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Every business has some kind of supplier or vendor. It could be a supplier of raw materials; it could be a supplier of ideas or training. For the purposes of this post, a supplier or vendor is any company that you buy from in order to do business – auto manufacturers will have parts suppliers while coaches might have a "supplier" from whom they bought their domain name and web hosting.

So here’s the conundrum: Do you use one supplier or many? There are advantages and disadvantages to both decisions, and in today’s post (and the one that will follow later this week) we’ll explore this question.

Today, let’s explore the idea of having just one supplier.

With just one supplier, you can generally build a fairly solid relationship. Since you give them 100% of your business, they won’t be hounding you for more of your business and instead you can focus on maintaining and improving the relationship. As well, your supplier will probably be open to working with you to improve the production and delivery of the product you’re buying from them. In many cases, you might also have enough buying power by putting all of your eggs in one basket to get lower prices.

Having one supplier is particularly advantageous when you require products or services that are exacting in some way. With multiple providers, you might get some variance but with one provider you are able to minimize the variance. I’ve seen this in graphic designers, writers, painters, shinglers, and numerous manufacturing scenarios. Whenever you have a situation where variance (in quality, style, or design, for example) will become noticeable, you will probably want just one provider.

There is a disadvantage, too: The supplier could go away and then you’d have to start at zero. Sometimes the supplier might disappear simply because they’ve gone out of business, or sometimes they might decide to stop working with you because it’s no longer profitable (which can happen if you work less on improving the relationship and more on negotiating discounts!).

If you have one supplier, and you only need one supplier, here is how you can mitigate the risk: If appropriate, keep a small stockpile on hand just in case the supplier can’t deliver on time for whatever reason. And, work with your supplier and view that relationship as a mutually beneficial, collaborative relationship. In a way, they are not that different than your employees and they require just as much investment in training and "care" that you would give to an employee.

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