented a 5x or greater expansion from current levels.
Each scenario is not a range pulled from uncertainty. It is a statement of what the market becomes if specific things happen. That is far more useful for a strategy conversation than a single number, because it clarifies which conditions the client should be tracking, which bets are worth making now, and which capabilities need to be in place before the transformational scenario becomes accessible.
A second compound, with a significantly smaller current market, illustrated the same dynamic at an even earlier stage: a molecule whose five-year potential ranged from roughly 2x in the base case to more than 7x in the transformational scenario, entirely depending on whether beverage flavoring applications gained traction in the U.S. market and whether consumer awareness reached the threshold that makes major brand investment viable. The job was not to predict which scenario would materialize. The job was to make the scenarios specific enough that the client could actually make a decision.
Why Primary Research Carries the Weight
In both of these engagements, secondary data played a supporting role at best. For the commercial tire repair channel, no existing research captured that specific combination of segments and products. For the specialty molecules, the nascent applications had not generated market reports worth trusting — and where reports existed, the ranges were wide enough to be nearly meaningless.
Primary research did the work. Not because qualitative interviews can replace quantitative rigor, but because the market intelligence that actually matters in these situations only surfaces when you talk to the buyers and experts who would populate the market you are trying to size: latent demand, willingness to adopt, purchase barriers, competitive dynamics.
This is triangulated market sizing in its truest form. Not averaging three numbers from different secondary reports, but cross-validating a bottom-up estimate against independent lines of evidence: what subject matter experts say the market could absorb, what potential customers reveal about their purchasing behavior and decision criteria, and what secondary data about underlying populations or category trajectories can confirm or challenge. Each line of evidence has weaknesses. The convergence of all three is where confidence comes from.
In the tire repair engagement, that triangulation produced a SAM estimate grounded in specific channel realities, including the fact that certain segments, like heavy-duty construction, showed hesitation due to a structural shift toward fewer pneumatic tires. That kind of nuance does not appear in secondary data. It only comes from conversations with the people who would actually be making the purchase decisions.
The Value Is in the Range, Not the Number
The goal of this kind of research is not a “confident” number. It is a defensible argument.
For the tire repair manufacturer, that argument was built from six segments, dozens of interviews, and three converging lines of evidence. The output wasn’t just a TAM. It was a clear-eyed view of what was reachable in the near term, what was structurally out of reach until channel infrastructure existed, and where demand was already waiting to be captured. For the specialty biotech company, the argument took a different form: not one number but three scenarios, each tied to a specific catalyst, each giving the client a concrete condition to watch rather than a range to argue about in a board meeting.
Different problems. Different methodologies. The same underlying discipline: building the market from evidence rather than assumption, and being honest about what the number actually represents.
The market you can see clearly usually has competition standing in front of it. The real strategic value is in the markets you can’t yet see. Getting the sizing right is how you decide whether to build the channel, fund the compound, or walk away. And it almost always requires doing the harder analytical work that a secondary report simply cannot do for you.
Ken Donaven is a Partner with The Martec Group. He can be reached at ken.donaven@martecgroup.com.
Tatyanna Dadabbo is a Senior Project Manager with The Martec Group and can be reached at tatyanna.dadabbo@martecgroup.com.
