James Schramko here. Today, I’m going to share with you how you can avoid being single-source dependent for your supply.
When I worked with Mercedes-Benz, I noticed that the cars came through with different brand tires. They had tires from Michelin. They had tires from Pirelli. They had tires from Bridgestone, and I asked about this.
And back at the factory, they wanted to make sure that they could always get a competitive deal with the tire supplier and they could protect themselves for a situation where the tire manufacturer couldn’t keep up with demand. This way, they had multiple sources to draw from, and they could keep everyone tight.
So the exercise, I think, you should do for your business is have a look and see where you are single supply-source sensitive, i.e. are you just using the one supplier all the time? And is it time to see if there might be a second supplier?
Maybe it’s people who provide you audio-video, maybe it’s your photographer. Maybe you get some constant resource that you’ve been getting for a long time, and it’s time to revisit that. Maybe (and this will be a good indicator) you occasionally run out of supply and you’re actually caught short and it costs you business.
You always want to have a little bit of backup, a little bit of insurance, and keep people reasonably interested in earning your business. And I think you’ll find some profit sitting there for you and you’ll be able to scale faster with less hiccups.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s tip. I’m James Schramko. This is jamesschramko.com
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