NAID Briefing

Attentive local owners can respond nimbly to situations.

I doubt that anyone reading this believes that McDonald’s has the best hamburger in his or her city. People might say McDonald’s makes them faster or cheaper than anyone else, but not better.

Similarly, Home Depot is a very convenient place to find anything you need for household improvements, but it is not the place to get a high level of personal attention, with their sparse and under-qualified floor staff.

Now, I am not saying anything that McDonald’s and Home Depot don’t already know. They know exactly what they are and who their customers are. These companies know that the trade-off for their size is the "remote control" management they are saddled with. As a result, whether it is the best hamburger in town or the best shredding service, a smaller owner operator can usually do a lot better job in the service department than a big corporation. Few national companies have local managers who take the business as seriously as an actual owner. Few national companies have local managers who can respond to a situation or changing market conditions as quickly as an attentive local owner.

NAID also serves as an important tool for the 99.5 percent of NAID’s members who are small, locally owned secure destruction services. In fact, only about 1 percent of NAID’s annual revenue comes from all the national firms combined.

Think about who benefits from NAID’s national advertising, certification, marketing brochures, consumer education or government relations initiatives. National companies can do most of these things themselves. Small companies can’t. That is why NAID is such an important source of strength for the combined population of small companies who lack the economic resources of the national firms.

So, while NAID fairly and earnestly serves all its members, big and small, we are very sure about exactly what we are and who our customers are. n