Bigger is a different business

In Damietta, a family makes sesame bars in a workshop behind their house. A dozen shops nearby stock them. The shopkeepers know the family, the customers know the taste, and the bars sell out most weeks.

Every few months, someone tells them they should be in every supermarket in the country.

It sounds like the obvious next step. More shops, more customers, more of the thing that already works. It also assumes that the road from a dozen shops to a thousand is the road they have been walking, only longer.

It rarely is. Between where they are and where they are told to go sits a stretch that looks short from here and is not. New machines, a distributor who wants his margin, fees for shelf space, a recipe that has to survive a month in a warehouse instead of a week on a counter. Slower money, harder decisions, more people to answer to. Plenty of small makers start up that stretch, run out of patience or cash halfway, and arrive nowhere, having lost the dozen shops along the way.

Bigger is not a larger copy of what they have. It is a different business, with different customers and different problems.

Staying the size you are, when the size you are is working, is not cowardice. It may be the best way to keep making something good for the people who already care about it.

And if they decide to make the climb anyway, it is worth asking first whether they have the money, the patience and the people to reach the far side, because the middle is where most attempts stop.