Yesterday I had the good fortune of dining with my friend over at a local Ice Parlour, while we were enjoying the tranquil views and enjoying some great ice cream we discussed how the food prices were going up even for basic goods. My friend, Yusuf Bulbulia has substantial experience in business and has many contacts in the food industry. He related a story where a business owner who makes pizzas for various food outlets is now closing his doors. His reasons were startling, over the past year the average price of food products has gone up by 20%, the common ingredient in pizzas being:

Wheat (used in flour)
and fresh produce i.e. tomatoes, cucumbers and cold meats

Have all gone up by a startling 20% in price. However, the cost of energy i.e. gas and electricity up from last year, his profits have taken a drop by a huge 60%.

Sadly, he couldn’t pass these costs on to his suppliers as they too have been struggling hence he took the decision of closing the business before encountering further losses. One possible solution may have been for him to differentiate and offer value over price, rather than solely competing just on price. Business owners need to project a long term vision to how they are going to offer their products or services without compromising quality and price, being the lowest on price can not be a great unique selling point (USP)

So ask yourself how would you differentiate in your business?
How are you bringing in value to your industry or organisation?
What one key process or activity differs you from your colleagues or competitors?

I believe, this difference does not have to be huge, even a modest 5% to 10% of a difference can set yourself apart from others and draw in more clients or rewards for yourself and keep you from shutting your doors or making your career into a dead one.

Yours, Hanif

Doug Richard is a United Kingdom-based Californian entrepreneur and specialist in technology transfer, commercialisation, and business incubation. He shot to prominence as a result of the BBC programme Dragons’ Den, where he appeared as a “dragon”, or investor. He is the founder and executive Chairman of Library House, an investment research and consulting firm based in Cambridge and co-founder of trutap — a new mobile startup offering unlimited texting.

I will be present at the event so looking forward to hear about Doug and his rise to success. More soon.

Welcome to the Dyne Consultancy Blogroll or should it be Dyne Consultancy Blogroll welcome to the world? Anyway, now that we have established a new home, we will be talking about aspects of business from starting up (Vision) right through to service delivery and of course not forgetting along the way how to make our business and personal lives more profitable.

The blog is used to communicate to a wider audience and encourages users to get engaged with us, whether you agree with us or not, we want to hear your views, be they ideas, suggestions, critique or simply just saying ‘Hello World’ it would be great to hear you drop by

Further updates are being made to the website, we also aim to have a dedicated forum being released in the next couple of days and have more interviews with folks who have a business released via our podcasts, whitepapers or articles to download and a whole host of other features.

So stay tuned and watch this space…

Dyne Consultancy