Remember the card game Pontoon?

Stick or Twist ………….

you decide to be dealt another card & risk scoring over 21 & losing the hand

In business do we Stick or Twist with Suppliers?

Have you been sold to, then had the realisation that your expectation was totally misplaced?

• How do you resolve that?
• Discuss with the supplier, who perhaps does not see the situation through your eyes, or
• Do you simply stick with that choice and hope to make the best of it?
• Perhaps, twist – change your supplier, which, is not always as easy as it first appears

In recent months I have travelled the waters of a home renovation, thinking it was an easy path, something modest, certainly not a ‘Grand Design’.  At times those waters seemed to range from dark, to murky and occasionally bright and clear.  As the latter part of the project is fast approaching, I have been considering the lessons I have learned and how these not only apply to my situation, but life and indeed our business.

Areas of contention?

Within this renovation there have been several areas of contention, thankfully not with my main contractor and project manager, who has picked me up from a rather wretched place and carried me along this build with careful consideration, but instead, with sub contractors, suppliers and even directly with manufacturers and all of them, suppliers which I had chosen, (more on this in other blogs).

The cladding, expensive, marketed at the high end, fantastic to look at and a dream product.  Yet, it let us down at every turn at the outset.  Visits from the manufacturer and additionally from a kind installer proved that the issues were not isolated to my property, yet to replace the product and use an alternative was too late, we had to stick with it and try to ‘make the best’.  Stick, not ideal, but once invested sometimes you cannot change.