Welcome!

We are a group of business people who want to grow our businesses by creating joint marketing and thereby getting economies of scale so we can drive down our expenses. This is a NOT-FOR-PROFIT group. We don't charge for meetings. We don't make money off of group members. We benefit by meeting others who want to increase market share and are willing to work together to drive down costs through joint marketing projects.

For example, by sharing the back side of a piece that is mailed, each person can share the cost of production and the cost of mailing and thereby spend half of what it would cost them to get their piece to the door as a solo business. Like printing costs, advertising in newspapers and magazines is much cheaper when bought by the full page or half page, and the newspaper/magazine doesn't care if the ad space is broken into 2 or 3 pieces. This allows each of the businesses to reduce their cost and thereby increase the amount of marketing that can be purchased for the same amount of money.

Some businesses GROW in rough economic times. Usually it is by taking advantage of the fact that competitors have stopped or reduced their marketing to lower costs. Through joint marketing, you can expand your scope and increase eyeballs to your business, thus increasing your market share!!

There is no obligation within the group, only opportunity. Usually it works as follows. Someone decides that they want to produce a piece of marketing (e.g., 30,000 inserts in one of the local newspapers). The size of the piece (e.g., 8.5x11, 11x17, multi-page), cost of the insert, etc. is put before the group. Anyone who wants to be considered for inclusion can express the interest. No one makes ANY profit on this. The goal is to share the costs, thereby increasing production size and scope and obtain economies of scale.

ECONOMIES OF SCALE: Did you know?
- It is nearly as cheap (within a penny) to mail 20 page brochures (8.5x11) as it is to send a 5.5x8.5 inch postcard?

- In smaller quantities (less than 5,000 pieces), you can reduce your cost per piece by 25% each time you double. Thus, you can produce 4x as much printed material for only twice the number of dollars. And, if someone else is sharing the printing, you can produce 4x as much material for the same cost as printing it by oneself.

We have all the expertise, knowledge, and experience, and we have been doing this sort of thing as our own small group for a number of years. Now we want to grow our market share even more by expanding the group and leveraging the ability to do even more marketing.

We welcome your participation and hope you join. Feel free to email me directly if you like.

John Hokkanen
temp8{|a.t|}surftheturf{d.o.t}com
760-479-5620

Requirements: Your business must reside in San Diego County. Most of our businesses are in North County, and so a lot of our current marketing efforts are in North County. However, some of us want to expand outside of North County, so anywhere in San Diego County is OK. We have never approved of external businesses, but we won't say that it can't happen; but if you don't have a local business, you will need to make a case for why you should be included.