Stephanie Birt, Owner of Blue Ocean Office Supplies and Solutions (Credit: Troy Bridgeman/Guelph Mercury)
Blue Ocean Office Supplies and Solutions was profiled by a local news outlet.
Guelph Mercury reported on Blue Ocean’s Owner Stephanie Birt, whose cartridge remanufacturing business “relies on building relationships with clients”, due to the supplies industry being “fiercely competitive”, and Birt noted that the “formula for success” is “building relationships with clients while ignoring the competition”.
She noted that there’s “enough business just in this city […] for pretty much everybody and anybody in any industry. So I don’t need to fight for this one and fight for that one. I don’t need to step on people’s toes”, and added that it was the “competitive culture of the industry” convinced her to “get out of the business” in 2014 “after six years with a well-known office supply company”.
She had “spent the last six years selling print and technology for somebody else […] the core of my job was building relationships locally for somebody else’s business. I knew it was time for me to do something on my own. I didn’t really know what it was, just something”, and the relationships made “inspired her to get back in the business, but this time on her own terms”, the outlet notes.
The company offers remanufactured cartridges alongside “free product consultation and technical support”, and Birt’s previous clients “continued to ask” for her “expertise”, which showed “the demand” for the product from a “trusted source”. She likens the cartridge industry to the “razor and razor blade mentality”, with the printers “cheap and the supplies […] very expensive”, and added that “most consumers want to save money” but “need a trusted convenient place to get it from”.
She named the company after – and “a large measure” of her business philosophy was based on – a book called Blue Ocean Strategy, which is about “creating uncontested market space”, with one key idea from the book being that “’head-to-head competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting’”.
Birt added that in her career she has “always told people and small businesses I worked for not to worry about what everybody else is doing. If you do whatever it is you do and you do it with enthusiasm and integrity, you’re going to succeed, period”. In turn, her business benefitted from the Ontario Self Employment Benefits Programme, which has given her a “personal business adviser and a panel of business mentors”, with seminars and guidance given on building a business.
In turn, the programme has “helped her expand her network of customers and establish relationships with other small businesses”, and are “an endless resource for support” , and partnered with local company PERK Printing Solutions to remanufacture and collect cartridges, with money raised from collection donated to The Children’s Foundation of Guelph.
Birt stated that “providing advice and technical expertise” for free to customers is part of the “environmental stewardship” that Blue Ocean is based upon, and noted that “it’s about creating your uncontested market space. There is no competition for that – no one is going to do that for you for free because, essentially I am telling you to spend less with me. But that’s OK because I want to do what is right for you. It’s giver’s gain”.