Small Dog Electronics takes the byte out of buying a Mac

Vermont Business Magazine, Jan 01, 2002 by Marcel, Joyce

Small Dog Electronics of Waitsfield is a fast-growing company with a marketing strategy based on ease and whimsy.

Small Dog sells Macintosh computer products - upgrades, memory, software and storage - on the Internet. In 2001 it had close to $20 million in sales, representing more than a 10 percent jump over 2000. It is now the Number1 Apple reseller in New England, and its rapid growth in 2000 made it Number 217 on the Inc.com 500 list of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the United States.

Founder and CEO Don Mayer chose to sell Apples rather than PCs because they're so easy to use.

"At a previous company I started, I found that once I put an Apple Macintosh on an engineers desk, they were producing work the same day," Mayer said. "But if I put a PC, it took them a week to figure out how to use the computer."

Small Dog makes its frivolous-sounding name do some serious work; for example, it offers customers an e-mail newsletter called "Kibbles and Bytes."

"Before I started, I was trying to think of a name for the company," Mayer said. "I have these two small dogs, and I was sitting on a hill outside my house on Prickly Mountain watching them play. I had two things in mind. One was keeping the company reasonably small, because it's easier to manage and more profitable. And also, I wanted to have a name that wasn't Mac this or Mac that or Tech this or Tech that. I wanted a name that would be memorable and give us something we could market easily. Dogs soften the hard edge of the Internet. When people deal with us, I want them to feel they're walking into Willie's General Store in Greensboro, that we're approachable and real."

To keep things personal and doggy, the Small Dog site (www.smalldog.com) offers things like "dog cams," where customers can watch the employees while they're working, newsletters that talk about events in employees' lives, and pictures of customers' dogs.

"All this is designed as a marketing approach, to make Internet marketing personal, so we become as trusted as that general store," Mayer said.

Small Dog is a hobby grown large.

"It got started in my living room," Mayer said. "About six years ago, I left another job and started purchasing Apple Macintosh computers, primarily at public auction, and reselling them on the Internet. Pretty soon I had boxes in every room in my house, and my wife became anxious about when she was going to get her house back. It was getting to be a little too much work, buying and selling and carrying to UPS. So I twisted my son's arm to join me and help set up an office in my living room. We began to do this in some earnest. Soon it outgrew us, and we hired a long-time friend to join us as well. Then we had three people working in my house. At that point, we were doing some reconditioning ourselves, but we were mainly purchasing factory reconditioned products directly from Apple. My wife was pacing and stomping her foot, so we decided we needed to build an office."

Mayer ripped up his strawberry bed and built an office near the house. He also started warehousing products at an old movie theater in Waitsfield. Soon eight people were working for the company.

"We would ferry computers up Prickly Mountain to ship out, and UPS and FedEx drivers, even in the middle of an icy winter, would make it up my driveway to pick up the packages. We outgrew that office space within a year, and ultimately bought an office and warehouse in Waitsfield. That's where we are now."

The company now employs 15 people. It buys new, reconditioned and discontinued Apple products, and 95 percent of its business comes from the Internet.

"We maintain a very high level of customer service," Mayer said. "We're looking to make customers for life. We look at a single transaction as unimportant in the scheme of things. If you get a customer to be a fan of the company, they're going to tell their friends, and that's important for the business."

In the future, Small Dog will be investigating whether its own, companydesigned web-site design and shopping engine can be used for other products and be sold, either under the Small Dog umbrella or through other company names, to other businesses.

Small Dog is a member of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, and Mayer sits on its board.

"We very strongly ascribe to a triple bottom line," he said. "We make profits for the owners of the company, so we remain a viable business, but we're also in business to provide viable jobs for our employees - enjoyable and rewarding jobs. We've won the Vermont Psychology Association's Healthy Workplace award. And the third thing is giving back to our community. We're very active. We have a charitable giving program, where we match our customers' contributions to charities. When they put something in their shopping baskets, if they choose to make a contribution, we match it."

These efforts - personal marketing, involvement in the community and a core of very committed and enthusiastic employees - have created a community around Small Dog, Mayer said.