Get Your Product or Service in the Door through Supplier Network

Centocor, Lockheed Martin, Merck... these are just a few of the doors Taillight Communications, LLC has walked through since joining the Chamber’s Supplier Network a year and a half ago.

Taillight is a small business specializing in technology and pharmaceutical communications, translating technical information — or jargon — into creative copy that is practical for the end user.

The company’s owners, Jim Leeke and his wife Jane Clark, provide highly specialized type of copywriting that fills the gap between a corporation’s in-house communications and its ad agencies.

As a fledgling company two years ago based in West Virginia, and with a business plan firmly in hand, Leeke and Clark took a road trip to investigate a dozen chambers of commerce between Ohio and Southeastern Pennsylvania. They were looking for help in marketing their services.

"GPCC was the best chamber for our needs; no other one even came close," Leeke said. "It was the best business decision we ever made." Clark added, "We think it’s a great resource for small supplier companies such as ours, and many of those companies have the convenience of having it right in their own backyard."

The partners say it usually takes months just to locate the right person in a large company who will listen to them pitch their service.

Instead, after completing Supplier Network training, they spent that time developing a relationship with the purchasing director at Merck, securing their first contract with Centocor, and using that contract as a springboard to get a meeting at Lockheed Martin.

As a veteran-owned Supplier Network member, they were offered exclusive access to a Vetwork Your Business event. "We went to a Chamber networking event at Merck and, without even knowing who would be a good contact for us at such a large organization, it turned out the man escorting us upstairs was precisely the person we needed to talk to," Leeke said. "The Chamber not only identified the right person in the company, they put that person right in front of us."

"These are the kind of serendipitous connections Chamber programs facilitate," Clark added. "Every staff person gets it; they understand the connectivity that’s critical for a business to grow."

While Clark’s talent lies in managing the day-to-day operations and long-range planning, Leeke, the creative director, has a background as a journalist for daily newspapers, contributor to technical publications, and author of five books. And his military background (U.S. Navy, 1969 to 1973, communications technician) provides the company with another advantage: as a veteran business owner he is entitled to special incentives which he has learned more about through the Chamber’s Vetwork Your Business program, an off-shoot of Supplier Network.

About the Supplier Network
As an educational and networking series supported by Citizens Bank, the Supplier Network (SN) program designed to better qualify smaller companies to do business with larger corporations. It prepares small to mid-size supplier businesses to pursue bids from large companies and government agencies, and develop relationships with regional procurement officers from SN supporting corporations. The program features comprehensive training sessions, ongoing exposure to procurement officers, exclusive networking events, special designation and online visibility, and advanced workshops. There is a one-time fee of $250 for Chamber members, good for the duration of a Chamber membership. Visit greaterphilachamber.com/suppliernet

About Vetwork Your Business
Vetwork Your Business was developed for those who bravely served our nation by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and is proudly sponsored by Lockheed Martin Corporation, Merck and Centocor. It is a subsidiary of the Chamber’s Supplier Network, a program designed to better qualify smaller companies to do business with larger corporations through comprehensive training and networking sessions. Vetwork takes the program a step further by identifying Veteran-Owned Business (VOB) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Business (SDVOB) vendors that want to capitalize on their classification, and connecting them to regional corporations and government agencies that want to satisfy their supplier diversity goals. The Vetwork program is free for Chamber members. Visit vetworkyourbusiness.gpcc.com.