Getting Your Foot in the Door with Certification

Certification Helps Small Business Compete with the Big Boys
Maria Coria is the owner of Pina M. Inc., a Brooklyn-based company that’s been in business for 14 years and provides health care, laboratory, and safety products. In the last three years, her company has sold products to 18 New York City agencies through more than 800 contracts with a total value exceeding $1.5 million. These contracts ranged in value from a few hundred dollars to over $30,000. According to Coria, the City of New York accounts for nearly 60% of her company’s annual revenue.

Coria got her first contract in 2005 with New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Shortly after, she applied for and received her Women-owned Business Enterprise (WBE) certification after she realized it could help her compete for more contracts with the City because it gave her company a distinct advantage over the larger suppliers. “Who is going to call a small company when you have major suppliers with big warehouses that can provide any product with no notice at all?” she says. According to Coria, certification helped her develop partnerships with these major suppliers throughout the United States to negotiate good prices and help her compete by increasing the portfolio of products she can offer. The big suppliers benefit from the partnership because Coria has access to customers and agencies through her certification that the suppliers can sell products to.

Coria has a smart strategy for doing business with the City. “It all starts with offering the best product at the lowest price when responding to the small-purchase bids,” says Coria. “Once I win those contracts, I set up a follow-up meeting with the customer to go over their additional needs and the products I offer. Agencies often call back for price quotes on smaller purchases that usually range from a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand.” While certification helps Coria get access to City contracts, that won’t ensure that she will win the bids. She still has to offer a low price to get her foot in the door, then she works on building the relationship.

Coria continues to look for more opportunities and jumps at any opportunity to meet face-to-face with City agencies. “They will start to remember you if they see your face enough,” she says. “My company is dependable, and if you do right by your customers, they’ll do right by you.”

Preparation Before Certification Was Key to Success
When Londel Davis and Keith Pearson started American Fire Control, they knew from their military experience that government could be a good source of income for their company. The Manhattan-based firm is a fire extinguisher maintenance company started by the Army veterans less than two years ago.

While the partners awaited their first-year anniversary (one of the requirements of certification is that a company be in business for at least one year), they prepared their business to compete for government work. They attended workshops on certification at the Harlem Business Alliance. They also visited the Procurement Technical Assistance Center at SoBro in the Bronx to learn how to access government contracts. At these workshops, Davis and Pearson learned that through certification, they were able to not only gain a competitive advantage for public contract bids, but they were also able to learn about closed bids that were only open to MBE-certified businesses.

They received City Minority-owned Business Enterprise (MBE) certification in May of 2009 and shortly after got their MBE certification with New York State’s Division of Minority and Women-owned Business Development. Two months after getting the firm certified, Davis and Pearson attended their first networking event, SBS’ Third Annual Citywide Procurement Fair. “After I left the procurement fair, I emailed everyone who gave me their business card and all the contacts listed in the brochure. I wanted to make sure they remembered our company,” says Davis.

A week later they received a call from the New York Police Department (NYPD) to inform them of an upcoming contracting opportunity to provide fire extinguisher maintenance. American Fire Control submitted a bid and won their first contract with the City, valued at $25,000. “Certification has been the entry point for winning government contracts; without certification, we might not have been able to compete with larger companies that have been in business for years,” says Davis.

Since then, American Fire Control has been awarded a two-year $100,000 contract with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). They are also currently being evaluated for two additional contracts with other City agencies. These big contracts have also opened doors for them with other clients. According to Pearson, being certified with the City and receiving City contracts gives a small business credibility with other prospects. For example, Pearson says that if they wanted to pitch business to a large national corporate client, they would ask for references, and the NYPD and the New York City Department of Transportation would have more weight than a corner fish market.

Today, City contracts account for more than 70% of the company’s revenue, and this new business has enabled them to hire an additional staff person.