Who would believe that the key to entrepreneurial success is not to focus on profits and growth? For this book Bo Burlingham, an editor-at-large for Inc. magazine, shows how fourteen companies have bucked the trends. These companies—including Anchor Brewing, CitiStorage, Clif Bar Inc., Righteous Babe Records, Reel Precision Manufacturing, and Zingerman’s Community of Businesses—concentrated instead on goals like creating top-notch customer service and satisfaction, building community ties, and providing a pleasant and stable work environment.
Jay Goltz’s Artists Frame Service in Chicago is one small giant. By locating his business on the city’s rundown North Side in 1978, Goltz helped spearhead the area’s transformation into a vibrant center of activity and commerce. That’s clear just from real estate values: When he opened Goltz was paying $1 per square foot for his space. The present going rate is $40 per square foot.
Clif Bar is another example. CEO Gary Erickson’s marketing strategy has been to eschew advertising and instead focus on directly connecting with consumers, especially athletic consumers, at the grassroots level. Around 75 percent of Clif Bar’s promotion budget is spent on sponsoring events around the country and supporting amateur athletes. This tactic provides the company with personal contact and feedback from its customers, and such intimacy has been a major contributor to Clif Bar’s success: Its annual sales leapt from $39 million to $92 million between 1999 and 2004.
The founders and leaders of small giants have passion and soul, says Burlingham. They don’t settle for standard measures of success, but rather imagine any and all possibilities for the kind of businesses they want to create. Financial rewards come without a sacrifice of the organization’s beliefs and ideals. And it seems these companies do not aspire to go public, either: All the businesses Burlingham has profiled are still privately held.
- Sarah Jane Gilbert