The Pocket Small Business Owner's Guide to Starting Your Business on a Shoestring by Carol Tice

Author:Carol Tice
Format: epub
Publisher: Allworth Press / Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. (Perseus)
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

SUPPLIES

This category covers everything you need to purchase for your business that doesn’t end up getting sold to your customer. If you have an office, you might need office supplies such as pencils, pens, copy paper, writing pads, and fax-machine toner. If you operate a retail store, you might need bags, toilet paper, and paper towels.

Often, businesses sign up with one supplier for office needs and then basically forget about it. Every time you need supplies, you pull out that same catalog and place an order.

This is not a good approach, as all suppliers will have items they make more margin on and lower-profit ones.

Instead, compare several suppliers and cherry-pick items between them. Keep accounts with more than one supplier so it’s easy to order from a competitor to get a better deal. Also, feel free to play suppliers off against each other to see if one might offer to beat the other’s price.

If you have employees, be careful about who has the power to approve and order supplies. Make sure workers don’t treat your supply catalog as a candy store to order whatever goodies they feel the office should stock.

For instance, a movie production office where I once worked would send a worker to Costco once a month with a blank check to buy snacks for the office kitchen. You never saw so many snacks in an office in your life! Instead, have a supplies budget, stick to it, and closely oversee purchases. Have a supply request sign-up form—then review it and only approve what is truly needed.

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