Flexibility and greater control over your destiny are just two advantages of not growing too big too quickly

TALK to almost any businessperson and the first thing they will want to discuss is growth. How to grow, where to grow, how to manage growth ...

Ross Greenwood talks at the Inner West Small Business Expo at West Ashfield.

TALK to almost any businessperson and the first thing they will want to discuss is growth.

How to grow, where to grow, how to manage growth, why there’s no growth. The conversations are endless.

Nirvana for many small business people is to expand to a medium size, and then into a big business. But for every growth strategy there is a risk, and a set of obstacles to navigate: capital, debt, costs, ­labour, marketing. Timing is everything.

But sometimes, if a business operator finds a niche — and it works — there’s nothing embarrassing about staying small.

This should not be read that these businesses that deliberately remain small don’t have challenges ... or that they don’t require change. But a small business with reliable cashflow can have big advantages.

The first is about control. If you remain small, the likelihood is that you will not be ­beholden to shareholders or bankers. By staying small you should be able to control the capital and debts of your business with greater certainty.

Then there is lifestyle. Any small business is all-consuming. If you are not doing your own work — paying staff, ­marketing, sales, production, collecting debts — you are doing the government’s work — paying super, collecting tax, filling in IR reports.

But as a business grows, so does the administration, so do the pressures from third party “stakeholders”. A business that deliberately stays small can ­reward its owners with more time and a better-balanced life.

Profit: it is hard enough to make a profit in any business, but if you’ve found a niche where you can make reliable profits, then hang on to it for as long as you can. Yes, there will be competitors and challenges, yes you will have to change strategy but there’s a lot to be said for discovering a ­sustainable business niche.

Flexibility: the brilliance of remaining small is that you can keep nimble. This doesn’t mean flitting from one business plan to another but it is an ­advantage in business to be able to adapt more quickly to change that your competitor. If you have big overheads and big staff numbers, it becomes more difficult to change quickly.

Service: smaller companies tend to treat customers and suppliers as trusted family friends rather than as business counterparts where every last dollar is haggled over. Small companies tend to take the time to get to know their ­customers and suppliers better, because their business is the lifeblood of the family.

The tools and knowledge to thrive

Carol and Shourn Riley owners of the business Newfield Jig &Tool at Hoxton Park / Picture: Robert Pozo

SOMETIMES small is much, much better.

For Carol Riley and her husband Shourn the secret of survival and prosperity for their Hoxton Park based business, Newfield Jig & Tool, is their ability to stay out of the way of mass producers.

Though the name has an old-fashioned ring about it, Carol as managing director has made certain the way the business presents itself is as modern as possible. It helps that she has worked in the business since she was 15.

Carol’s father, Eric Whiteley, started the business in 1975 as a toolmaker, servicing the thriving manufacturing industries in Western Sydney. But as industry protection was removed, and the Aussie dollar started to rise, the manufacturers departed and mass-produced ­Chinese products moved in.

Along the way a young welder/fitter & turner joined the company. Little did Eric know at the time, but he had just hired his successor. Carol and Shourn — who had gone out together since they were 15 at school — married. When Eric retired in 2004, they took the business over.

Newfield Jig & Tool survived by taking on jobs with very small ­production runs and short lead times. This has given them an advantage over bigger players and international operators.

But it is its ability to tool up for more than 1000 different products that gives Newfield an edge.

“A lot of companies overseas tool up to make millions of parts, whereas we can jig up for small quantities ... literally hundreds of parts.”

It’s that flexibility that allows the company to survive.