Our new location gets a lot more visibility than our old building.  We’ve had walk-in visitors who have never stopped in, but the convenience compelled them to satisfy a curiosity.  As a result, we’ve had the pleasure of working with many businesses we might not have had contact with by any other means.   There was a time last year when I wondered if we would ever find a location that would meet our needs.  We had searched high and low and found nothing close to this same area in which we have remained for over nine years.   Finally a space did open up that was large enough and close enough that we would not have to move but a few blocks from our earlier location area for the past eight years.

I considered my prayers answered!  However, some of our clients voiced a concern for me.  They said, “DJ, don’t you know that your competitor’s building is down the street from you?  Aren’t you worried you will lose business to your competition?” We chose to move into our wonderful new building knowing that it would be very close to what many people consider to be our competitor.  There are only two well known exhibit houses in our city, so a rivalry is sometimes perceived where there really is none, at least on our part.  This brings up a good point about competitive awareness and concerns.  You should always know what your competitor is doing, but do not be obsessed with your competition.  If you are providing a success rate for your clients and your clients perceive a real value from doing business with you, then there will be no concern about them leaving to go to your competition.  The way I look at it is if our prospect or client leaves our building and passes our competitor and decides to visit our competition, then we did not do our job well enough to keep that prospect or client happy.  It challenges us as a company to go above and beyond our clients’ expectations to be the best we can at all times.  If we do our job well, then everyone wins.