Why Think Big?
As Stephen Covey said, “Start with the end in mind”. Thinking big allows you to think ahead to your ultimate goal, and provide constant motivation and drive to achieve your milestones. And small achievable milestones make your mission a reality; pragmatically speaking.
‘Thinking big’ means being able to dream and visualise what you can achieve on an audacious scale: with no limits on your thinking.
It is about being open-minded, positive, creative and seeing opportunity in the big picture. It allows you to set a grand purpose, a raison d’etre for your business, which would clearly help to think about the various paths to achieve your vision.
And subsequently, achieving Big does not necessarily require starting Big.
Why Start in Phases?
It’s always enticing for Investors to start capital intensive retail businesses with huge fancy stores and designer-clad interiors, all in the hope that customers will be attracted enough to purchase from them. But that expectation falls short when the business realizes that they have not yet established trust, brand image or goodwill. And one would start to realise this challenge whence they see the huge overheads and payables which mounts to a large sum within a year of operations.
Today we live in an age of brand based marketplace, where the idea of brand image and brand associations are ever so important and those who play the brand game very well know how to tap into the psyche, sensitivities and personal priorities of the consumers.
Brand building uses various methods to associate their brand image with the needs of its customers, and thus customers come back for more of their products just because of their brand affinity and status correlation.
Take the example of the clothing brand Supreme, which has an immense cult-like following. With only 11 Brick and Mortar Supreme stores operating worldwide, they currently have a valuation of $1 Billion US dollars. Do you think that they spent an immense amount of capital worldwide to gain such a valuation and customer base?
No.
Supreme started its operations in 1994 with a small store in Manhattan. With their exclusive apparel and accessories for skateboarders, they focused their design and brand to accustom to the needs of skateboarding sub-culture and streetwear.
Their strategies included ‘affordable exclusivity’ and increasing scarcity to create hype. All of these have made Supreme, establish itself among global giants like Vans and Nike who are competing in the same market.
Creating a great sought after brand and establishing goodwill requires patience and carefully planned customer acquisition strategy. And much of the initial capital investment should be utilised strategically. And also by fine-tuning the value proposition based on feedback from its lead users.
Starting small requires less resources and can minimize the risks.
Scaling up should be done in phases with each phase implementing a strategic action. This phased growth strategy provides the firm with substantial time to find shortfalls and mistakes, and thus gaining knowledge to take corrective measures. Gaining steady momentum and scaling up to achieve growth requires one’s own ability to find mistakes and correcting their actions to mitigate future costs and capture larger markets.
Think Big, Start in Phases and Scale-up.
