Relationships help small firms survive

By Wayne T. Price
Florida Today

While so-called big-box retailers — also known as "category-killers" — continue to change the shopping landscape for many consumers, a few small, independent businesses have been able to maintain a sustainable, if not healthy, market share.

Dennis Meehan, co-owner of Meehans' Office Products in Florida, says his small business specializes in going the extra distance to provide personalized service to his customers. That may be one way in which mom-and-pop operations can compete with big-box retailers. Gannett News Service

That's only going to increase the pressure on the shrinking number of mom-and-pop operations that each year struggle from the massive competition from Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe's, Target and more.

The U.S. Small Business Administration said there were approximately 22.9 million small businesses in the United States in 2002. Those companies provide nearly 41 percent of all private sales in the country.

One way to succeed against the corporate Goliaths is to stress a few Business 101 lessons.

S.F. Travis Hardware in Cocoa, Fla., and Meehans' Office Products in Melbourne, Fla., for example, stress relationships with their customers and specialize in going the extra distance to provide personalized service that's rare at many major retail operations.

And it's not done as a nostalgic throwback to a bygone era. They do it to stay in business against competitors that have thousands of employees, sales that top the billion-dollar mark many times over and the ability to offer steep discounts to customers.

"The small business must offer superior service," said Debbie Allen, president of Allen & Associates Consulting Inc. in Tempe, Ariz. "That's the only way they will be able to survive."

Godfrey Phillips, a nationally recognized small-business researcher, said businesses like Travis and Meehans' are successful because their small size "allows them to adapt quicker to changing business conditions.

"Those businesses are often more flexible than the big retailers," Phillips said. "They have their ears to the ground and usually have a good sense of what their customers want."

Part of being more flexible means providing services for customers they're not likely to get elsewhere, a fact etched in the playbooks of local small-business operators.

"If you order something from me by 2:30 p.m. today, it will be sitting in your office tomorrow or whatever time you want it there," said Dennis Meehan, co-owner of Meehans' Office Products.

James Nance, founder and senior partner with the Melbourne law firm of Nance Cacciatore Duryea & Hamilton, quickly lists numerous reasons why his firm has always done business with Meehans'. He cites service, friendship and loyalty, but also a dislike for the major retailers.

"I really resent them putting the little guy out of business," Nance said. "But being friends with Meehans' and getting good service and good prices that satisfy us is enough. It overwhelms what those concerns could ever possibly offer us."

Ironically, the 118-year-old Travis Hardware borrowed a key lesson from Sears, once one of the top-selling chain retailers, said Mac Osborne, great-grandson of hardware store founder Samuel Franklin Travis.

"Sears used to say 'Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back,' " Osborne said. "That's the way our company operates. You're not going to leave here unsatisfied. We're going to take care of you on a one-on-one basis. I'm either going to beat you to death with service or find out why you're not happy."

The store does have a Web site, an homage to modern ways of doing business, but Osborne doesn't sound too excited about it.

"We're on the Internet, but who cares? Pick up the phone and call us," he said. "We'll bring it to you."