Given the crisis we are experiencing, and especially given the constant rumors that are being installed in the market, it is curious that companies, apparently, are not reinforcing their strategic network, made up of employees and leaders, customers and suppliers, calling it to talk about the current crisis.
When I asked him how things had gone, he laughed and said "I didn't do anything, everything was complicated with the workshop." C designs and cuts the clothes it produces and sells them through stores (boutiques). The clothing (sewing and ironing) is outsourced.
We started talking about it as C's outstanding characteristic is his "love" for independence. This, precisely, prompted her to leave her previous employment in a dependency relationship and launch her own business that has been in existence for five years. Its objective was to double sales, for which it was necessary to increase the number of points of sale it already had. You had to go from 5 to 10 stores (customers), which at "first glance" seemed simple.
In those two weeks he had been looking for new workshops to replace the current one. His story contained anger that, apparently, he had expressed to his current workshop leader. He was waiting to see his clothes delivered by the new workshop he had hired. "They are all equally informal," she commented to me, almost resigned.
I invited her to reflect on the "independence" she had achieved with her own business.
As we progressed in the discussion, the need to interact with others emerged, very clearly, and that independence is a utopia. This opened the way for us to look at your venture (company) as a link that should join one producer and another commercial. His task was not limited to designing and selling, but he should seek to stop the workshops from being considered suppliers to become strategic partners, as well as the clients, owners of the premises that sold their models to the public.
We have seen this before, but it is one thing to "see" it in theory and quite another to live it. This is precisely the objective of the periodic meetings.
Every economic project is measured by its commercial and operational feasibility. It is useless if the market demands if it is not possible to supply it or vice versa, it is useless if what is not demanded is produced.
I think that the flavor of our meeting turned out to have detected a gap between his desire to grow and his actions, adjusted to his possibilities. We had once considered your suppliers and customers as fundamental resources to consider in your business plan. This stage of his growth plan came from knobs to check.
First of all, C will have to build, and then consolidate, his bond with his “producer partner” and for this he will have to learn to live it as a “healthy dependency”. If both parties share the same goal - to grow, for example - surely "the deal" between both parties will be different from the one they have today.
"I bring sweets to the girls," C would tell me, indignant, believing that this would make them do what she wants them to do so much. When I asked him if he had ever clearly explained how he wanted them to do things, he replied “I always tell them to be wordy”. What do you consider it to be to be neat in making your clothes? Did you list it in writing? There was silence, the token fell.
If the workshop, whatever it is, is not assimilated by C as its strategic partner, it will be difficult for it to grow.
On the other hand, there is the commercial link. Locals that sell their clothes, too, should feel part of C's plan. Not only do you have to get a local to buy your clothes, but you also have to choose to offer your clothes before others' clothes or give them a place of preference so that buyers can see it (shop window or place of exhibition inside the premises). This is only achieved by transmitting the feeling of belonging to a project that transcends the merely economic. "Every time I call the locals, I think they will think that the only thing I am interested in is selling them," C. confessed to me. We will have to change the belief. Or not? What's wrong with wanting to sell them? It is essential to design a plan and monitor its compliance.What's wrong with wanting to find out about the sale of your products? What data do you use to decide the designs for each season? How do you decide what to produce for replacement sales?
Now it is possible to round out a conclusion, saying that if C fails to choose good productive and commercial partners, it will be difficult for her to grow and for this, she will inevitably have to review what she understands by independence.
