More evidence of decline...

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
Gone West
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
Messages
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Upstate New York
Display Name
Geek on the Hill
Hi there. I've been busy working on a new site the past few days (one of my own, this time, long-delayed due to other work), so I haven't had the time to be on POA much. But an email I received this morning simply screamed out for sharing.

This email was from a competitor of one of my clients. She wants me to help her rebuild her site -- and uses the job I'm doing managing her competitor's site as her reason for contacting me. Furthermore, she doesn't seem to even consider that, for ethical reasons, I might not be willing to do this. She just assumes that I will and wants to know the price.

To me, this email is emblematic of a slow, but steady decline in morals and ethics in our nation. I attribute this to several factors, one of which is an increasing hostility to anything that hints of "religion" or "old-fashioned" values. I believe that when people stop believing that there is some power greater than themselves, they are at risk of becoming their own "gods," with no obligation to nor concern with anything except their own best interests.

They then project this schema onto others, even to the extent of not even considering that there may be others who neither share nor endorse their self-centered world view. I never received a response to my reply to the sender (quoted further down in this post) expressing my ethical problems with her request. I suspect that the sender is as baffled by my refusal as I am by her request.

Here's the sender's email, with identifying information redacted.

email sender said:
This is a Contact Form response to RJM Web Design regarding:

Name: Gina [REDACTED]
Site: [REDACTED]
Phone: [REDACTED]
Cell Phone: [REDACTED]
Email Address: [REDACTED]

Message: Hi, I am interested in finding someone who can overhaul my website. I noticed that you are currently managing the website for one of our biggest competitors ([REDACTED]) and it looks like you are doing a great job. I am having trouble getting people to call once they arrive at the site. The formatting is off and I know a lot of the pages need some work. I would like to discuss what exactly you can provide and how much it would cost. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Thank you,

Gina
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And here's my reply:

my reply said:
Hello Gina,

Thanks for contacting me regarding your Web site.

For ethical reasons, I do not provide my services to companies competing in the same markets. My goal is always to make my clients Number One in their respective markets, and that's impossible to do when managing the sites of competing companies.

Thanks again for your email, however, and for your kind words. I wish you success in finding someone to help you overhaul your site.

-Richard
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I wanted to write something a bit more strongly-worded, but I decided that would serve no purpose. In any event, Gina never replied.

I also debated putting this in SZ, and I suspect that that's where it will wind up...

-Rich
 
Maybe it's different in the web world, but nearly all of my customers are competitors. If I only sold to one, I'd be living in a cardboard box.
 
It doesn't seem to be a problem to me. As a writer, I publish with a bunch of companies that are competitors of one another. Other than the contracts saying they get first look at the next thing I write, they have no problem with me selling it elsewhere if they decide not to go with it.

Perhaps in your case it would be a problem, but I don't think her query is out of line.
 
I'm having a hard time seeing the ethical dilemma, unless there is some sort of conflict of interest. To the extent you don't sell out your client to some competitor by divulging priveliged information, I have no issues with working with a client's competitor.
 
Religion is not necessary for a reasonable social contract, though it is one way to organize one. Note that it CAN promote unreasonable social contracts as well. Like discouraging contact with outsiders (not that this is common -- but it does happen).

There are many other ways. Like actually teaching ethics.

I'd agree that if you're promoting a contract that makes a business #1 in a field, it would be unethical to promise the same thing to others. Not because of religion, but because that has to be a lie to one of the parties. A world where everyone lies all the time is not a pleasant world. It would be different if you were promising an excellent website, not "the best." I think that that's all your customers really expect, but the ethical thing to do would be to poll them.

If you look, you'll find pockets of ethical areligious people, particularly if you start hanging around nonprofits. It's not hard to find. Not everyone worships the dollar.

You'll also find lots of examples in the for-profit world where making a buck justifies ethically questionable actions, regardless of religion. My personal anti-favorite is how automotive labor is priced. It's listed as "by the hour," but is really by the job, where one of several labor guides says how long the job "should" take, and it's often inflated. It's done universally, so just about everyone rationalizes it like "everyone else is doing it."

So, I think your religion thing is a red herring. That's not the problem.
 
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Ditto. I think your opinion/ attitude about this situation is extremely odd.

BTW I think your opinion about the decline in moral values could be graphed in direct proportion to your increase in age. I personally think the number of people who really believe in a god or God has remained relatively constant over many centuries...what has changed is the proportion of people who are willing to be honest about it.
 
I think it depends on the industry. For example, you wouldn't want the same lawyer representing both sides. I'm not sure how this applies to web design other than I think one of the goals is to be the best positioned on search engines. That might be a conflict of interest but I don't think it is that obvious to an outsider.
 
Very often the key to ethics is simple disclosure.

Hopefully those two companies don't share the same telephone company ;)
 
I think her both her request and your response were appropriate.

There are some web developers who are hired to do either a single or a series of particular tasks, such as an overhaul of a website or changes to certain functionality. Once the task is completed, they don't have a continuing obligation to monitor or change anything until the customer asks them to.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be in the business of managing a company's web presence rather than just doing development. Meaning that you will monitor their search rankings and other site statistics, and make appropriate changes to maximize their exposure as you see fit.

With that sort of ongoing relationship it makes sense that you would not want to manage the web presence of two competing companies. But if you were the first type, just doing development at the direction of the company on a project-by-project basis, I don't think there would be any moral problem with accepting two competing companies as clients.

So I can see how she, thinking you might be the first type of developer, would ask the question, and how you, actually being the second, would politely decline. And while not sending an "Okay, thank you for your response" email might be a tad rude, it's certainly not out of line with what I expect out of most business people these days.
 
I would have been thrilled to have a new lead, and I would have asked her if she had any other friends who needed my work.

My work is what sets my ethics, not some artificial allegiance or religious preference. If you can't serve them because of internal conflicts of interest, well.. that's not the potential clients fault.

Religion.. has nothing to do with it..

Even as the post above me mentions, I wouldn't worry about that relationship being a conflict unless your revenue is based upon some revenue share model and you're considered a contractual partner.
 
Rich, it seems to me that she's honest and forthright as well. She's impressed with your work and contacted you accordingly. Competitors don't want their websites to look identical, and it didn't seem that you were being asked to provide identical services. Furthermore, she openly stated that she was a competitor. So, I don't see an issue with her request on moral or other grounds.

Think of it like engines in planes. Lycoming and Continental both have sold to Piper, Cessna, and Beech at one point or another in history. The engine, much like a website, is necessary for the company to operate. At the same time, a great engine (or website) attached to a crappy airplane (or company) can only do so much. Knowing you to be ethical and not one who would steal content or share inside information from either side, I don't see a problem. 172 and Cherokee - same engine. 737 and A320 - same engine. CRJ and ERJ - same engine.

On the other side of it, I also don't see a problem with you politely declining her request. It is entirely your perogative to do so, and think you were correct in being polite rather than firm. If you weren't comfortable with the request, then you shouldn't go forward with it. Your explanation was polite and rational.

I don't see this as evidence of decline. That's not a company desperately grasping at straws to go after a competitor, merely seeing someone who does good work and soliciting that company. That seems like the old fashioned way to me. The decline would be "Rich, you do great work. We're firing you and having the website managed by some guys in India who are cheaper. Oh but we need you to teach them how you built the site."
 
bluesky74656 said:
I think her both her request and your response were appropriate.

There are some web developers who are hired to do either a single or a series of particular tasks, such as an overhaul of a website or changes to certain functionality. Once the task is completed, they don't have a continuing obligation to monitor or change anything until the customer asks them to.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be in the business of managing a company's web presence rather than just doing development. Meaning that you will monitor their search rankings and other site statistics, and make appropriate changes to maximize their exposure as you see fit.

With that sort of ongoing relationship it makes sense that you would not want to manage the web presence of two competing companies. But if you were the first type, just doing development at the direction of the company on a project-by-project basis, I don't think there would be any moral problem with accepting two competing companies as clients.

So I can see how she, thinking you might be the first type of developer, would ask the question, and how you, actually being the second, would politely decline. And while not sending an "Okay, thank you for your response" email might be a tad rude, it's certainly not out of line with what I expect out of most business people these days.
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I think this spells out the likely situation here very well. If anything, I even give her some credit in going directly to you at first, than going to another developer and telling them "see how that site does things? I want that, too."
 
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They then project this schema onto others, even to the extent of not even considering that there may be others who neither share nor endorse their self-centered world view.
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You have created an ethical rule that runs counter to the operation of a free economy and plain common sense. You then commit the very projection you complain about with a strange schema of your own onto the rest of the world - and find it wanting in "morality" and consider your view non-self-centered.(!)

Let's try out your ethical rule on just two common situations (I can easily write more if you need more confounding examples):

If John Deere sells a tractor to farmer X growing Y, by your ethic, it should not sell tractors to any other farmers growing Y since they compete.

If employee X with has acquired industry specific skill Y that allows them to be employed at good wages in that industry, by your ethic they would be acting immorally if they ever left the first firm that employed them and went to a competing company.

Perhaps you should add some qualifiers to your ethical rule to work around these cases - assuming you agree that they lead to results you didn't expect. Or better yet (in my humble opinion) you should drop that ethical rule in the trash where it belongs.

Lastly, if that all bothers you, why not bind yourself to that one firm with a contractual non-compete clause? Then you can respond to the other firm that you can't do their web site due to contractual restrictions.
 
I don't see anything un-ethical about her e-mail. She is pretty up front with you. She wasn't trying to steal you away from the other client. I don't know that religion has anything to do with it, and I don't know what old fashioned values are.
 
bluesky74656 said:
I think her both her request and your response were appropriate.

There are some web developers who are hired to do either a single or a series of particular tasks, such as an overhaul of a website or changes to certain functionality. Once the task is completed, they don't have a continuing obligation to monitor or change anything until the customer asks them to.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be in the business of managing a company's web presence rather than just doing development. Meaning that you will monitor their search rankings and other site statistics, and make appropriate changes to maximize their exposure as you see fit.

With that sort of ongoing relationship it makes sense that you would not want to manage the web presence of two competing companies. But if you were the first type, just doing development at the direction of the company on a project-by-project basis, I don't think there would be any moral problem with accepting two competing companies as clients.

So I can see how she, thinking you might be the first type of developer, would ask the question, and how you, actually being the second, would politely decline. And while not sending an "Okay, thank you for your response" email might be a tad rude, it's certainly not out of line with what I expect out of most business people these days.
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That actually sums things up quite nicely.

There have been jobs I've done that consisted solely of building or re-building a site, after which I turn it over to the client and don't touch it again. In those cases, I feel no continuing obligation to the client (other than making sure that the site is still up if I happen to also be hosting it).

Managing a company's Web presence, however, is very much like managing a store on behalf of the store's owner. It's not a one-time service, and it's not the same as providing services which either work or don't work (such as telephone or electric utility services, for example, or even basic Web hosting).

In this case, I do manage the Web presence for the company that Gina referred to. It's pretty clear to me that she knows that, based on her twice choosing the present continuous tense in her email:

Gina said:
I noticed that you are currently managing the website for one of our biggest competitors ([REDACTED]) and it looks like you are doing a great job.
Click to expand...


That's why I feel pretty confident in assuming that Gina's attitude was improper and self-centered.

I could, of course, be wrong. Maybe being a person who slings words around for a living makes me hypersensitive to grammatical choices. But it does seem pretty clear to me that she knew of my ongoing management of her competitor's site.

On the other hand, she did disclose; so maybe I'm being a bit rough on her.

-Rich


 
Most companies that work across competitor landscapes use a non disclosure or confidentiality agreement to protect intellectual or proprietary information. You would be surprised who is in bed with whom when you look into some industries. It is not an uncommon practice to see a company buy a product or service from their competitor to fill out an offering they have.

In my market, we sell to competitors who compete, sometimes in the same market, for the same customers. It is the beauty of our capitalist society.
 
Just out of curiosity and so I can understand a bit better....

Why do you say you can't (or won't) do the same thing for both companies?
 
RJM62 said:
To me, this email is emblematic of a slow, but steady decline in morals and ethics in our nation. I attribute this to several factors, one of which is an increasing hostility to anything that hints of "religion" or "old-fashioned" values. I believe that when people stop believing that there is some power greater than themselves, they are at risk of becoming their own "gods," with no obligation to nor concern with anything except their own best interests.

-Rich
Click to expand...

I respect and appreciate your opinion, beliefs, ethics, and concern.
 
I'm in the camp of those who don't see the conflict. In my line of work there are 3rd party test labs who will test for anyone who walks in the door. They have methods in place to ensure confidentiality of their clients' proprietary information. And, of course, we would have a confidentiality agreement in place with the lab before sending any work in their direction. Not an uncommon situation at all.
 
RJM62 said:
That's why I feel pretty confident in assuming that Gina's attitude was improper and self-centered.
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Disagree, and I think you're reading WAY too much into this e-mail. Translating it into some kind of sign that our society's morals are eroding? Is the sky falling too?

I don't see the harm in her approaching you about working on her website. After all, she has no idea what type of relationship you have with the other company. Website developers typically are 3rd party and generally not involved with trade secrets or other proprietary information for their customers.

And remember you have thousands of competitors who would be more than happy to work on her website.
 
dell30rb said:
Disagree, and I think you're reading WAY too much into this e-mail. Translating it into some kind of sign that our society's morals are eroding? Is the sky falling too?

I don't see the harm in her approaching you about working on her website. After all, she has no idea what type of relationship you have with the other company. Website developers typically are 3rd party and generally not involved with trade secrets or other proprietary information for their customers.

And remember you have thousands of competitors who would be more than happy to work on her website.
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I fully agree with this.
 
RJM62 said:
That actually sums things up quite nicely.

There have been jobs I've done that consisted solely of building or re-building a site, after which I turn it over to the client and don't touch it again. In those cases, I feel no continuing obligation to the client (other than making sure that the site is still up if I happen to also be hosting it).

Managing a company's Web presence, however, is very much like managing a store on behalf of the store's owner. It's not a one-time service, and it's not the same as providing services which either work or don't work (such as telephone or electric utility services, for example, or even basic Web hosting).

In this case, I do manage the Web presence for the company that Gina referred to. It's pretty clear to me that she knows that, based on her twice choosing the present continuous tense in her email:



That's why I feel pretty confident in assuming that Gina's attitude was improper and self-centered.

I could, of course, be wrong. Maybe being a person who slings words around for a living makes me hypersensitive to grammatical choices. But it does seem pretty clear to me that she knew of my ongoing management of her competitor's site.

On the other hand, she did disclose; so maybe I'm being a bit rough on her.

-Rich
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It certain wasn't evident to me that you manage the web presence vs website. I think you're being much too hard on her. The basic formula of building and maintaining a website is more or less the same, so I don't see any issues with building and maintaining as such.

The web presense one gets to be trickier and I can see there being a potential conflict of interest there, since that does get to be more like a shopkeeper and you've got more direct involvement with the company's failure or success rather than simply supplying a product. I think it could be handled if you wanted to, but I can respect just wanting to avoid it entirely.
 
Rich, I think it depends on the size of the industry how many players are in that particular industry and how close in the market the competitors are ie is it a coke / Pepsi type competition or is it Chevy, Toyota, Kia, Honda, Dodge, Nissan Ford kind of competition.

I think the woman was upfront and honest and certainly complementary of you. I might have actually gone one step further in your email to her and that would be to refer her to one of your colleagues who does what you do.
 
Many business consulting companies like Deloitte would not exist if they couldn't work closely with competitors. Disclosure of business relationships and non-disclosure agreements make this relationship work. Most clients understand this and generally will not have a problem with that.

On the other hand, if your existing client hired you because they have "exclusive" use of you in their industry, that's a different story. Hopefully you're charging them accordingly for that exclusivity.

In your original situation, you could have at least referred them to someone else in your industry that you trust. That would have built goodwill with the potential customer, as well as someone else who might throw work to you when the situation warrants it.
 
While I understand your perception of an ethics problem, I don't think there is one...
Unless you are being paid for exclusivity, or are getting $$$ based on performance of the site, I'd think you should be free to sell your services anywhere.
 
If I were your customer I would appreciate you not helping my direct competitor with the same services that I am paying you for. :D Our website is hosted by Forddirect, they host a ton of Ford dealer websites, we have control over the way it looks and how it works, but basically they are pretty similar to others in the area. BUT, we all knew that when we signed up with them. :D
 
I am glad you are doing so well that you can afford to turn down business. I definitely cannot say that about my HVAC business. It has steadily sucked, oops, declined since 2009! Maybe you can recommend one of your competitors to her.
 
EdFred said:
Just out of curiosity and so I can understand a bit better....

Why do you say you can't (or won't) do the same thing for both companies?
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Well, there are a lot of reasons; but the main ones are:

1. Part of the job is to try to keep the company's site ranking first on Google and other search engines. You can't do that for two clients in the same area.

2. Another part of the job is monitoring traffic and conversion, which means having a certain amount of access to privileged sales information.

3. Properly managing a company's Web presence requires knowing about upcoming sales and promotions in advance, and also having some confidential knowledge about the company's future plans in general.

-Rich
 
AdamZ said:
Rich, I think it depends on the size of the industry how many players are in that particular industry and how close in the market the competitors are ie is it a coke / Pepsi type competition or is it Chevy, Toyota, Kia, Honda, Dodge, Nissan Ford kind of competition.

I think the woman was upfront and honest and certainly complementary of you. I might have actually gone one step further in your email to her and that would be to refer her to one of your colleagues who does what you do.
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Adam, I actually wanted to give her a referral. The problem is that only one member of my former cohort of trusted colleagues is ( 1 ) still alive, and ( B ) accepting new clients -- and only reluctantly, at that.

I did send him an email, though, asking if he's interested. If so, I'll pass his name on to Gina.

-Rich
 
RV10flyer said:
I am glad you are doing so well that you can afford to turn down business. I definitely cannot say that about my HVAC business. It has steadily sucked, oops, declined since 2009! Maybe you can recommend one of your competitors to her.
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I wish that were the case...

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Well, there are a lot of reasons; but the main ones are:

1. Part of the job is to try to keep the company's site ranking first on Google and other search engines. You can't do that for two clients in the same area.

2. Another part of the job is monitoring traffic and conversion, which means having a certain amount of access to privileged sales information.

3. Properly managing a company's Web presence requires knowing about upcoming sales and promotions in advance, and also having some confidential knowledge about the company's future plans in general.

-Rich
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Rich,

This is the whole purpose behind the non-disclosure element of these relationships. The Google ranking as you know is influenced by a bunch of different factors that typically are impacted by the content. If the two companies have different e marketing strategies, it will impact where they end up in the page hit criteria part of the ranking.

Web developers for the business I work for (a global, multi-billion dollar business) routinely work for our competitors. Many of these service providers work this way. All of them are also aware of the sales strategies, timing and strategic direction of our business. We protect ourselves under CDAs and non-disclosure agreements. We never had a problem with our confidential information being shared. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but the financial and credibility risk for these partners is too high for them to take a chance.

Maybe it is different in the smaller business environment, but with the impact Sarbanes-Oxyley has had on the public businesses, I would find it hard to believe smaller privately owned businesses with aspirations of going public aren't trying to function this way.

It sounds like you have the opportunity to show your business ethics to your clients by making them aware of areas of discussions that may violate them.
 
RJM62 said:
Well, there are a lot of reasons; but the main ones are:

1. Part of the job is to try to keep the company's site ranking first on Google and other search engines. You can't do that for two clients in the same area.

2. Another part of the job is monitoring traffic and conversion, which means having a certain amount of access to privileged sales information.

3. Properly managing a company's Web presence requires knowing about upcoming sales and promotions in advance, and also having some confidential knowledge about the company's future plans in general.

-Rich
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We deal with the second part of #2 and #3 and we just don't tell company A what company B is doing, or vice versa, and we've been doing that for years. We haven't had any issue, and both A and B know we work with the other.

But yeah #1 is a deal breaker. Even so, I don't see it being an ethical problem with her asking. Maybe your contract is up at the end of the month, and she gets lucky with her timing, or maybe a number of other reasons could allow for you to take her on as a client. It's like dealing with ATC, you don't get if you don't ask.
 
RJM62 said:
Well, there are a lot of reasons; but the main ones are:

1. Part of the job is to try to keep the company's site ranking first on Google and other search engines. You can't do that for two clients in the same area.

2. Another part of the job is monitoring traffic and conversion, which means having a certain amount of access to privileged sales information.

3. Properly managing a company's Web presence requires knowing about upcoming sales and promotions in advance, and also having some confidential knowledge about the company's future plans in general.

-Rich
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If you had articulated those specific reasons to the woman when you declined to accept her business then you wouldn't have needed to start this thread. None of those reasons would have occurred to me without a bit of thought, and likely not to her, either. And I've been programming since 1973. But I have no experience in web development and marketing.

I find "Ethics" to be a useless word because I never know what people mean when they use it when they are deciding how to act or react to any given situation. When pressed, as you have been, you eventually articulated the rationale by identifying an objective set of harms that would or might occur if you followed through with accepting her business. An appeal to religion was not needed.

Lastly, if I made the claim that more people are acting "ethically" than ever before - rather than declining - you'd expect me to explain my definition of the term and provide plenty of supporting facts and not a single anecdote, right?
 
Marauder said:
Rich,

This is the whole purpose behind the non-disclosure element of these relationships. The Google ranking as you know is influenced by a bunch of different factors that typically are impacted by the content. If the two companies have different e marketing strategies, it will impact where they end up in the page hit criteria part of the ranking.

Web developers for the business I work for (a global, multi-billion dollar business) routinely work for our competitors. Many of these service providers work this way. All of them are also aware of the sales strategies, timing and strategic direction of our business. We protect ourselves under CDAs and non-disclosure agreements. We never had a problem with our confidential information being shared. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but the financial and credibility risk for these partners is too high for them to take a chance.

Maybe it is different in the smaller business environment, but with the impact Sarbanes-Oxyley has had on the public businesses, I would find it hard to believe smaller privately owned businesses with aspirations of going public aren't trying to function this way.

It sounds like you have the opportunity to show your business ethics to your clients by making them aware of areas of discussions that may violate them.
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That's possible.

I'm getting the impression that maybe my ex was right when she said I was too anal...

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Well, there are a lot of reasons; but the main ones are:

1. Part of the job is to try to keep the company's site ranking first on Google and other search engines. You can't do that for two clients in the same area.

2. Another part of the job is monitoring traffic and conversion, which means having a certain amount of access to privileged sales information.

3. Properly managing a company's Web presence requires knowing about upcoming sales and promotions in advance, and also having some confidential knowledge about the company's future plans in general.

-Rich
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I was an associate professor of business for a major Colorado college a few years back, and often taught the ethics course. Put me in the school of thought that sees no problem with your contract work on two clients.

1. The company you currently do development work for is in a market where there is already competition. Only a part of your income is derived from a secondary(albeit important) part of their marketing. You are not responsible for their direct product offering, or negotiate pricing, or discounts, or other elements of the corp contract decisions.

2. Your ability to segment the information you have access to as a contractor from your other clients is the mark of a professional. If Gina had come out and asked you for, or intimated that she wanted inside information in return for your services you would have a case. She didn't, and hasn't, and wants your talent that she expressed admiration for. Business is business.

3. As with #2, you will present the current customer with your best effort, with the knowledge they share, and will at all times keep that knowledge confidential. If you decide to take on Gina as a client, you would enforce a non-disclosure clause with each client.

I work with our competitors and our partners who know a great deal about many things inside each other's company. We all have NDAs and we do NOT share company secrets with our competitors. The networking industry is rather small when you get down to the pointy end, and anyone caught squealing out of school is a pariah, and won't ever leave their current employer.

BTW, your theological convictions about origins of a religious foundation in this country are not well founded. Many if not most of the founders were deists(which does not preclude a supreme being) with a healthy respect for the abilities of man to overcome their challenges. That is one of the reasons we have such a strong theme of mankind in the constitution and no mention of god, except for the 'nature's god' (mommy and daddy)comment in the declaration.

Many of the founders were also Mason's who have no direct correlation with any church, but welcome all members of any non-violent organization. Sadly, several western leaning church organized religions have serious problems with Free-masonry, often and usually without any foundation for such problems.

For further investigation on this, should you no doubt find offensive, what you want to look up is the 'Apotheosis of Washington'. A quite literal interpretation of the first president being elevated to the humanitarian equivalent of god-hood. You'll never guess where it can be found. Further, some research into the origins of the Washington monument, and Jefferson, and the famous origins of the scientist and Freemason James Smithson(Smithsonian institute) are in order. Oh sure, there were believers along the way, and they played a part in many of the rituals of early US developments, but by and large, the founders were sick to death(sometimes literally) of the infighting of the Church of England and would brook no more regal interference in their new colonies.
 
We are pilots..most are anal with a huge ego. That is what my wife says too.
 
Old school NH. Nothing wrong with working with competitors. This is a case of misplaced loyalty. Your client would fire you in a nanosecond if they could find someone else to do the job cheaper, and they will someday.
 
Old School so be it. If one or the other clients thinks Rich favored one or the otehr or stole components, he will lose far more that his service fee in attorney's fees.

America is SOooo broken. I posted about my getting sent to collection by Enterprise of N. Ilinois for the car I never took. So, at JVL on Friday I used Hertz. Today I got an automated call that I had the car for five days, what were my intentions.....it appears that the FBO, may have never called that I had returned the car...and the car is gone. I did manage to find the person, though.

The business model here, is "get the client's financial information and soak 'em, send 'em into collection".

So, now, I will simply do the next most economical option- leave a beater everywhere I go.

I used to think American business was the bedrock of our culture. Not so. It also is broken.
 
Marauder said:
Most companies that work across competitor landscapes use a non disclosure or confidentiality agreement to protect intellectual or proprietary information. You would be surprised who is in bed with whom when you look into some industries. It is not an uncommon practice to see a company buy a product or service from their competitor to fill out an offering they have.

In my market, we sell to competitors who compete, sometimes in the same market, for the same customers. It is the beauty of our capitalist society.
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Good points................

In the racing industry the concept of serving only (one) customer with a chassis, or motor or any other component on their car is suicide....

I spent a great deal of time perfecting a winning product.... They recognize it and and buy into the deal.. Then 20 other teams want the same, or better product to compete with on Sunday. If I would only sell the the first racing team, and they lose a race for whatever reason, my business is headed down the tubes until I create another "cutting edge" product.

By selling to multiple teams I get additional revenue, a vast amount of product feedback and the ability to improve my position in the market.. If the OP had a superior product and is comfortable with being sole source to his customer, and more importantly, can sleep well at night with the assurance that the only one customer will fund his business model with continued income, then is say go for it..... Putting all your eggs in ONE basket is a double edged sword for sure....:hairraise:.....IMHO.
 
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