November 22, 2006.
Small company looks big? Small company pretends to big? Or just don't tell...
I read an article a few weeks ago in Fortune Small Business, Play Big by Julie Sloane. The article talked about with technology today companies could seem big without really being that big. It started off with a Southern California Software company that had no employees, just the two founders and four engineers in India. They used and actress/phone system that answered the phone and routed the problems or questions to the correct department (either one of the founders wearing whatever hat was needed). The company would not even allow the company's name listed in the article for fear of what their customers would think.
Having run the business out of the garage for 3+ years, I found this article fascinating, I kept it by my bed and read out passages to my husband at night. In his defense he was just trying to watch a little sports highlights and I would not have it. This is EXACTLY what we have been doing at JPD for these past four years, and we never thought a second about it.
I used to be embarrassed about it, never admitting to people I met or especially prospective channels. I just let them think we were working in the studio (garage) or I was in the office (garage), or shipping department (garage). I guess to some we were lying, but I don't think so. We just let them assume these departments were run out of an office and different parts of the company.
The point is, we fooled everyone, until we confided in them, our channels thought the business was run out of a commercial office building. Even now we are not a huge company, but we give off a very professional image:
- Website - Built professionally, shopping cart, photographs professional
- Brochures - Printed on press, not on my black and white printer
- Logo - Created by Graphic Designer
- Customer Service - Excellent and always professional
- Phone System - not my home number, a service, a second line for the business
- Email - not home email, no kids footer or information about being a home business
- Titles - Everyone had a title (bookkeeper, accountant, graphic artists, publicist, shipping clerk, etc.)
Now nothing wrong if you don't do these things - we just did. And it worked for us. We acted and still do act like a big company with policies, processes and procedures.
Late last summer we nabbed a very large channel. I had tried many, many times only winning the channel over after sending samples of our products. After many conversations setting us up in their system, and working together flawlessly for a few months the website administrator paid us a big compliment (we laugh about it still to this day), "You know we work with lots of much smaller companies, the artisans we usually work with are not nearly as a big a company as yours."
I rest my case.
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