Small is beautiful
Full disclosure: The title for this article comes from a book by British economist E.F. Schumacher. The full title of the book is, “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People
Mattered.”
I’m a big fan of small businesses. You might charge me with being biased because I own one (and you’d be right), but I’ve felt this way long before
I became a small business owner. According to the
U.S. government’s Small
Business Administration, there are 30.2 million small businesses in America, and those comprise 99.9
% of American businesses. Approximately 59 million
Americans work at a small business, and small businesses make up for 98% of firms exporting goods. Small businesses account for almost all new job creation.
Pretty impressive, right?
People often think that it’s the biggest companies that make the biggest differences, but it’s start-ups that are always trying something new. It’s brand new companies with new ideas that try to push things in a different direction, doing something that no one else has thought of. And it’s small businesses that large corporations are always lobbying the government to kneecap so that they won’t have any competition, but that’s a whole other column.
Today, it’s a new, small company that’s brewing better beer. This is a great example of small businesses doing something awesome and transforming an industry.
A few decades ago, the four largest brewers in the UK had, between them, bought 90% of the pubs in the country. They only served their beers, which were quite mediocre. No small brewers were allowed to sell their beer in any pub owned by the big brewers, which was nearly all of them. So, they had no real way into the market. People talk about free markets, but this isn’t what a free market looks like.
Then, in 1971, four people founded the Campaign for Real Ale, and eventually got a law passed in Parliament requiring all pubs to have at least one “guest ale”, that is, one ale not brewed by the owning brewer or one of the big four brewers. Small brewers could not enter the market and sell their beer. It took a crowbar, so to speak, but the market was opened.
This was the beginning of craft beer in the UK, and the founders of the Campaign for Real Ale eventually came to America and helped start craft beer here. You can see the results all around you. Craft beer is a big and growing business in the US, and there is more variety in the beers available than ever. New breweries are opening in Arkansas all the time. We’re supposed to get one right down the road in Camden this fall. I’m stoked.
All of that is thanks to small brewers who were making better beer than their big competitors, but who had been shut out of the market by corporate monopoly and collusion. Thanks to them, you can enjoy delicious craft beers pretty much anywhere in America. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Small businesses are the places where new ideas take shape and where new things (like new, delicious beer) happen. They’re also where most of your friends and neighbors work. So support your local small businesses.
‘Til next week.