The Power of Partners

I'm going to keep this relatively short b/c my leg is hurting and I'm exhausted from the 8+ orders my mom and I managed to get out the door today (hooray!) so am thinking that a percocet is about the perfect thing to finish the evening with right about now. However, I was thinking today about how much 'partnering' has benefited me and my company.

I'm not talking about official partnerships that you send out press releases about. But those smaller partnerships and networks that can, when leveraged, really pay off for the company. I think I mentioned before that all my tradeshow materials went out via freight (and are currently on their way to the next trade show in Chicago). At this point I certainly don't have enough stuff for a full pallet so I partnered with another local company - who technically is a competitor - so that we could share a pallet and split the cost. We both get our stuff to the shows easily at half of what it would have cost us to do on our own.

Then tonight I placed an order for new packaging material. Even though I placed it, the order is technically done in combination with a friend/entrepreneur who lives near me. With our combined order we were able to get the cost high enough to qualify for free shipping - otherwise shipping would have cost both of us approx $40. For us, right now, that $40 is a huge savings.

And lastly in my list of examples tonight, the order that is coming in tomorrow that was made with another one of the entrepreneurs in my workspace. We both order materials from the same provider but said provider requries a minimum amount before we can place an order. So, again, we combined our orders and together were able to meet the minimum needed and are able to get the materials we need. That saves substantial amount over having to potentially purchase the materials at retail prices versus the wholesale price we pay with this provider. More savings!

As a wise friend of mine in the industry once told me, to be able to compete with the big guys we small businesses HAVE to develop partnerships that help give us some sort of economies of scale. Otherwise they can too easily push us out of business.