Tuesday, Sharon McLoone, blogger for Washington Post’s Small Business blog, posted a profile on our 2006 Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award winner SewWhat?Inc. Here at Dell, we know Megan and Adam Duckett’s story very well and stay in touch regularly on how their business is going and how Dell can help them be successful.

I did pick up a few tips from the story that I wasn’t aware of in terms of what they are doing to stay ahead in today’s tough economy. I thought you might be able apply these ideas to your own business. Congratulations SewWhat? for your continued success and innovative business practices.

New Sales Division: RentWhat?Inc. As reported by Sharon, they are “…rolling out a new rental division, enabling customers to buy products for the short-term rather than requiring them to make purchases flat-out.”

Continuing Education: From the Post: “SewWhat? also has capitalized on state programs like the Small Manufacturers Advantage initiative that's run by California Manufacturing Technology Consulting, a private, non-profit consulting firm that receives federal funding from the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program. MEP has offices in every state, but the program's funding is perennially in jeopardy. The program helps manufacturers with less than $15 million in annual revenue become more efficient. ‘They've really helped train us on how to be more efficient on the manufacturing floor," said Duckett. ‘We've learned things we never would have without going to school for shop floor manufacturing...and I went to the school of hard knocks.’”