The end of Small Business Support Niche

Many have been hinting for quite some time that the end of the SPF is near. But nothing strikes quite so literally when you get to see it and touch it. Geek Squad has been on the forefront of this carnage with VW bugs around town, something that many foolishly dismissed as a failure that no business would ever trust. Go figure, they have money to advertise – I got this flyer in the mail today along with a ton of SMB Nation spam:

But is this just Best Buy’s territory? My local Staples seems to disagree as they too have a banner right as you enter the store:

I even have a picture of a Scion in front of Circuit City offering a similar service.

I can sense your mouse sliding towards that bright red X in the corner of the window, after all, you’ve heard this story before. Best Buy sucked, sucks and will suck forever! Right?

Wrong.

As much as this may have been a pluge by Best Buy into differentiating themselves as a full service retailer, it has taken on larger proportions. What may have been a quick stunt for them now has others following suit and the snowball grows as it rolls downhill. Would Staples, who likely has a tiny share of the market, love to drop their service? Absolutely. But they won’t because then how do they compete with Best Buy? Same for Circuit City and everyone else.

Are these companies better than your average IT computer consultant? Maybe, maybe not. That however is not the point. The point is that these businesses now exist, for the long term, and are diluting the marketplace with affordable offerings. Do they have to be better to crush the SPFs? I do not believe so, they just have to raise a question in the mind of the consumer.

Read the Vista (writing) on the wall here, computer maintenance and network buildout are not what they used to be and with simpler and more reliable applications an entire industry will cease to have its purpose. Yes, people will always have computer problems, but will those problems be enough to justify $50–100 an hour, and will you have enough billable hours in a week to justify not having a job?