Small Dog Electronics has launched a promotion in our retail stores to funnel donations to women’s shelters in each of the communities where we operate. With several participating brands we will make a donation for each sale to the local shelter. Why would we do this? Yes, we have an interest in combating domestic violence and want our employees to be safe at work or home but we have a commercial and philosophical reason too. As you may know, the margins on our products is very low, in many cases below 10% and you have a wide variety of places to buy these same products. It is difficult for us to compete with big box stores that use Apple products as “loss leaders” by discounting to below cost or online resellers that do not charge sales tax. While many companies will simply suck it up and discount their products to compete, we have decided upon a different direction.
While we cannot compete solely on the basis of price, Small Dog Electronics wants to give you many reasons to choose to buy your next Mac or iPad from us. One way we can effectively compete is through community involvement. Instead of discounting the products we will make these donations to leverage our “money machine” to help the communities where we live. While we have our on-going customer-driven charitable contributions program where we match donations, we feel that the giving generated by these special promotions not only raises awareness about important issues but also lets our customers and our company make a real difference. I hope you agree!