July 2007

Not every underdog has the same pedigree

My son’s baseball team recently won the championship of the Hollidaysburg Pee Wee League. That achievement was more impressive because the team concluded the regular season with a losing record, finished in eighth place and just barely qualified for the playoffs. They upset the first place team in the opening playoff game and never looked back.

Such feel-good stories have been the basis for many a Hollywood epic. The world loves an underdog and relishes the opportunity to get behind each overmatched David in the ultimate confrontation with Goliath.

Wikipedia, the largest multilingual, free-content encyclopedia on the Internet, defines “underdog” as “a person or group in a competition, frequently in electoral politics, sports and creative works who is popularly expected to lose.”

That definition should not exclude business. Nowhere has the aspect of competition taken-on more volatility than in the business arena. When so many jobs have exited to other continents, what remains are more underdogs than you can, pardon the expression, shake a stick at.

In Blair County, it’s fairly simple to name businesses that have emerged from underdog status to position themselves at the top. I won’t name any of them because some don’t consider themselves as ever having been underdogs and others won’t want to be lumped-in with those businesses that they now consider beneath them.

Sound complicated? It can be. Business underdogs, I’ve concluded, are not always of a single mindset. There are those who fight the odds, scratch and claw and relentlessly get where they want to be no matter whom or what stands in their way. The battle to reach that plateau often turns out to be more satisfying than the view once they get there. To no one’s surprise, many of those businesses are ultimately sold within the ensuing five year period following their ascent.

There are those who take shortcuts to get on the fast track, only to find that the rarified air of high finance and shareholder expectations often results in getting them unceremoniously kicked to the curb. They either disappear, are acquired by a more stable business or handle desperation through a variety of means not always within the guidelines of the legal system. If Blair County currently has businesses operating within that last category, I’m honestly not aware of them. It’s difficult, I believe, to fly that far under the radar in a small county like this one.

There are also those who cautiously dip their toes in the waters of business growth and insist that they have shed the underdog moniker and are now a force to be reckoned-with. It takes an incredible marketing effort to sell that to themselves much less to anyone else. But it’s usually harmless and at least projects a positive feeling, something of which business can never quite get enough.

The last and largest group of business underdogs is the one whose primary motivation is to remain underdogs forever. Is there anything more comforting than to be able to operate within the World of Business with absolutely no tangible expectations? When something goes awry, there’s a built-in excuse that not only covers the unfortunate inequity of every given situation but can elicit a fair measure of sympathy as well. Who wouldn’t want that?

All facetiousness aside, the strength of the Blair County business community during the remainder of this decade will be largely dictated by the determination and resourcefulness of businesses that haven’t faced those challenges in the past. If, in fact, two more WalMart’s open within the county, it can’t be viewed as a death knell to other retailers. It’s merely a chance to expand other sectors of the niche market and to work with organizations like The Chamber and the Allegheny Mountains Convention & Visitors Bureau to bring greater numbers of consumers to our region.

True underdogs are an inspiration to our communities because they represent the hope for accomplishment that takes all of us to a higher level. We must be willing to get swept-up in their enthusiasm and constantly encourage them as they take their places among others who were not deterred by the challenges nor intimidated by the obstacles.

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