Delivering needed cash; UPS, FedEx and DHL ship packages all over the world.
Morris Mays – inventor by night, county employee by day – excused himself to change into the uniform he said he sometimes dons to sell the toothbrush sterilization system he created.
Emerging in a sharply pressed black tuxedo he asked: "Do you get it? I'm dressed to kill."
If Mays' germ-killing outfit is a bit unexpected, so is the source of funding that's helped him launch his invention: package shipper DHL.
As logistics giants FedEx, UPS and DHL battle for small business clients, they are rolling out services that have little to do with hauling packages from Point A to Point Z.
FedEx, for instance, has quietly become the nation's second-largest producer of signs and banners, and it's about to unveil a service aimed at helping entrepreneurs get into the direct-mail marketing industry. DHL has launched a small-business magazine and is funding micro-enterprise efforts such as Mays'. And UPS has become one of the top providers of Small Business Administration-backed loans in the country.
There's no secret why the trio, which built their reputations in corporate mailrooms, are increasingly wooing mom-and-pop shops. Of the 23 million businesses in the country, 98 percent are small enterprises, according to the SBA. And 97 percent of all exporters are small ventures.
"It's the fastest growing piece of the economy both domestically and internationally," said Joe Curtis, vice president of channel sales and small business at DHL. "And we believe it's an underserved market."
The clearest manifestation of the trio's eagerness to hook small ventures is the retail outlets that are springing up.
UPS started the trend when it bought Mailboxes Etc. about five years ago and has since expanded those stores and its branded outlets to 23,700 locations. It estimates that small businesses account for 75 percent of its package deliveries.
FedEx bought Kinko's for $2.4 billion in 2003; now it has almost 10,000 retail sites and plans to add 2,000 more over the next five years. DHL has about 5,000 service centers, most of which are independently operated. But it, too, has plans to expand.
The explosion of shipper-powered copy shops is a direct result of the changing face of entrepreneurship, said Brian Philips, FedEx Kinko's chief operating officer.
"As more people telecommute and establish home offices, more people need a lot of the products and services … that you and I take for granted," he said. If your corporate office needed a shipper, then your home office needs industrial printing services, IT technicians and marketing help.
"Our goal is to become the back office for small businesses and the branch office for medium and large companies," Philips said.
Like many business owners, Ramiro Cardenas' only exposure to UPS was when the men in the brown uniforms would ring his doorbell. But when Cardenas started hunting for a loan to expand his food brokerage business, colleagues kept telling him to check out UPS Capital – the company's banking arm.
About two months ago, UPS lent him about 75 percent of the money he needed to purchase Zales Meat Distributors & Discount in Hialeah, Fla.
Not only did UPS Capital lend him the money, but UPS staff helped perform a comprehensive audit and detailed analysis of the business before closing the deal.
"Without exaggerating, I would say they reviewed more than 10,000 pages worth of documents. They saw things that my lawyers and CPA haven't ever looked at," Cardenas said. "They're more than a bank; they're a partner."
