Small businesses in Barbados were recently told they have more power than they think and they need to exercise it in an attempt to drive prices down. the challenge came from president of the Barbados Small business Association, Celeste foster, who told a packed monthly meeting at Pelican Village that she knew small businesses were being accused of being the reason for rising prices. While the association “went out to bat” for its membership when the accustaions first arose, she further urged them to look at their practices.
“We want to send the message that before we start to finger point we really need to sit downand ask ourselves some fundamental questions. It is a fact that the cost of living in Barbados is rising? Are we contributing to that? she asked the members, urging them to be honest. She told them if there were instances where they were contributing to the issue, they needed to start looking at how to change it, how to be part of the solution rather than the problem.
Stressing that she did not believe the small business sector was a major player in the rising prices, she noted that most of them were barely able to meet their current obligations. We struggle to ensure that we maintain our client base. therefore our first priority is to always keep our customers happy. So we don’t compete necessarily on price, we compete on quality of service and relationship. “Therefore we have a responsibility to maintain that and to improve it and to to create niche markets so that we can move from existing to being sustainable,” said Foster.
But even beyond this she told members that they must remember were also consumers, customers and clients who had a right to demand better of their service and goods providers. “We have responsibility to demand what we want or to take our business elsewhere. there are over 11,000 small businesses in this country, so we need not be silent. We have power. It is up to us to understand how to exercise that power.”
She then cited an incident a day before when her office manager wanted to buy a toner from a regular supplier and after getting a quote, a check with another supplier revealed the same item for $15 less. After calling the previous supplier to cancel the order, Foster said the office manager was told not to cancel but allow them to work out something. The offer made for the purchase of the toner was then $20 less than what was originally charged.
“I am saying to you that allowed us to save between 12 and 15 per cent and that was only one item. This is something we order every quarter. “If we collectively started to make those kinds of decisions, what would happen to some of the prices? So I’m saying to you, we have two responsibilities – one, as the providerof the service or the good we have to make sure that our prices are fair and that we are not ripping off customers and trying to get super profits, and two, as customers we need to demand service,” the president stated.
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The President is right on target with her very appropriate comments. We are operating is a business climate with reduced demand, which does not support price increases. Every effort during this period should be made to find ways to cut cost by doing what we do better and more efficiently. The use of technology is one way to reduce cost. It can be used to reduce the cost of marketing and can expand the reach of your message.
We help small businesses to grow their customer base with the use of Internet marketing and Social Media portals that get their marketing message to more people.