{"id":2302,"date":"2015-06-25T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=2302"},"modified":"2015-06-25T10:21:43","modified_gmt":"2015-06-25T17:21:43","slug":"white-label-it-make-it-you-inside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=2302","title":{"rendered":"White-label it: Make it \u2018YOU\u2019 inside."},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Steakley<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week’s insight comes from David Steakley, who has contributed several great posts to Berkonomics this year. \u00a0David is an active angel investor in Texas and is a former management consultant, where he obviously plied his trade well. \u00a0– Dave<\/em><\/p>\n

Companies can strike it rich by finding an element of business operations which many companies need, but few have the capability or expertise to execute with excellence \u2013 and then aim to supply that element.\u00a0 Sometimes this is called a white label<\/em> strategy, because \"whitelabel\"<\/a>your customers offer your product as their own product, writing in their brand name on the blank label in your underlying offering.<\/p>\n

But, more often, this is just the virtualization of what we used to call outsourcing.\u00a0 On the web, not only does no one know much of who you are, but no one cares how you sourced your widgets.<\/p>\n

Bazaarvoice, a company in Austin, Texas is a great example of this kind of operation.\u00a0 To be quite frank, the first two or three times someone told me what they do, I couldn’t understand it.\u00a0 My preconceived notions of the possible range of business models simply didn’t include this one.<\/p>\n

[Email readers, continue here…]<\/em><\/span> \u00a0Basically, the company created software for online forums.\u00a0 Really, that’s a business?\u00a0 Yep:\u00a0 revenues of over $100 million per year with a market cap around $800 million.\u00a0 The company identified an element of operations which almost every online retailer already has, or needs, but very few do well on their own.\u00a0 Moreover, the company’s offerings allow the retailer to change a thing which may be seen as mostly a pain – into an engine for increasing sales, for sharpening the retailer’s value proposition, for catching and solving problems before they become real problems.\u00a0 In short, the underlying value of that company is the old-fashioned underlying value of outsourcing (if there was one):\u00a0 the outsourcer not only does it for you, the outsourcer shows you how to do it right, and does it at lower cost.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Now listen to one of Bazaarvoice’s short pitches:\u00a0 \u201cOur industry- leading social commerce solutions capture & amplify user-generated content, driving the highest social media ROI, for the world’s largest brands.\u201d\u00a0 Forgive me, but I had no idea what that meant.<\/p>\n

I heard another pitch recently, for a company which must have been unknowingly inspired by that other obscure pitch.\u00a0 This one wants to supply product comparison mechanisms for online merchants.\u00a0\u00a0 You know, those bubble charts of products and features, by model?\u00a0 Do you want zoom in your camera?\u00a0 How much zoom?\u00a0 How many pixels?\u00a0 Thank god I had finally grasped Bazaarvoice; \u00a0otherwise I probably would have sent these guys packing.<\/p>\n

There’s a lesson in this for business operators.\u00a0 Look around your operations, and identify areas of cost which, as far as you can tell, do little or nothing to enhance the profitability of your operations – but, you must have them.\u00a0 Can someone do it better than you, and at lower cost? \u00a0\u00a0Have an open mind.\u00a0 You’re used to outsourcing payroll, bookkeeping, and logistics.\u00a0 Just for an exercise, see if you can identify someone to outsource absolutely everything in your business.<\/p>\n

You have only so much management bandwidth.\u00a0 It can only make you more effective – if you’re able to focus your attention on the things you’re best at doing \u2013 your core competency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Steakley This week’s insight comes from David Steakley, who has contributed several great posts to Berkonomics this year. \u00a0David is an active angel investor in Texas and is a former management consultant, where he obviously plied his trade … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-growth"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}