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OP/ED: Business culture kills

by Mona Mattei on 06 May 2010
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OP/ED: Business culture kills

A couple of years ago a friend and I were talking business and she said to me, “I’m American and I run my business the American way, not Canadian.” She was referring to the kill or be killed business culture of the United States. It’s hard to imagine that just by crossing the 49th parallel that the entrepreneurial spirit takes a different form. But when you start shopping around for pricing and customer service, it’s hard to understand the reasons for the significant difference between our countries. There truly is a cultural difference in how we run our businesses.

The United States (US) was built on the ideal that in their country you can rise to the heights of riches through hard work and business smarts. The American dream includes making sure you come out on top no matter how you get there. But what the culture has created is a very competitive business market that provides almost everything you could want at a good price. If not, just shop around - there's plenty of businesses offering the same product. While that culture doesn’t always equate to fair wages and good work environments, it does create a marketplace that is hard to beat.

The Canadian entrepreneurial approach is much more concerned with worry about whether or not we’re competing with our neighbour, and being sensitive to the community. It results in a more cautious approach to stocking shelves, and pricing. I must admit I find the customer service in most large businesses in Canada top notch, while in the US I have had my share of attitude from employees of big stores. But overall, Canadian stores just can’t (or won’t) offer pricing that keeps their customers home. And in the age of the Internet, this is leading to serious hemorrhaging of economic dollars.

Even savvy shoppers and small business owners wanting to support their local economy have a hard time keeping their dollars home in this market. Just this week our group of websites investigated buying a product locally, even at a slightly higher price, versus sourcing it through the net. With a price difference of over $600 for the same number of the same product how can you buy local? But the local business didn’t seem to mind if they got the business and that is exactly the Canadian way.

Canadian businesses are kind and caring. They’ll be happy to direct you to where you can get the product just down the street. That speaks to the business culture of sharing, not winning. We just are not cutthroat enough to win. It’s very Canadian to be okay with making enough money to be happy and share the wealth with our neighbour business. In fact we can even be made to feel guilty about not sharing the wealth.

Perhaps that is at the crux of our dilemmas in succeeding in competition with others. While it is very nice to care about each other, it doesn’t create the volume of sales that we need to survive at lower prices, and there lies the problem with being able to be competitive. Large companies know this and that’s why they succeed where our small businesses can’t.

Where would I rather do business though? In Canada where we care more about our employees and our neighbours than the almighty dollar.
 

Comments

Apologies to Andrew

by Mona Mattei on 09 May 2010 at about 15:34.

I want to extend my sincerest apologies to Andrew for the use of a quote in this piece. As he already has expressed the comment was made as a part of an email conversation where we were questioning and trying to find ways to support our local businesses and avoid purchasing out of town. The quote has been removed from the article for future readers.

Andrew and the team at Lone Sheep Publishing have been leaders in their community in supporting their local businesses, and I did not mean to indicate otherwise.

My intent here was to provide an example of the difficulty for local businesses to compete in the global market where pricing is so radically different, and how, even with the best intentions, choices might be made to spend elsewhere by our local buyers.

Many apologies to Andrew for any unintentional misrepresentations of his dedication to his local economy.

 

 

Important Addition

by Andrew Zwicker on 09 May 2010 at about 10:44.

It's important to note that my "comment" to this story was not a comment at all, but rather several words from a private e-mail taken entirely out of context. The comment in that e-mail also had a question mark at the end of it which was not published and was asking  a question to a business partner in jest as a suggestion for a possible op/ed piece when responding to their thoughts about sourcing a product locally or from afar where the local product was much more expensive than outsourcing. In fact this "comment" came from a discussion thread for an idea I've been working on bringing to fruition for over a year to create a buy-local program in our region to promote just that.

I'm a HUGE believer in buying local and have many times over bought local to supply my business even though the price was higher than outsourcing over the internet or buying from the states. The reason is that I'm also a firm beliver that what goes around comes around. The Rossland Telegraph and Lone Sheep Publishing's mantra is that local is better. That cuts to the very core of what our business is about, the idea that we can do things better locally and on a smaller scale than a corporate entity from elsewhere can.

In Rossland we're lucky that most of our shops and businesses are owned by locals so that the idea of what goes around comes around actually works quite beuatifully. I'll gladly buy something and indeed search it out locally even if it means  paying more. If the other entrepreneurs and business owners in town do better and have more disposable income they're more likely to spend that back on my business and other businesses around. Sure a trip down to Wal-mart might save me a few bucks today, but it'll cost me those dollars several fold over later. The "American" view on business I'd say perhaps is much more short sighted than the Canadian viewpoint in general and looks at business transactions in a shorted time period. The goal is more-so to get ahead right now, where-as (and again this is a very general stereotype we're working with here and many people on either side of the border don't work in the generalities discussed here) the Canadian business mind-set encompasses a greater time frame for getting ahead. The idea generally being that doign the right thing now benefits me, my fellow businessmen and community in the long run. IN that sense the Canadian way is a much more sustainable business practice and on that I whole-heartedly subscribe too.

Mona, you're quoting of me completely out of context paints me into the american side of the picture which couldnt' be further from the truth. I fully seek out the buy-local option and am happy to spend a few dollars more knowing that's a few more dollars in our communities economy. With all the talk of economies shrinking, recessions and so in recent years, the surest way to break out of a recession and to increase your community's economy is to spend locally regardless of whether or not you spend a few dollars extra.

Perhaps we can feel better about spending those few extra dollars knowing it's essentially a home-grown stimulus package for our own local area.

Canadian pricing

by Bill Wilby on 08 May 2010 at about 18:37.
I have enjoyed reading your article and would like to add my thoughts. I have more than 20 years of experience as a Canadian retailer in the photo industry. The last few years because of the world wide web I have been able to find customers globally. This has made me more aware of the pricing of the products that I sell in other countries. I think this may be true for many Canadians as most of us are told daily by our media the value of our dollar compared to the U.S. This is very different for my customers in the U.S. who often are unaware of the situation when the U.S. can gain or lose 20 % in value compared to other currencies. For the products that I sell the Canadian dollar needs to be valued at less than .80 U.S.D for me to be competitive with U.S. stores. I battle my suppliers continually because my dealer cost is often higher than U.S. retail. My suppliers defend themselves by pointing out U.S. stores can sell for a lower mark up. This may be but I can't believe they can sell at a loss no matter how large the volume so they must be able to buy for less. One of my suppliers helped me understand the situation better by reminding me the total Canadian consumer market for their company was smaller than the state California but the service area was larger in size than all of the United States combined. We can look to Europe and Australia and consider ourselves fortunate as their costs for the same products are often higher than ours. I was reading a post on a forum last week where someone in Europe was complaining about paying more for his camera than someone in the U.S. but ended by saying that he could afford the extra because of his saving by not having to pay for his health care. For me the bottom line is, it is hard to know that someone is paying less for the same product somewhere else, but if I look at the bigger picture I am happy where I live, how I live and that I can afford to buy what I need and support my neighbor. In this new global economy it is just a bit harder to define the neighborhood.

Cdns are for the most

by Fiscally prudent on 09 May 2010 at about 17:03.
part timid entrepreneurs vis a vis their American counterparts. The prosperity that one finds in Trail is a direct result of an entrepreneurial American from Montana, Augustus Heinz. His early vision and investment located the Trail smelter in Trail BC as opposed to Northport US when he saw that the CPR was building a rail line to Vancouver. The relative stability of this innovative, competitive industrial giant that was called CM&S, now Teck allows us (in the region) to have all types of services and prosperity. -fp