Clearly, I love small businesses…the smaller, the better. But that doesn’t mean I hate big business. More specific, that doesn’t mean I hate big businesses just because they’re BIG.
And I’m sad to read small business bloggers’ posts that scorn the big guys for just that: being big. Often with the (false) claim that big businesses don’t offer what small businesses can: personalized service, accountability, a human touch, etc.
Because here’s the thing…
The Thing
There are certainly big businesses that raise my hackles for using their size as a weapon. They abuse their employees, short their vendors, and dishonor all of us with bullshit mission statements that say they care. Wal-Mart comes to mind and I’m sure you can think of others.
But then there are big businesses who take fine care of their people, their partners, and us. They use their size to make good things happen for businesses of every size. In my experience, Costco is a great example of this. They’re not perfect (who is?), but they’re wonderful. I love me some Costco!
With that said, here’s the other thing…
The Other Thing
There are small businesses who’ve earned a hard kick in the ass for what we consider “big business behavior”. I can think of an online service (who shall remain nameless lest I burn my tongue with bitterness) who hung me out to dry.
Their customer support reps may as well’ve been fucking bots for all the human touch I got. I asked for help with a problem and I got copy/paste answers. When I asked a follow-up question, they simply didn’t answer my email. Or my tweets. Or my second email. Humph!
And there are small businesses who use their wee size as an excuse for poor quality, weak products, or ineffective marketing. A friend told me this story: her local web host didn’t offer space, bandwidth, and other features at a competitive price. When she told him about packages she’d seen at Bluehost and others, his response was, “No one can afford to give you that at the price you’re talking about”.
WTF? Of course they can….they do and are. Try coming back with a solution instead of defense and denial, Dude!
One Last Thing
So really, I think this attitude of dissing big businesses because they’re big is just plain ol’ bigotry.
And yet there are small business folks I adore—who don’t have a racist or gender-biased bone in their bodies—who let their Big Biz Bigot flag fly.
But why, when…?
…there are small businesses owned and run by demon-spawn and there are big businesses led and manned by minor deities.
…some small’uns will put mouse turds in your ice cream and say they’re chocolate chips (hat tip to James Lee Burke for that glorious visual), while some big’uns stand by their promise to replace their product if it fails you—whenever, whatever, no problem.
…Amazon is huge, but their datasource knows what books I’ve read and what books I may want to read…and then connects me to indie bookstores where I can go buy them.
…there are tiny jewelry shops like silverdotjewelry and staroftheeast who package my treats with such personality and care that I hesitate to open them. Yet other wee Etsy shops do the least possible to make my buying experience joyful: no thanks-for-buying email, no shipping notification, no business card or note with the purchase, no nuttin’.
Big and little. Little and big. Shitty and marvelous. Fantabulous and jackassiness.
Being big doesn’t make them monsters. Being small doesn’t give us a free pass.
Size can matter, but it doesn’t have to.
.
Et tu? Do you have a resolute Grrr! toward big business? Should small businesses get our love just because they’re small?
Well said, Crystal. I see an awful lot of “it’s bad because it’s big”, and it saddens me a little to see people eschewing a very good service just because it’s had the good fortune to grow. (Protip: big business rarely starts big.) Now I have somewhere to direct them.
@Chris Goood point! Based on how some folks act, I wonder what they do when the small vendor they treasure bursts (maybe even unwillingly) into the big time? Do they bail for smaller pastures?
My wife is into indie music. According to what I can tell, that’s exactly the attitude that a lot of indie fans take – if it gets popular at all, it automatically sucks, regardless of whether the music has changed.
This also spawned the Theory of Hipster Relativity: http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=126 (webcomic, other strips NSFW).
I love the pic. Seriously. I was laughing out loud until I realized the seriousness of the topic.
Whether it’s a big business or a small business, the only thing that matters is that the people who are running it get it right. People matter. There’s no excuse for bad behavior, no matter how many employees you have. It’s all part of PR. What the big, or small business, bigots don’t understand is that their attitude can work against them.
If you are part of group that is known for your attitudes about exclusion (which we seem to run into more and more these days) people aren’t going to want to deal with you. The only way you can run a successful business is to be open-minded and inclusive.
And I agree with Chris here: “if it gets popular at all, it automatically sucks.” It’s a shame because we wouldn’t want people to feel that way about us if we became successful doing what we love.
Sometimes though size can become a factor. For example, in the grocery business where profit margins are super tight, large chains have the advantage over smaller businesses. Because larger chains can buy in bulk, they receive discounts that smaller stores do not. Walmart is a prime example of this. They buy so much stuff from some suppliers that they can blackmail the supplier for lower prices.
I personally worked at Publix for two years. Publix is not cheaper than Walmart, but people go to Publix for the customer service not the prices. Walmart doesn’t have that anymore.
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So true. It’s disgusting how businesses like wal mart can get away with treating their employees the way they do. No free thought or you will be out the door. I don’t know if Zappos qualifies as a big business, but it seems that they do a create job of not keeping their employees down.
Dr. King said we want to live in a world where people: “Will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Big company, little company is the color of its skin but: a good product, a price that represents value and stellar customer service are truly the content of its character.
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Middle size business´s is always best.
Let’s face it, many of us small business owners dream about making it “big” sometimes. The businesses that grow successfully are the ones who remember the values that helped make them successful as a small business and apply those to their growing business.
Yes i agree it is much better to have a small business rather than having a big one. The most important thing is that you can learn a many things from you small business before starting a big one. It is very risky to start a new big business without having any kind of experience.
I have come across many big companies where people are dishonored at all. There are delays with paying out wages, reducing wages because employees did something wrong. How don’t they understand that utility bills do not wait, rental fees cannot be shifted.
I had the dream of being a business man from a child hood….may dad used to always tell me. That if u want to become a big business persona then you have to be a great small business man. I did follow him and i started a small business 4 years before and i am quite successful in it….i have many chains of the business and soon i’ll be doing a new project for my new BIG business.
Big business needs a lot of investment. If you want to set a huge business you need to be successful in your small business. I agree to”Cake Top” for stating successful big business you should have huge experience in your small business. After experience is a good teacher.
A big business has got to start somewhere? It has nothing to whether you are small or big, its about your business and how you conduct yourselves.
I think big or small, it all comes down to who is running the business and their personal philosophies. You don’t even want to get me started on Walmart, but their philosophy is all about making money and getting bigger. It disturbs me the number of “mom and pop” shops that they have destroyed in their quest for more and more market share. Small businesses tend to value every consumer that they get, so they focus more on keeping their customers happy, but at some point this ideal becomes lost in the quest for the almighty dollar.
I think it is easy to look at a Wal-Mart coming into your town as an enemy.
If I was a small business owner though I would almost relish the challenge of dealing with an issue like that. There are ways to survive the shadow of the big box stores – finding a good niche is a good start.
I also find it funny that small business owners would not like big business, because which small biz owners out there don’t want to be big? Maybe it is just me, but I want my business to succeed and grow to be HUGE. That is why I put in sleepless days and tiring weeks.
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