Produzir marca branca?

"I own a company that manufactures and sells high-performance aftermarket automotive parts. About 80 percent of our sales are retail, primarily through our website; most of the rest are wholesale to other retailers, but we also design and manufacture some specialized products for larger companies. Recently, some of these companies have approached us about private labeling a few of our products. My concern is that if we do it, we may end up competing with ourselves and hurting and diluting our brand while reducing our profit margins. On the other hand, these companies have much larger customer bases and would be able to sell much larger volumes of our products. My question is this: When is it appropriate to private label your products?"

Um dilema que muitas PMEs têm de enfrentar. Quando o dono da prateleira diz:

"Para aceder à prateleira, tem de produzir com a nossa marca X unidades de..."

Neste caso, a empresa tem uma vantagem, tem a sua própria prateleira, a partir da qual vende a maior parte das vendas. Hmmm! Já pensou a sério numa loja online?
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Contudo, aumentar a facturação, aumentar o volume pode ser muito atraente. O que decidir?
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Norm Brodsky responde em "When a Private Label Is--and Isn't--a Good Way to Grow a Business".

Curiosidade do dia

"When you have limited resources, you need to be extracareful to use them wisely.
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That's actually the only problem with having competition from much larger companies: It sometimes leads you to focus on the wrong things.
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So I urged them to focus on the advantages they have but aren't currently using."

E no caso da sua PME... não está presa ao modelo mental que dá vantagem aos gigantes do seu sector?

Trechos retirados de "Ask Norm: How Can A Start-Up Compete Against the Big Guys?"

A co-evolução que gera Mongo

"For at least two decades, I seldom ran into any entrepreneur whose notion of success did not include building a business that would one day have a lot of employees. But that changed in the mid-2000s. I began seeing more entrepreneurs with a different mindset and a different goal. Many didn’t want employees at all. What they did want was the ability to support themselves and their families without having to report to a boss-;in a word, independence. Thanks to the Internet, moreover, they had an increasing number of avenues to pursue their independence.
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Now, I’m not saying there aren’t any entrepreneurs who want to build big companies. Obviously, many do, and some succeed. Witness Twitter, Facebook, and Zappos, among others. But I believe entrepreneurs with such aspirations are a minority these days. As I’ve noted, most of the would-be entrepreneurs I meet are starting Web-based businesses on the side while continuing to hold full-time jobs. Their goal is to be independent rather than to build something big.
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I expect this trend to accelerate"

A co-evolução que gera Mongo. Empresas mais pequenas, mais diversidade de abordagens, mais heterogeneidade de estratégias e de modelos de negócio.

Trecho retirado de "Why Are Small Business Owners Creating Fewer Jobs Today?"

Duas lições para as PMEs

Uma história com duas lições a reter em "The Commodity-Pricing Trap":

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"When you're starting a business, it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to compete against larger companies on price. ... When you build a business around having the lowest price, you soon find that there's always someone else around who can offer an even lower one. As a result, you are under constant pressure to keep reducing yours. At best, you end up with an unsustainable commodity business that's no fun to run and an obstacle to achieving the goal of becoming economically self-sufficient."

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Recordar os postais "Como uma startup" dedicados às PMEs que decidem exportar para novos mercados e ao paralelismo com uma startup...

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"a niche lasts only until competitors catch on and start copying you. That's what Jolina's rivals will do if they discover she's siphoning off sales. Yes, she could try to obtain a patent on the software, but the process is lengthy and costly, and there's no guarantee she'd get one.
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So, instead, I urged Jolina to start looking immediately for other ways to differentiate her service"
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Duas lições recorrentes neste blogue:

• fugir da guerra do preço;
• trabalhar sempre, sempre, na diferenciação. Nunca descansar à sombra da bananeira, nunca acreditar em queijos garantidos para sempre.

Reconhecer os próprios erros para poder crescer

A grande diferença entre os políticos e os privados:
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"Lately, several CEOs of troubled businesses have come to me for help, and they've reminded me of an important lesson: You've got to take responsibility for the messes you get your company into. Problems will keep resurfacing until you recognize how your actions helped create them in the first place. That may seem obvious, but most people have a hard time seeing the role they played. It's always easier to point the finger at other people or circumstances or bad luck or forces beyond your control than to admit that you're to blame."
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O que faz lembrar o postal da bosta "Abençoado cheiro a bosta"... claro que existem excepções no privado, os que acham que a culpa é dos chineses e que tem de haver proteccionismo e subsídios.
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Trecho retirado de "Growing up as a CEO".
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BTW, por exemplo, já alguma vez ouviram um mea-culpa de Cravinho por causa das SCUTs?