Why Shop Small?

 Why shop small?

It’s a serious question. One that, as a small business owner, matters very much to my success, even my survival. Why should people shop small? Why should people walk into your store? Why should they visit your restaurant? Why should they choose you, or me, over Amazon or Walmart or Chili’s or McDonalds? 

Give me one good reason why customers should choose you and I don’t want to hear the tired cliches about how buying small helps an entrepreneur pay their mortgage while buying big helps some fat cat CEO buy another ski chalet. I am a consumer. None of that matters to me. What matters to me is price. Well, not really price but value. All other things being equal, price is the deciding factor so I guess that means small businesses should probably shut down because we’ll never be able to compete against the big boys. Right?

Probably true, but the good thing is that we don’t have to compete against the big boys, we can easily be better instead of equal. But we do have to work. Being small and opening your doors isn’t enough. We need to each find our edge. We need to find what Warren Buffett (no little guy) calls a durable competitive advantage. I believe as small business owners, there are a few easy ways to do this.

Be nice to your customers. My wife and I walked into a small shop in Charleston, South Carolina yesterday. The shop sold crystals and the like and had a yoga studio attached. A very nice, and inviting space. There was a clerk behind the counter. We said hello, she said nothing. Others walked in, carrying yoga mats and dressed for yoga. She was all smiles and hellos for these folks. They were people she knew.

Our daughter is a collector of crystals and although she wasn’t with us, souvenirs are a regular part of travel and I would have liked to have bought her something from this store, but alas, we bought nothing. The clerk finally did acknowledge us but it was only to let us know from across the room that we had to leave because the class was going to start and she had to lock the door since there would be no one to keep an eye on the place.

The clerk did inform us that she had called the owner, but the owner wasn’t around and so she had to ask us to leave. We were welcome to come back and spend our money when the owner deigned to show up. This wouldn’t have irked me so much if she had acknowledged us in the first place. The clerk may not have thought about her actions or maybe didn’t care, but she was rude to us and that is why zero of my souvenir budget will be spent at that particular shop. If she had been nice to us from the moment we walked in and walked over and explained the situation instead of calling across the store that we had to leave, we may have returned and spent some money with her. But no, she doesn’t deserve my hard-earned.

The sad thing is that the clerk doesn’t care or even know why the way she treated us will echo in her career, too. I will never spend my money there. I would never recommend this establishment. I would discourage people from visiting this establishment. I may even go so far as to recommend other places where the same goods may be acquired along with service and a smile.

Acknowledge your customers. Maybe this point should have come first but I want you to be nice. Don’t acknowledge a visitor just to turn them off with a scowl.  Be nice and acknowledge your customer. Say hello when they walk in. let them know you’re nearby and happy (not just available or willing) to answer any questions your customers may have. After all, if I want to be ignored, I can go to Target.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a bookworm. I found a lovely bookstore and went inside. The clerk behind the counter, who maybe was the owner, raised her head from what she was doing, looked at us and only said hello after we did. We wandered through the store without a word from her. I love books and I love buying books from small places but I walked out empty handed.

Contrast this to my favorite bookstore in West Yellowstone, Montana. I walk in and someone says hi. Employees roaming through the store offer assistance. The cashier makes small talk. I never leave that place without a book or three.

We walked through the market in Charleston and got both kinds of treatment. There were some vendors who made eye contact and smiled and bragged about their goods like proud grandparents. Others sat behind their tables and mumbled prices or said nothing at all, treating potential customers like an inconvenience.

Know your stuff. One of the greatest things about shopping small is getting to speak to someone who really knows their stuff. I don’t just want to know what the product is. I want to know its provenance. I want the person behind the counter in the small store to come out from behind the counter and tell me why I should spend more at her store than I would have to at a big box retailer.

We walked into a jewelry store a while later and the clerk took the time to tell us that all the pieces were handmade by the artist who owned the store and that she only made a couple of each piece. This immediately made the products more desirable and made price less of an objection. She asked us where we  were from and it turned out she was about to jump on a plane that very evening and head toward our part of the world. She also took the time to tell us about some other unique places we can visit and told us about a great restaurant we could go to for lunch.

She earned my business. Big Time!

So be an entrepreneur. Set up your business. Stock it, market the hell out of it and sell! But do the little things that are going to give you an advantage. Most people are price sensitive, but many of them will make price a secondary consideration for the right product, and maybe more importantly, the right experience and the right person. Be the right person and provide that experience to all your customers all the time. It costs you nothing, but will pay off handsomely.

Adolfo Jimenez is a small business owner and writer living in South Florida with his family. He is the author of The Successful Vendor, a guide to succeeding in the competitive world of small-scale retail.

Trouble with School

I was not much of a student. I dropped out of high school. I received my GED at the age of 24 and started college. I did well, but I didn't graduate.

I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent. I rode in my share of cop cars and got into lots of trouble, including fist fights and suspensions from school and even an expulsion from Dade County Public Schools.

I eventually got myself straight, but never really got the formal education that I wanted or should have had. I got along. 

One thing saved me. 

I like to read. I spend a lot of time and money on books. I have always been a reader. Even during my delinquency. I would get into trouble, break some windows, graffiti a wall or two, come home, and read.

I now spend my days in a school. I am not a teacher or a student or a janitor. I own a business that runs school cafeterias. We have two schools we serve. I work in the larger of the two. I am able to look after my other businesses from the convenience of the school cafeteria.

This position has given me a very interesting insight. I feel I've come to understand the mind of young students in the middle- and high-school age range in a way that even their teachers, administrators, and perhaps parents, don't understand.

This is not meant to be a criticism of these people. Rather, I believe they are too close to the system to see the harm it does to the children it is meant to serve. This makes sense. Parents grew up in a similar system, as did educators. Parents may not see what I see. Educators may or may not see it, but they are, in too many instances, just collecting a paycheck and doing what they were trained to do. If X is all you know, X is just fine.

I have two daughters. One is finishing her second year at Montana State University. The other is finishing her sophomore year of high school. The older one has known she wanted to be a doctor since she was old enough to dream of what she would be when she grew up. While she has changed her focus since she began college, she is still on the path to being the first doctor in my family. My younger daughter is a singer. A fine one. This talent was discovered by one of her teachers and nurtured by another. She had no focus before learning of this ability and now she is working hard at making music and acting her vocation.

I am not proposing that kids shouldn't learn Readin' Ritin' Rithmetic, but there has to be more to it than that. 

I told my teachers and anyone who would listen that I would never need algebra, geometry, trigonometry, etc. in my adulthood. I was right. While I had no idea what I would become or even what I wanted to become, I knew it wouldn't involve mathematics. Sure, as a business owner I need to do some basic accounting functions, I don't need the aforementioned. Maybe my accountant does, I don't know. That's not my business.

One of the reasons I dropped out of high school is that I was sleeping through algebra when I should have been learning how to balance a checkbook. I spent years as a banker and the only reason I know how to balance a checkbook is because I taught myself how to do it. I'm still not great at it and don't even get me started on reconciling that blasted thing. 

What I am good at is communication. Maybe some of you reading this would disagree. I may have been a good lawyer or perhaps a teacher of American literature. It's a little late now, but one can dream of what might have been.

I don't mean to whine and I don't mean to lay my troubles at the feet of others. I made my decisions and I accept responsibility for them.