I wanted to buy
a potted miniature rose
for my Mom.
I called up the small town florist
a block from her.

I ask for them to deliver the potted rose.
Sorry, we don’t sell those,
they respond.

A normal customer would hang up at that point.
I, knowing that they share mall space
with a grocery store that DOES sell the roses,
ask if they can simply buy one
as a favor for me, a regular customer,
resell it to me for a mark up,
and
deliver it.

Silence.
No, we can’t do that.

I then call the big chain that DOES do it.
And you know what?
Their prices on the other flowers,
the flowers I normally buy,
are much less expensive.

The main advantage of small business is
flexibility.
Lose that and
you lose customers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under New Business Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.