Small businesses hold the global supply chain together..
When the pandemic began, you started working from home. Spending so much time there, you realized you needed a new couch—your old one was good enough for a Friday night movie and a bag of chips, but when you were spending every night there, you started noticing the sags and stains. So you looked at a bunch of websites, found a couch you liked, and ordered it. It looked so stylish! Just the refresh your living room needed.
Then you got the email saying the order was delayed for a couple of weeks because of supply chain issues. Okay, no problem. Two weeks was no big deal.
Then another email. And another. In the end, it took nearly six months for that stylish couch to arrive. In the meantime, you also realized you needed a new lamp, a bookshelf big enough to hold all the novels you’d read during quarantine, an updated laptop… and there were similar delays with everything. Your bike shop had an eight-month waiting list for a new three-speed. And your favorite laundry detergent was suddenly nowhere to be found, so you had to switch brands.
What on earth was going on?
COVID-19 broke the global supply chain.
Even though your new couch was being made nearby, the manufacturer used textiles from Bangladesh and couch springs from China, which were both stuck on a boat somewhere far away. Your lamp’s metal parts were from Korea where plants were closed, your bike was made in a factory in Denmark that used parts that were stuck in Vietnam because of a shipping container shortage… you get the idea.
A few supply chain problems added up to one big mess. COVID-19 disrupted production all over the world, with illness outbreaks and safety restrictions leading to factory shutdowns and staff shortages. Those same staff shortages affected global shipping, meaning that ports were clogged with goods they couldn’t move, resulting in warehouse backlogs and shortages everywhere. Just-in-time manufacturing, an approach that relies on super-accurate market forecasting, was suddenly thrown off in drastic ways. Meanwhile, businesses that were unprepared for the huge impacts of these sudden changes found themselves struggling to stay afloat, and many failed, which disrupted things even further for those that remained.
Some elements of this situation have stabilized, but the ongoing war in Ukraine, the evolving Israel–Hamas war, and other global instabilities have continued to impact the global supply chain, along with increasing impacts of climate change on everything from rail transport to fuel prices.
The new normal is unpredictability.
Bear in mind that on top of global supply chain issues, governments and consumers are also putting ever-increasing pressures on businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and embrace sustainability. Along with that, we’re seeing a fresh emphasis on buying local, and consumers want basically instant delivery.
Big companies are resetting supply chains in innovative ways.
This deep-dive article from EY says we’re experiencing a “great supply chain reset.” Businesses are coming up with entirely new models for products, such as refurbishment, recycling and other approaches that reduce the need for new materials. They’re placing a greater focus on sustainability and circularity, making products engineered for durability with recyclable and replaceable parts. They’re nearshoring, which means locating manufacturing in places closer to home. They’re using GenAI and other technology to add efficiencies and tight monitoring to their supply chain. And they’re creating tighter collaborative relationships with a wider range of suppliers.
Small businesses are the answer to supply chain diversification.
At B2BeeMatch, we’re seeing this supply chain reset from the perspective of small and medium businesses (SMBs). Right now, governments and major industries are the strongest voices in the conversation on supply chain issues, but we believe that SMBs should be at the heart of it.
Why is that? Well, small businesses are well placed to help with the supply chain diversification that’s going on right now. We’re skilled at being agile and flexible, pivoting quickly as new situations arise, and tackling challenges with innovation and creativity. According to Forbes, we have a lot to teach big businesses! Most small businesses didn’t have a huge cushion to fall back on in case of emergency, so if we’ve managed to stay in business through all the crises of the last few years, we’ve proved our resilience.
Another reason why small businesses are a crucial part of the supply chain conversation is that many small businesses provide specialized services and focus on technological innovation. The conversation often focuses heavily on products, but products can’t exist or get to consumers without the support of specialized services and tech. This makes small businesses key to supply chain diversification.
B2BeeMatch connects big companies and small businesses.
At B2BeeMatch, we believe strongly in the power of small businesses to help build a better world. That’s why we’re leveraging technological innovation to connect SMBs and help them succeed. Our AI-driven lead generation is more efficient for small businesses than traditional business networking, and that makes us part of the solution—essentially, we help companies discover each other and close supply chain gaps faster, easier, and more economically than ever before.
As part of our focus on small business, we’ve become incredibly useful for big companies, too. When big companies rely on the same suppliers and vendors over and over again and don’t diversify, they can end up being more vulnerable to supply chain issues, scrambling to find other companies to fill their needs when something goes wrong. Luckily, B2BeeMatch is here to help big companies connect with small businesses that can step up quickly and efficiently when they’re needed most!
We know we won’t solve the supply chain problem by ourselves. In fact, we believe that small businesses should use every platform at their disposal to create success, whether that’s Google, Amazon, Facebook, or B2BeeMatch. The whole point is that it’s not up to one business or one platform to fix the broken global supply chain. We’re all in it together. And we can all help each other grow and succeed by connecting and working together.