Dell, Austin area's biggest business, looks to make inroads with small firms

Dell Technologies has become one of the largest companies in the world. But it hasn’t forgotten about its dependency on much smaller operations.

The tech giant launched its campaign to support small businesses, offering deals on Dell products and free small business advisors to any small business that reaches out.

Now, Dell has roughly 3.1 million small business buyers nationally, with 275,000 based in Texas. The company classifies small business buyers as customers who have purchased Dell technology and have no more than 99 employees. Dell does not disclose revenue numbers from its small business buyers. 

The effort came out of Dell’s internal research that found it becomes 50 percent more difficult to get a company to change a vendor after they’ve locked in on one, said Erik Day, vice president and general manager of Dell North America Small Business.

“Our small customers end up being medium customers, end up being large customers,” Day said. “What we realized is there is a massive need for small businesses to have support.”

While most of those relationships happen virtually, Round Rock-based Dell uses its proximity to Austin to meet with small businesses in person.

Take, for instance, the company’s relationship with Kendra Scott, an Austin-based jewelry designer who grew her company into a billion-dollar entity. Kendra Scott uses Dell PCs, servers, monitors, cloud services and software. 

“We were able to nurture that relationship, and as she grew, we were able to grow with her,” Day said.

Dell also works with Austin favorites like Tiff’s Treats, Cuvée Coffee and Wanderlust Yoga. Dell featured its partnership with the three companies at Austin Startup Week’s startup crawl in September.

“It was a huge help to get exposure there,” said Elizabeth Hughes, social media and community manager of Wanderlust Yoga.

Dell gave Wanderlust Yoga computers for its downtown studio this year, and provides virtual around-the-clock small business advisors for support, according to Hughes. Dell's small business advisors are a free service to small businesses.

And Tiff’s Treats, the Austin-based chain known for delivering warm cookies and ice-cold milk, has worked with Dell for more than a decade.

The company, which has been rapidly expanding in the last year, uses Dell computers to operate each store, according to Jeff Sartor, Tiff’s Treats executive vice president of marketing. Tiff's Treats declined to disclose how much the company has spent on Dell products, but Sartor estimated that it spends thousands of dollars on Dell products every year.  

The partnership goes beyond Dell computers, Sartor said. Dell frequently features the cookies at company events, and even wrote about the cookie company in Dell’s magazine.

Rather than the partnership being a single check-in, Sartor said, “It was more of the basis of a great relationship that somewhat already existed since we use Dell products all over.”

In February, the company announced that it would open two stores in Nashville, Tenn. and acquire Jake’s Bakes there. By the end of the year, Sartor said, the company hopes to open five or six new stores as part of its "rapid expansion plan."

“With every new store that opens on the business side, we need at least four machines that are Dell-powered machines,” Sartor said. “They’ve been a great partner, and I know that they provide us with small business solutions in terms of us opening up this many stores.”

Day, of Dell small business, says those connections in a growing city like Austin help remind customers that Dell understands “what it’s like to be a small business.”

“We want to be a part of that journey,” Day said.