After 30+ years in business, my companies have developed a reputation for having low prices. We may not be the rock-bottom lowest-priced vendor, but the price that we charge our customers for the value we provide them is always unmatched by our competitors. Here’s why we deliberately keep our prices low and avoid price increases unless absolutely necessary:
我和1986年创业是可怕,will never forget the pain that we endured. My partner and I started a business in the basement of a wet and cold factory. We had no heat, no air conditioning, and we used blankets as our office walls. Instead of customers, our office visitors were rats, birds, flies, and snakes.
我们初创公司的前四年是迄今为止最糟糕的。我们每周工作近7天，每天工作〜12个小时。我的妻子每年为我们的教师收入提供了18,000美元的支持。我们在热狗和通心粉和奶酪上生活了多年。我们的娱乐预算恰好是每周6.00美元，这使我们能够购买2架辣酱玉米饼馅，并在我们最喜欢的墨西哥餐厅留下1美元的小费。
I regularly share this and similar stories with all of my employees. I’ve gone out of my way to make sure that every one of my employees understands how tough it is to start and run a small business. Even though they’ll never fully understand, I try to give my employees a small taste of the trials and tribulations that small business owners face every single day. Since I know deep within my soul that small business owners do not have any extra time or money to waste, I want my employees and my companies to always be considerate of our small business customers.
This means that our products have to be superior. Our quality has to be top-notch. Our support has to be stellar. And at the same time, our prices must remain as low as humanly possible.
This philosophy is especially difficult to balance in the cyber age in which we live. The complexity and costs associated with developing cloud-based software have increased exponentially in recent years.
Here’s one small example of why software development costs have skyrocketed: High-quality Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) software providers like Patriot Software build their software so they can push out new changes daily or even multiple times a day. Software that’s live on the Internet must be designed to run on any type of phone, tablet, or desktop computer with every type of browser. Online software also has to be made as bulletproof as possible to protect against cyber threats. To achieve the highest level of quality and security possible, Patriot Software’s Development Team has already written over 46,000 computer programs called “unit tests,” which ensure that our software’s security and quality are stellar. It’s this type of behind-the-scenes expense that drives up costs, but this is what ultimately saves the small business owner time and frustration. And, I could give many more examples like this.
因此，不幸的是，我们每隔一段时间都被迫提高价格，以便我们可以继续提供我们提供的极高品质产品。我可以告诉您，当我们提高价格时，我会为最小的小型企业主要花多少钱而感到痛苦。那是因为我意识到，他们中的许多人仍然像我一样生活在热狗和通心粉和奶酪上，而5或6美元的钱很重要。这就是为什么我讨厌提高价格的原因。
Mike Kappel
