Susan Labandibar – Activist CEO

Last night I accepted an award from the Institute for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC). The Inner City 100 award recognizes the fastest growing businesses in urban America.  This is the second year we have won this award–moving up to 27th on the list, compared to last year when we ranked 83rd.

I am deeply grateful to Harvard Business School professor Dr. Michael E. Porter for creating the ICIC as a vehicle for inner city business development.  In May 1995, Professor Porter published the ‘The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City’ in Harvard Business Review.  This was the first time that anyone had suggested that inner city businesses could have a competitive advantage over businesses located in more affluent areas.

Although I had never read the article (or practically any other business publication except for Jay Conrad Levinson’s Earning Money Without a Job), I was destined to be one of many entrepreneurs who proved that Professor Porter’s ideas on inner city competitiveness were real world.   A few months after the article appeared, I visited every subway stop on the MBTA Red Line, looking for a spot to locate my new used computer store.  I went from Harvard Square, where I had seen a retail space with no parking for $2,500/month, to Andrew Square, where a larger space could be had for $800 for the first year, building up to $1,600 in year three.  It was directly across from the subway station.  And it had tons of parking!

I never thought twice about the abandoned buildings, the huge scrap yard, the drug users and the graffiti.  I was more worried about the guy who saw me lugging used CRT monitors into the store a few days before the opening and asked me if I was opening a TV store.  Prior to the store opening in Andrew Square, I had delivered used computers from my home in Somerville to every neighborhood in Boston except South Boston.  What if the people here didn’t even know what a computer was?

Over time, my location turned out to be just as great as I had hoped.  Not only did we attract plenty of customers from Dorchester and Roxbury, as well as people from Southie, but the proximity to the subway and all major highways turned out to be a huge advantage a few years later when we started servicing small business networks.  Now it was up to my engineers to get to the client site.  In many cases, they could get there on the subway.  This saved us thousands of dollars in parking fees and mileage expenses.

As the business grew, I experienced some challenges in recruiting senior level engineers and managers because their negative perceptions about the area we were in.  It’s certainly true that there’s no Starbucks in Andrew Square.  One way around this recruiting problem is to work with outsourcing firms for key positions such as CFO and HR Director.  But, until we won our first Inner City 100 award in 2008, I did not have an effective response for my employees when they complained about the dirt, the noise, the drugs, and the general lack of amenities.

Today, I proudly point to our Inner City 100 awards plaques hanging on the wall of our conference room.  For me, they are tangible evidence that my decision to locate in the inner city was based on sound business strategy, and not just good old Yankee penny-pinching!

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