I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. Even if don't love every page, I always come away with a couple of big points to ponder. His latest book, David and Goliath, is no exception. (I'd highly recommend watching his TED talk on David and Goliath if you don't want to read the book.)
The book had me thinking about how a disadvantage can be an advantage. For example, there's been a lot of gnashing of teeth on the Etsy forums about the site's change in direction which allows manufacturing. How can little handmade shops compete with large-scale companies that have huge budgets and work forces? Won't these Goliath-sized companies stamp out all the tiny David-sized ones?
After reading David and Goliath, I'm guessing that we can compete very well.
Yes, those huge manufacturing plants overseas have us beat on price and quantity, but is that really where you want to be anyway? I know I personally don't want to crank out 10,000 identical designs that will fall apart in three months. Wouldn't you rather be known for quality? Or uniqueness? Or amazing customer service?
This book dovetails nicely in something I just read in the January 2014 issue of Wired magazine. The article "Try It On" by Bill Wasik describe the difficulties of making wearable tech devices fashionable. Even if companies do succeed in making them prettier, they'll have to contend with a second problem once they become popular: everybody wants to be unique. Wasik writes, "Call this the Trucker Hat principle, after the low-fashion item that became popular as a hipster accessory in the early aughts and then lost steam precisely for its popularity. Everybody was wearing one, so it wasn't cool anymore."
Try this low-tech experiment: go to your local big box retailer, grab a piece of cheap, made-in-China jewelry, and tell the clerk that you'd like the necklace to be shorter, to use blue stones instead of pink, and you want matching earrings that are clip-on instead of pierced. What do you think she'll say?
That's your advantage. Even if you don't do custom work, you can move so much more quickly in response to outside trends or personal inspiration. Small means agile, not bogged down by lots of processes. It also means not having 10,000 peace sign necklaces to unload at a substantial loss when the trend suddenly turns to kitten earrings.
Next time you have a knee jerk negative reaction about a Goliath you view as competition, take a moment to figure out his weakness. Sure, he's an amazing CEO, but how's his family life? Yes, she's on that TV show, but how's her health from being on the road 300 days a year? There's a flip side to everything. You have more advantages than you realize.