by Margaret Heffernan - Thursday, 6th September 2007

Competitors. Every VC and bank manager will ask you who your competitors are.

If you say you have none, they’ll think you don’t know your market – or are proposing to enter a market no one else in their right mind wants.

Most entrepreneurs identify a few competitors and construct self-vindicating scenarios that prove that they will triumph, leaving their competitor bloodied, bowed and broke.

But what happens when the competitor is Tesco? Isn’t that the point at which sane adults turn and run away screaming?

Not if you are Tish and Andy Jefferies.

Their Somerset shop – Farrington’s – is just down the road from a Tesco and offers much the same stuff: meat, milk, bananas, carrots, cheese, jam, bread, easy parking, loyalty cards, a café.

Ask them how their prices compare to Tesco’s and they don’t know. They don’t send in invisible shoppers, they don’t even subscribe to retail data that would tell them.

They don’t know Tesco’s prices because they don’t care. Are they out of their minds?

Far from it. Andy and Tish have beaten all their revenue projections and won awards because they don’t compete on price.

They compete on experience. From the baby barn where customers see and touch calves, lambs, guinea pigs and rabbits, to the milking parlour where children see where milk comes from.

“There are things we can do here you can’t do at a supermarket,” says Andy.

“Look at the calves, the milking. Some people don’t know that a milk cow has to have a calf every year. That’s what it’s all about, not price. It’s about environment and service.”

Andy’s right, of course: for all its might, Tesco can’t compete with this.

Both companies claim – and, I think, demonstrate – that they understand the customer in everything they do.

But customers are complex and want more than one thing. Tesco might win on value – but Farrington’s wins on values. Farrington’s commitment to local producers makes people feel good.

They like knowing which farm their meat came from, that their food contains no fillers or preservatives.

They like supporting local farmers; it may be as close to farming as some shoppers ever get.

They don’t compete on wholesale prices either.

“We just buy at the price the farmer thinks is fair, and sell at a price we think is fair. If it sells, we keep doing it, and if it doesn’t, we tell the farmer it’s too expensive. You don’t have to screw the farmer.”

So shopping at Farrington’s becomes even more than an experience. It becomes a cause.

Consistent with the emphasis on local produce is a big emphasis on customer service – not the kind that reeks of corporate training but the innate kind that can’t easily be taught.

Starting with five employees, they now have 45.

On salaries, they refuse to compete. Neither Tish nor Andy knows how their pay compares to Tesco’s and they haven’t hired any staff from there.

Hiring and training their own kind of people is all part of the shop’s consistent brand of authenticity.

“The whole team knows that customers are the most important thing in the shop,” says Tish. One of those customers is the personnel manager of another local supermarket who brings her staff in to see what real service looks like.

Of course, Farrington’s can’t compete with Tesco’s on scale. Tesco takes more per minute than Farrington’s took on its best day of business.

But they do compete for the money in our pockets. Tesco’s tills now take 12.5p of every pound spent in Britain in the markets in which it competes – and CEO Terry Leahy says he’s after the other 87.5p.

That means he wants, in effect, to see shops like Farrington’s put out of business.

I don’t think he’ll succeed. Leahy aims to get more of our money by building bigger stores selling more products – monolithic shops for monolithic customers.

So Farrington’s Farm Shop does what entrepreneurs must do: offer real choice and genuine alternatives.

The Jefferies have done what smart businesspeople do the world over: they’ve refused to let the competitive landscape be defined by their competitor.

They know that if they tried to compete with Tesco on price, they’d be slaughtered. They’ve defined their own market and gone after it with obsessive devotion.

Instead of playing the competitor’s game, they chose their own – one they can win on their own terms.

And they have one other secret weapon: location.

Far from putting them out of business, the arrival of Tesco’s drives more traffic past their cow signage every day.

What I love about Farrington’s isn’t just the food and the service. Competitive strategies like theirs keep quality businesses alive.

Tags: andy jefferies, competitor, tesco, local supermarket, customer service, farringtons,