Entrepreneurs are often portrayed as the ultimate rugged individualists, blazing new trails in highly competitive landscapes. Yet in reality, many entrepreneurs benefit substantially from collaborating with similar businesses, even while they compete with them. It can be a delicate dance, but it can also produce greater success for all involved.
Among the many aspects of business, marketing might seem like an unlikely arena for cooperation. After all, one basic principle of marketing is to identify “distinguishing variables,” things that separate your business from your competitors. But one excellent local example of collaboration among competitors can be found in the oyster farmers of Grand Isle, who are collectively marketing their product under the umbrella of “Grand Isle Jewels.”
“The more we are all able to work together on the marketing, the better it is for all of us,” said Nathan Herring, owner of Bright Side Oyster Company. Herring noted that he uses his own company name when talking to buyers, but added, “The Grand Isle Jewels brand gives us more name recognition, and buyers may be willing to give us a better price.”
“The brand gives us more traction in the community,” concurred Kirk Curole of Bayside Oyster Company, who added that cooperation among these smaller oyster farms goes beyond just the marketing. “I help other farmers when they run out of product, and they help with my customers when I’m out of town. No one has all the equipment, so everybody brings something to the table.”
In fact, Herring was able to obtain a grant to buy a tumbler — a key tool in the oyster sorting process — because he committed to sharing it with his fellow farmers. “I would not have been able to buy this on my own,” he stated.
Not only do the oystermen share equipment, they assist each other when one has boat problems or issues with other equipment.
“The farms are close together,” Herring explained. “We may be in competition, but we’re friends too.”
Another illustration of this principle is the legislative actions undertaken by craft beer brewers around Louisiana. While the Grand Isle oyster farmers are still, as Curole described it, “a gentlemen’s co-op,” the brewers have established The Louisiana Craft Brewers Guild as a formal alliance.
Jacob Landry, the founder and CEO of Urban South Brewery in New Orleans, currently serves as president of guild, which was founded in 2011— as a response to the challenges Louisiana brewers were facing at the time.
“Breweries were blowing up all over the country,” Landry recalled, “but they weren’t blowing up here.”
Louisiana laws restricted how craft brewers could sell their product; in particular, for breweries that wanted to distribute their products offsite, only 10% of what a brewery produced could be sold out of its taprooms — which is where these businesses enjoy their highest profit margin.
Landry, who had not even opened up his own operation at that time, began working with existing breweries to get the laws changed.
“We got the legislation passed in 2015, and it quintupled the number of brewers in Louisiana,” Landry reported. He opened Urban South the following year, noting that, “We wouldn’t have made it under the old law.”
As the craft beer industry has evolved and grown, however, cooperation has become in some ways more challenging, with some regulations favoring larger operations over the smaller ones, and others working in the opposite direction. Nonetheless, Landry said, “We get more done if we work together. We are stronger together.”
From small grocers combining forces to increase their purchasing power to many types of businesses forming cooperatives to save on insurance costs, examples of competitors working collaboratively abound both locally and nationally. Competition is part of life, and certainly part of business. But it can be done with respect – and surprisingly often it can be set aside for mutually beneficial collaboration.
Keith Twitchell spent 16 years running his own business before serving as president of the Committee for a Better New Orleans from 2004 through 2020. He has observed, supported and participated in entrepreneurial ventures at the street, neighborhood, nonprofit, micro- and macro-business levels.
