The headline of this article is actually the name of a business a friend of mine owns. It deals in large-format printers — the kind that produce high-quality, full-color prints, poster-size and larger, used for trade show displays and similar purposes.
He got into the business more than a dozen years ago, back when this kind of printing technology was just coming down in price to the point where companies other than big corporations could afford it.
He struggled at the beginning, so much so that during the first lean year, he and his partner consulted with the companies whose equipment they were selling, asking them what they were doing wrong.
After looking at their practices, the company representatives assured them that they were doing everything right and that things would turn around. A short time later, his partner gave up, and my friend bought him out. And then the business did turn upward. Since then, my friend has done great, and he thanks himself occasionally, not just for taking the leap of faith to get his firm started, but for staying with it.
There’s a moral
There’s a lesson in here for onsite installers and it has to do with big systems, which are the focus of the cover story and System Profile in this issue of Onsite Installer. The lesson is to consider thinking bigger.
There’s a growing market for those able to think beyond systems for individual country houses. Consensus is growing that it’s often too expensive to extend sewers to rural subdivisions, and so cluster systems are gaining a foothold. There’s also a need for large-scale onsite systems for everything from schools, churches and summer camps to restaurants, offices and strip malls.
You might argue: That’s beyond my capability. I don’t have the training. I can’t afford the equipment investment. I can’t risk adding the staff. You’re right to be concerned — those are known in the business world as barriers to entry.
But these barriers have a plus side: If it’s hard for you to get into the large-scale market, it’s hard for others, too. That means if you make a move, you won’t have every Joe with a backhoe as competition.
Up in class
And isn’t that one of the discontents of the single-family market? The fact that as a true professional you have to compete with people who peddle bare-minimum systems (or worse) based on low price?
Enter the world of commercial and cluster systems and you’re taking a big step up in class. Because these systems are bigger and often handle higher-strength waste, they face tighter scrutiny from regulators. It’s much harder for a designer or installer to cut corners. The rules are enforced, and one thing that means is a level playing field.
It’s not a question of who can throw a box and some rocks in the ground for the lowest dollar. It’s about who can install a system that effectively protects the environment and do it for the most reasonable price. Winning the job often depends not on the prices of septic tank, piping and gravel but on the caliber of innovation — a cost-effective way to solve a site-specific problem that no one else thought of.
In other words, there’s more room, more demand, for ingenuity. And for many people, that’s quite satisfying compared to installing cookie-cutter systems.
What it takes
All right, it’s easy for me to preach about making investments and taking risks while sitting comfortably in an office. Moving to bigger systems is a significant step, and it’s not for everyone.
On the other hand, as the saying goes, this is not brain surgery. If you know the basics of single-family systems, you also know most fundamentals of large-scale and cluster systems. Wastewater flows the same, pumps and treatment units work the same, and the soil does its absorptive work in large systems just as in those you now design and install. It’s just that the puzzles are larger and have more pieces.
Well, maybe it isn’t quite that simple. But the point is: If you’re looking for new challenges, for a higher-quality sector of the industry, and for greater profit potential, maybe you should be thinking bigger. You know — the way that friend of mine did.
