Mission Statement
Indie Retailer Mission Statement
“To provide an open forum for independent retail business owners and managers to exchange creative and practical ideas on how to survive and thrive in a big box world.”
We hope that you will be able to gain as much from this site as we do. Being independent retailers for a relatively short period of time (8 years) when compared to the typical “mom & pop” operation, we’ve witnessed various trends come and go and have been fortunate to be able to recognize the evolution of the “traditional” small business model turn into one of uncertainty in the new era of rapid global growth of the big box getting bigger. We’ve also been fortunate enough to be able to see that the playing field is not as uneven as our small community neighbors seem to feel. The advent of technology has enabled us to step away from our small minded neighbors and play with the “big dogs.”
Unfortunately, although we’ve been able to recognize these trends and observe the transitions, we’ve been somewhat slow to react. This is unfortunate because as a small business, we realize an advantage over the big business retailers; we don’t have the hierarchy of administrators and middle management nay-sayers to have to appeal to in order to implement new and innovative concepts for sales and marketing our business.
As such, we are more agile. If we see a decline in business and have the foresight to understand why, we’re in a better position to make the adjustment quickly and definitely. We can dare to try something new and even though the risk of a new idea failing is higher; the benefits of a success can be higher still. And in the event of a failure of a new concept, we are able to empower ourselves or our staff to make those needed changes with little loss of time, and hopefully, investment or revenue.
As small business independent retailers competing against the Wal*Marts, Targets, K-Marts, et al, can we really afford to dwell on the consideration of competing? We think not. As a small indie retailer, you’re not a competitor. You have to consider yourself in an entirely different industry all together. Of course, that’s not to say to completely ignore them either. We all know, or at least have heard rumor of, their attitude of competition. As small indie retailers, we’re led to believe that “They’re out to get us.” “They’re looking to squish us like bugs.” “We’re nothing, a spec of sand on their beach, a bed bug on their satin sheets.”
The sooner we’re able to take our focus off of trying to compete and mind our own business, the better chance we have of surviving them. Now, by taking our focus off of them is not to say keep them out of sight. Just keep them in your periphery, just outside the corner of your eye so as to be able to notice any sudden movements… like perhaps a lunge!
The sooner you’re able to mind your business; you will also be able to appreciate your unique position. If you’re the sort of person that likes to talk to your customers (and you should be, they’re feeding your family for Pete’s sake), you’ll find that they pride themselves in being able to support their community small business. You provide them with so much more than just a product off your shelf. You provide them with a sense of community; you provide them with a sense of heroism, as well as to some degree a sense of ownership. The more they come to your shop and get to know you and your staff and your product, they begin to feel as if they have a vested interest in your success. They feel they’re partly, if not entirely, responsible for it. Is that realistic? Of course not, they don’t see the hours and stress you pour into keeping your small biz alive so they can come in and take “ownership.” However, so be it. As long as they share part of their hard earned with you, allow them that sense of entitlement and take pride in the fact that someone has that desire to see you succeed.
Everybody wants to be a businessperson. You’re showing your community that you had the gumption and where with all to take that leap of faith. You’ll see everything from pride to jealousy. But overall, if you consider the sources of either or both the good and bad energies delivered to your door via your customers, you can, and should take pride in the fact that you did take that leap of faith and you are determined to be successful. Even the Doubting Thomas’ amongst your community will have to respect you for it. Plus, you’re sparing them a trip to the mall to have to hunt for a parking space!
Lastly, we, as small independent retailers have found, and realized through our own research, that there aren’t a lot of resources out there dedicated to the small independent retailer. We’ve seen a lot of magazines and Internet web sites that are business oriented, but we found that we have to weed out too much that doesn’t apply to us in order to find some benefit. Our mission here is to develop such a resource. Not only for ourselves, but for others like us; independent retail small business owners trying to create and build a business in hopes of generating at least a meager living, if not complete independent wealth, and some sort of durable legacy for our children. Or perhaps just something to keep us busy in our retirement to keep us from becoming more feeble than we already are.
Our vision is to see this site develop into a mass of useful and current information provided by professional experts in their particular field to simple and effective words of wisdom from the struggling folk like you and me. We will try to build a site that you’ll find informative in all aspects of starting, managing, and succeeding in small business. We’ll discuss topics such as concepts in getting started in business, legal issues, licensing, taxes (oh, yawn), marketing (ooh, fun!), small business trends, vendors, banking, financing, merchant accounts, etc…
Again, keeping the big box’ers (as opposed to big “boxers”, which would be underwear, and that would just be silly) out of our focus and simply keeping them in our periphery, we hope that we can have positive and productive discussions on how to manage and build our businesses without having to bash, whine, complain, and rant of our big box woes. That’s been done, and overdone. For our sake, as well as yours, let’s not provide them with any more energy than they have already stolen from us. Instead, let’s reclaim that energy and share it amongst ourselves.
We hope to be able to provide you with useful information that you can use in your business, as well as perhaps in your personal lives. Since the day we opened our independent small business doors in 1998, we’ve kept two philosophies close to heart. One, we don’t consider other businesses in our area competitors, we consider them colleagues. “Competitor” makes for an instant adversary. We can’t possibly be all things to all people or carry every desirable product line. If we can work together with our neighborhood businesses we can see the sort of business they are and the products they carry. As such, if one of our customers comes through our doors looking for something we don’t carry, I’d like to be able to let them know where they can find it. Which leads us to our second philosophy; although we are independent “retailers”, we feel that we’re not here to simply sell a product off our shelves, we also provide a service. By being able to send “our customer” to another business close by, that customer appreciates the advice and being spared a trip to the mall. We also hope that “our customer” might be impressed by the fact that a business is sending them to a “competitor” and have enough of an appreciation for that to want to reward us at a later time with their business for some product that we do have.
Footnote: We hope not to have offended those of you independent small business retailers that happen to have put up shop in a mall. We are not taking a stance against mall retailers and appreciate your position and all things considered in running such a small business with incredible overhead expenses. Kudos to those of you that succeed. In our commentary, we simply state the sentiments of many of our own customers, who on occasion, enjoy a visit to the mall; but if given a choice, would rather support their community.