Staples Names Sen. John Kerry Small Business Champion of the Year

Staples Names Sen. John Kerry Small Business Champion of the Year

Article by Kari Larson

This week, Framingham, Mass.-based Staples Inc. honored Sen. John Kerry [D-Mass.] with their Small Business Champion of the Year award for his 23 years of service in the U.S. Senate on behalf of America’s 27 million small-business owners — including Massachusetts’ 650,000 small businesses. Kerry chairs the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

“I’m deeply honored to receive this award from Staples,” said Kerry. “I’m working everyday in Washington to do just what we ought to do: level the playing field for small businesses, and foster innovation and entrepreneurship — from Brighton to Boston, and from Salem to Springfield.”

Staples, which began as a start-up in Brighton, Mass., in 1986 with 42 employees, used the Small Business Investment Company [SBIC] program, managed by the Small Business Administration [SBA], to fund its initial expansion. That investment helped spur Staples’ growth to become one of the largest office products suppliers in the world.

“Staples is a tremendous small-business success story,” Kerry noted, “demonstrating the power of a public-private partnership that uses a federal small-business financing program to bolster the good idea and hard work of an entrepreneur.”

Sen. Kerry was recognized for his leadership efforts to get several small-business initiatives signed into law last year. Among his achievements: Winning legislation to increase funding for core small-business programs; expand energy efficiency resources; secure permanent funding for successful Women’s Business Centers; e.g., the Center for Women & Enterprise, in Boston, Worcester and Providence, R.I.; increase funding for small firms to develop military projects; and restore transparency to the Transportation Security Administration’s contracting process. Presenting the award on behalf of Staples was Mike Miles, company president and chief operating officer.

This year, Kerry will continue to work on behalf of Massachusetts small businesses and entrepreneurs around the country by fighting to reduce health-care costs, increase access to capital, foster green technologies, and boost energy efficiency. He also aims to expand access to federal contracts – especially for underserved communities, including women, minorities and veterans.

SOURCES: Staples Inc., U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

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Tags: American Express, Boston, Brighton, business, capital, Center for Women & Enterprise, contract, contracting, efficiency, energy, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, federal, financing, Framingham, funding, green, health care, initiative, innovation, innovative, John Kerry, legislation, Massachusetts, Mike Miles, military, minorities, office products, OPEN, partnership, Providence, public-private, Rhode Island, Salem, SBA, SBIC, small business, Small Business Administration, Small Business Investment Company, Springfield, Staples, start-up, startup, supplier, technologies, technology, transparency, Transportation Security Administration, TSA, underserved, U.S. Senate, veterans, women, Women’s Business Centers, Worcester

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? 2008 Kari Larson. All rights reserved.

Question by : Can Small Business get ISO 9001 Certified?
The pressure comes from industries like automotive, medical and environmental for their subcontractors to become registered. The customer to such small companies adds to the dilemma by requesting certification as a token of trust and reliability. These days it just seems like a double whammy.

A small business as understood by department of commerce is one that employs less than 500 people. That means a Machine shop to Sheet metal manufacturing all come under the umbrella of Small Business. For a relatively bigger organization it becomes easily justifiable to get certification and seems a viable option since most of the companies recover their investment in 3 years (studies from McGraw Hill and Dun & Bradstreet) but for a machine shop which does the contract and specialty work for one of these bigger companies is hard since their main product/service is that machine which they have invested in. With few resources, fewer incentives and inconsistent contracts pouring in, smaller companies have tough time justifying the cost and effort for registration.

This equipped with the common knowledge that it takes about $ 10,000-$ 25,000 approximately to get certified and retain certification in subsequent years. These figures are all dependent on the size of company, number of employees they have and number of factors but largely the size of company. Since a small company has few employees and few operations, its quality process will be a lot simpler and less expensive. The result of registration is felt more in a small company due to fact that its resources are more streamlined.

As a small company it is difficult to run business with competition coming from a lot of manufacturing gone to developing countries. This along with the financial instability, limited resources & manpower, training requirement, software upgrades makes registration an unattainable dream. Although there are a lot of obstacles in path to get registration for small organizations, there is a plethora of resource to achieve the goal. Since the limited number of resource is the biggest challenge getting external help is viable option but choosing a consultant with knowledge and understanding of your requirement is a critical step.

Just like the first step to shed the extra pounds is the most critical so is this step but once an organization is committed to follow the path all the obstacles become learning curve and all the myths debunked.

Best answer:

Answer by Synchronous
The ISO 9000 standards are a set of standards, technical specifications, technical reports, manuals and web-based quality management. There are about 25 documents in the collection in conjunction with new or revised documents are being developed on an ongoing basis.

What do you think? Answer below!