The business world is full of David vs. Goliath scenarios.
Sensing an opportunity, large companies will frequently enter a market to compete with smaller established vendors, relying on large budgets and even larger volumes to make lower prices their main selling point.
Short-sighted consumers are easily persuaded by the lower-cost argument and will cast their lot with the big companies without understanding the larger ramifications of their decision. More discerning customers, however, look at the big picture before deciding how to spend their hard-earned budgets. More often than not, they realize that saving money now on a single purchase will result in higher costs down the road.
That’s because, perhaps counter-intuitively, smaller companies actually have a number of advantages over larger organizations in areas other than price—services that ultimately matter more to clients.
The primary reason is that, in order to gain an immediate foothold, large companies entering a market will typically specialize in a single activity. Using marketing fulfillment as an example, this would be like a 4imprint or Halo focusing exclusively on branded apparel and other merchandise. While paying lower prices for promotional material is attractive, competing on price alone is a race to the bottom. Large businesses can easily undercut the competition on margin alone.
Customers who partner with these vendors do so at their own peril. Making a decision solely on lower prices for branded merchandise ignores other critical needs such as print, kitting warehousing, inventory management, shipping, and event management. When considering the bigger picture, it’s better to compete on outcomes, speed, and access—and charge accordingly.
How David Beats Goliath
Of course, the advantages of small businesses over large aren’t limited to the number of services offered. Many of the benefits offered by smaller organizations are intangible and unmeasurable but contribute to a more efficient and streamlined marketing effort that, in the long run, results in a more cost-effective solution.
What are these benefits? Let’s discuss, once again using marketing fulfillment as an example.
1. One company offering multiple services sees the whole picture
The greatest advantage offered by smaller companies is integration, not scale. A provider that specializes in a particular discipline might be excellent at printing, warehousing, or shipping, but it naturally optimizes its operation for that particular piece of the process. That leaves a large service gap. A smaller full-service fulfillment company has access to, and can look at, the entire workflow: marketing asset production; inventory; kitting; storage; order; shipping; event management; reporting. Having a finger in every aspect of the process, from inception to completion, makes it easier to identify inefficiencies and make the necessary corrections.
2. Greater speed; more flexibility
Speed and flexibility are the greatest weapons in a small company’s arsenal. Large organizations generally have highly rigid and standardized processes that help them achieve the scale they need to keep prices low. Custom requests must be routed through a complex procurement, legal, and bureaucratic approval process that, if adopted (typically days or even weeks too late), will cost the customer dearly.
A small firm, on the other hand, can say “yes” to a custom request today and deliver a solution quickly. Even if it’s outside the scope of a “normal” project, small companies are nimble enough to pivot quickly and make it work. Whether it’s a last-minute event change, a custom kitting request, a unique packaging requirement, or a one-off campaign, a small business is in a much better position to accommodate these requests than a large company that specializes in a specific deliverable.
3. Faster decision-making
Related to point #2, smaller organizations can make decisions much faster than large companies because there are fewer layers between the customer and the person who can make a final decision.
At a large company, where the chain of command is far more hierarchical, it goes like this: customer, account manager, operations, management, finance, operations.
Small companies can literally be two steps: customer and the person who can solve their problem. By eliminating roughly 80% of the layers involved in the decision-making process, smaller organizations can dramatically reduce turnaround times, which translates into generating revenue much more quickly.
4. More personal service
At a large organization, clients are quickly reduced to a mere account number. After the initial sales pitch (usually with upper management), customers who sign on the dotted line are quickly assigned to less-experienced junior staff.
Smaller companies can ensure that the people who made the pitch and won the business actually do the work. Customers enjoy direct access to senior leadership and experienced operations staff—people who really know the business. The relationship is far more rewarding and issues get resolved much more quickly when they aren’t routed through multiple layers of customer service. 
5. Technology adapts to the client, not the other way around
Larger fulfillment companies often have very sophisticated technology. It’s very impressive and effective—but it’s designed and built around their operating model. Customers may have to modify their internal systems to work with the vendor’s software. It’s the hidden cost of making decisions based solely on money.
Small full-service providers, on the other hand, are typically more willing and able to configure their own portals, workflows, reporting, APIs, inventory rules, and ordering processes to meet the customer's specific needs. For a marketing department, that means a fulfillment website that reflects how their organization operates rather than forcing their organization to integrate with the vendor’s.
6. Better coordination across vendors and activities
While working with a large branded promotional merchandise vendor will help cut costs for giveaways, it also means having to find, manage, and pay vendors to handle all the other services that go into marketing fulfillment.
Who is going to print the 10,000 brochures needed for an upcoming event? Who will assemble the 2,000 kits required? Who will handle warehousing, shipping, inventory management, and reporting? When separate specialists are needed for each additional service, the marketing team not only becomes responsible for connecting all the dots, the budget also takes a massive hit.
A full-service provider takes responsibility for coordinating all those activities. That means they are not only executing tasks, they are also managing complexity, which is a significant contribution.
7. Accountability and communication
Oddly enough, the more vendors you have to manage, the more finger-pointing you’ll encounter. Those 10,000 brochures never arrived at the event? The shipper blames the printer for being late. The printer blames the client for changing the event requirements. The warehouse blames the shipper for missing a delivery. The carrier blames the warehouse for not having the shipment ready. Nobody owns anything.
A full-service provider assumes full responsibility for managing all aspects of the process, from printing to final delivery, making sure any issues are resolved quickly. As for the client, they have one throat to choke—and, more importantly, one partner to solve the problem.
8. Familiarity with the customer
Smaller providers have fewer clients. That allows them to develop a much deeper relationship with and understanding of each and every one. This familiarity means the fulfillment vendor can learn each customer’s branding standards, approval processes, key stakeholders, order patterns, inventory requirements, shipping preferences, budget constraints, even their event calendars. This turns the relationship from vendor-customer into more of an operational partner-marketing team.
9. Less bureaucracy
Large organizations develop layers of processes designed to protect themselves. This often leads to friction with customers.
Smaller companies lack the infrastructure required to support layers of approvals, escalations, contract restrictions, change orders, and departmental handoffs. This makes the relationship a much more entrepreneurial experience rather than a painful bureaucratic one. This is a highly underrated advantage.
10. It’s about value, not price
There’s no question that a large, specialized company can produce merchandise or deliver a service very cheaply due to enormous volume. That’s why larger firms can almost always undercut the competition on margin.
Rather than trying to beat them on price, small companies compete on the value of the services they provide. The cheapest activity isn't necessarily the lowest-cost overall solution.
For example, a printer might offer a low printing price, but the client still has to manage warehousing, inventory, picking, packing, kitting, and shipping. While a full-service fulfillment company might have slightly higher print costs, it compensates by eliminating or charging less for the other related costs, resulting in an overall savings. More importantly, the cost includes the internal labor required to coordinate everything, giving the customer back that time.
This creates a new definition of ROI, where the total program cost is the total sum of vendor costs, internal labor, coordination, errors, delays, excess inventory, and freight inefficiencies. With this formula, the small full-service provider wins even when it isn't the cheapest provider of any individual service.
Taking the Long View
Customers who try to save money by selecting the lowest-priced vendors of separate services often end up paying more for full marketing fulfillment. Those who play the long game realize that bundled services cost less as a group, even if more expensive individually—with the added benefit that multiple vendor management becomes a thing of the past.
Smaller full-service fulfillment companies essentially become an extension of the marketing team, taking responsibility for the operational complexity behind campaigns, events, promotional merchandise and physical marketing assets. That's where a smaller company beats much larger specialists: not by having more trucks, printers, warehouses, or employees, but by making the client's life substantially easier.
