IF you saw Smart Beauty’s hair-colouring products next to those of Wella and
L’Oréal on the shelves of your local chemist or supermarket, you might think
you were looking at a company that was of a similar size to its famous
competitors.
Its packaging is every bit as professional as that of its rivals and its
products are stocked everywhere from Asda to Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
Even if you checked out Smart Beauty’s website (www.smart-beauty.eu),
you would be none the wiser, perhaps assuming that an .eu suffix to the
website address signals a company with Europe-wide operations.
In reality, Smart Beauty employs only two people in addition to its two
founder-directors and this year will have sales of only £1.5m.
Madeleine Mansfield, who set up the company with Michael Rusby in 2002, said
they had deliberately tried to look big in a market dominated by giants.
The first step was the website. “Having the website address Smartbeauty.eu
means that we could be absolutely anywhere. It doesn’t pigeonhole us in any
way because it is not a specific country or region,” she said.
In an effort to punch above their weight they also take a large stand every
year at the Clothes Show exhibition to demonstrate that they are a serious
player in the market.
Mansfield said: “It definitely gives the impression that we are a bigger
company and we are here to stay.”
Their third ploy has been to get featured as much as possible in the hair and
beauty magazines whose readers are their target market - for free, by
running competitions with Smart Beauty products as prizes.
“We wanted to get our name out there as much as possible but we can’t afford
to spend thousands on advertising. This means that we get page space without
having to pay for it.”
John Thompson, national business advisory partner at Baker Tilly, an
accountancy firm, said that giving the impression you are big is essential
if you want your business to grow.
“One of the best ways to think about it is to consider how you would like your
company to be in five years’ time – and act like that now.
“If you have a turnover of £3m now but you plan to reach £20m, then imagine
what the look and feel of your business will be then, the structures you
might have in place, the messages you will be giving to the market and so on
– and begin to act like that now.
“Acting big is like future-proofing the business.”
The first step, Thompson said, was to build an external team of advisers, such
as lawyers and accountants, who would be appropriate not for where your
business was now – but for where you intended it to be in a few years.
“The temptation is to hire the cheapest advisers you can get,” he said. “But
when you start entering into negotiations with larger organisations, one of
the first things they will look at is who your advisers are. If your
advisers are Bloggs & Bloggs from round the corner and nobody has heard
of them, then, rightly or wrongly, the immediate impression will be, well,
who are these guys?
“If you have chosen a firm that has a reasonable amount of clout and
expertise, people might look at your advisers’ website and say, ‘oh that’s
not a bad firm. These guys are serious players because they have serious
advisers’.”
The next step is to build an internal team that reflects where you want the
business to be; and that might mean, for example, hiring a professional
finance director before you actually need one.
Thompson said: “If you need people in a year’s time, why don’t you need them
now? You should be trying to get ahead of the game all the time. Having a
professional team in place internally as well as externally is a strong
message to the market.”
Thinking big and acting accordingly has other benefits too. First, it signals
to your potential customers and suppliers that you are here to stay – and
that as you grow they will be able to grow too.
Customers want to be assured that a business they are dealing with is likely
to still be in existence this time next year. So if your business looks like
it is going places you are more likely to win their custom.
Mark Riminton, director of Shirlaws, a business consultancy and training firm,
said small firms need to think hard about how their business looks to an
outsider. If the first impression of their business does not meet the
customers’ expectations, then they are never going to get anywhere.
“You must decide how you need to look in order to enter the market you are
going for,” he said. “If I am a one-man band, is it realistic for me to
expect to win a project from the Fire Brigade or the Department of Social
Services? Probably not.”
Second, thinking big signals to your staff that they are with a company that
is going places.
This not only makes them feel good about being part of your team, it motivates
them to invest time and energy into making your company great. It also
reassures them that they made the right decision in taking a job with you in
the first place. This means that they are more likely to want to stay with
the firm, and that others are more likely to want to join.
