By Janet Huseby
Ray Pickett is the proprietor of Golden West, a one-man Emeryville printing business. He has been on the UC Berkeley vendor's list so long, he doesn't remember how he got there, but he knows how he stays. "I have a lot of pride in what I do. Not every job is an A+, but very few leave here that are worse than an A-.
Pickett is one of thousands of small business vendors doing business with UC Berkeley. To stay in business he competes with the "big guy" by providing excellent service and individual attention.
The campus buys a wide range of products from office supplies to sophisticated scientific equipment. It contracts out for an equally diverse range of services such as for wood polishing, upholstery, video production, window-washing, travel arrangements, typewriter repair, flooring, plumbing, photocopying, steam-cleaning, and translating. Every one of these goods and services, along with hundreds more, can and has been purchased from a local small business vendor
UC Berkeley spends $400 million annually in research money-much of it federal dollars that are consciously directed towards minority, women and small business enterprises.
Even without the federal incentive, the campus is predisposed toward small business. Of its $200 million non-research purchases, 60 per cent are made from small business, like Ashby Lumber, Radston's Office Supplies, Krishna Copy, Rex Key Shop, American Soil Products, Ashby Plumbing and Heating and East Bay Sign Company, to name a few.
"At UC Berkeley, in general, people support small business," says Kurt Libby, campus director of Materiel Management. "It's sort of like supporting your neighborhood grocery store. People here don't want chains; they like buying the non-name brand.
The competitive threshold at UC Berkeley is $50,000. That is, purchases above must go to the lowest bidder, and purchases below are not restricted by price alone. The usual practice for a purchase between $10,000 and $50,000 is to determine the "should cost" price by going after three bids.
There is no central purchasing agency at UC. Each department makes its own purchasing decisions as does the university's business administration, capital projects, and physical plant. The Office of Small Business Development (OSBD), which receives over a dozen calls a day from interested vendors, works to facilitate one-on-one relationships with dozens of departments.
"We are a liaison between UC and the small business community, trying to link business with part of the university that has a need," says OSBD manager Claude Wilson. "We refer potential vendors to departments we feel may have a need for the goods and services the company offers. We also hold an annual small business development fair to introduce vendors to different purchasers."
