Not fair! – Competitor nasty antics

I headed back to U of T today to finish the job. After finally visiting every corner of the campus it’s pretty clear; this is the worst campus in Toronto for postering. There are a few hot spot buildings with a reasonable coverage of boards, but because this campus is so far apart it takes forever to get the whole place done. The main places to poster are the telephone poles that line the streets but the competition is so fierce for this poster real estate you’re lucky if you last more than a day. With the weather being rainy and snowy I figured out door postering is probably not going to be the most cost effective option given the minimal time a poster stays live. I tried a few telephone poles and I will see what happens when I return in two weeks. Perhaps the amount of exposure and quality of the traffic might make up for the minimal time. Then again it started to rain really heavily later that night so it was probably a waste of time.

During my travels today I also investigated a few buildings that I postered just 24 hours ago. As with any large university, a few of the board locations are very popular and some of my posters were already covered. However when I entered the IT building I noticed that my posters had all but disappeared from where I placed them just yesterday afternoon. Upon further investigation I noticed another poster, a hot pink poster, advertising proofreading services. It appeared to be an individual targeting thesis and dissertation writers claiming 25 years experience. I started seeing a pattern – where my posters used to be, this other proofreader’s posters started to appear. I even found one hot pink poster directly covering my yellow poster. Now I’m all for competition, but to blatantly remove or cover over a competitor’s poster is just rude! Yes, okay, this is business and it’s a dog eat dog world out there, but this I took some offence at on a moral level. The consumer should be allowed to be informed of both our services and then make a choice based on price and quality. This way the better business survives. I went around and replaced what I was missing but I was extra careful not to remove or cover the other proofreader’s posters. I was making a statement – I won’t do what you did and I’m going to keep coming back and putting up my posters regardless of what you do.

Another small job from one of our Asian regulars came through today and I’m still in negotiation on a large (about $1500) job from a repeat business client that I expect to be finalised by the end of this month. Edward Chalmers finished postering two of the big Brisbane campuses which I asked him to do for me because they are heading into summer semester finals in Australia now. One day I hope to have a postering network large enough to reach all around Australia but for at this point I can only afford to focus on Brisbane.

This weekend I plan to do some accounting work – yes that’s another hat I wear. I use MYOB to manage my day to day business activities which for those not from Australia, is a fairly rudimentary bookkeeping software with some reasonable reporting tools. I also have a proper bookkeeper come in once a month or so to check my work and reconcile my transactions. Plus of course I have an accountant once a year do my return. At the moment I am still a sole trader but I plan to incorporate next year when I finally have some assets built up worth protecting.

Finally just a couple of links I want to plug. Most people that read my blog will know these but just in case these two forums I visit often as they are full of like minded young entrepreneurs like me! Check them out if you like business talk.

Young Entrepreneur Forums – http://youngentrepreneur.com/forum

Young Network of Entrepreneurs Forums – http://ynot.thecouch.com.au/forum

Yaro Starak