It was made clear that with techno advancements it was relatively easy to set up a dropship account with large wholesale suppliers. Although this had the advantage of fast and easy access into the markets the downside was margins and unique products. Set up fees, monthly charges per dropship, upgrade costs and stock-outs were all common problems. A quick question from the now alarmingly large audience was, why should a top quality dropship list make any difference?

A gentle silence fell on the group and one of the ladies turned and in a soft and measured voice replied, Young man it makes all the difference in the world. Although he blushed she did not extend his discomfort and explained further to the delight of the audience the benefits as perceived through their experience on the subject. I grabbed another small wine and listened with due courtesy and respect as given by a student to a respected teacher.

She spoke at length but the general thread was very clear, she was passionate about quality and integrity. There are in my opinion two major qualities that would always give a small business startup an edge on the competition. Total quality management philosophy in business can be applied to even the smallest of companies and can have significant results on the bottom line. Quality products, quality service and fair prices should be one of the ways of obtaining customer loyalty. Most new start-ups failed in the first year through poor planning and preparation, poor funding and poor management skills.

However quality was not going to be compromised. The list includes companies from both USA and the UK and covered thousands of items and many categories. A home worker could choose to market just one product or however many they felt they could cope with as their businesses began to grow.

The evening was coming to an end and one of the ladies stood and thanked everyone and hoped they had found what had been discussed of interest. Hopefully it had also made them think of new and innovative ways that small businesses could be helped to be started, then grow and flourish in the Windy City and help to increase the wealth and lifestyle of the whole community. They had hoped to have a brief discussion on how to take small businesses to market both quickly and with low cost. That topic, she said would be for another time.

So what happened next? As you can see dropshipping is a methodology but add the TQM ethos and the business can be very different beast. Again I knew I should be doing some more research and pass this onto new small business groups and forums in the UK. My own busy schedule had began to go off the rails, but this was definitely the way forward and I now sincerely hoped that I would have another chance to listen to those ladies again at another superb location in the City of Chicago. Check out the next article Girls who Party.

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