What is a Dropshipper? What is a wholesaler?

Selling On Ebay Guide

What is a Dropshipper? What is a wholesaler?

 

People have been distributing products since before the first mastodon skinner traded a fur coat for a flint axe.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say ABC Manufacturers makes a product called Mom’s Ankle Wax. We’ll say that Mom’s Ankle Wax has been around for years. It’s a very well known brand name product. It will without a doubt give you the shiniest ankles on your block, and everybody wants some.

ABC Manufacturers makes Mom’s Ankle Wax, but they don’t sell it directly to the public. They’re a manufacturing operation. They’re far too busy melting paraffin and waxing test ankles to go around building stores all over the place. They need distributors; companies who will take their product and distribute it to the places that will sell it.

For years, ABC Manufacturers has sold Mom’s Ankle Wax to a company called DEF Distributors. The founder of DEF Distributors knew Mom herself, back in the old days when she made her Ankle Wax by hand, out in the turkey barn.

Today, DEF Distributors buys Mom’s Ankle Wax by the truckload. They pay $5.00 a case for it, which is a very good price. It’s such a good price, it has it’s own name: the Manufacturer’s Wholesale Price.

However, DEF Distributors does not sell it to the general public either. They are a distributor. They distribute Mom’s Ankle Wax.

DEF Distributors works with a chain of retail stores called Wax R Us. This place was founded by a retail business visionary who saw the incredible potential of Mom’s Ankle Wax a long time ago. Today there are Wax R Us retail stores on every street corner in every major city in the country. Wax R Us buys truckloads of Mom’s Ankle Wax from DEF Distributors for $10.00 a case.

So, DEF Distributors makes $5.00 on every case of Mom’s Ankle Wax they sell to Wax R Us retail stores. This makes DEF Distributors very happy.

Cases and cases of Mom’s Ankle Wax arrive in the stockrooms of Wax R Us stores everywhere. The Wax R Us employees open those cases, and pull 12 cans of Mom’s Ankle Wax out of each case. With their pricing guns, they stick a price of $4.50 on each and every can.

Wax R Us stores make a total of $44.00 on each case of Mom’s Ankle Wax. (12 cans x 4.50 per can = 54.00, minus the 10.00 they paid for the case = 44.00).

Wax R Us is even happier than DEF Distributors.

However, the happiest people of all are the people who can stroll into Wax R Us and purchase a can of Mom’s Ankle Wax for only $4.50. They think this is a great price, and they’re walking around with the shiniest ankles in town.

Well, that’s it…basic product distribution. The manufacturer sells to the distributor, the distributor sells to the retailer, and the retailer sells to the end user (the customer). The manufacturer, the distributor and the retailer all make money because the customer is willing to spend money for the product.

Drop Shipping has been around for a long time, too. Probably as long as mail order catalogs; maybe longer. If you want to use a buzzword to impress a corporate type, call it “second party addressing”.

Above, we talked about the manufacturer-distributor-retailer relationship. When you use drop shipping to sell products on the Internet, (or anywhere else), YOU become the RETAILER in that relationship.

It should be noted here, if only to keep the Punctuation Police happy, that if you use the method of drop shipping in your business, YOU are not the “drop shipper”. The company(s) who supply the products to your customers for you is the drop shipper. YOU become a “Stockless Retailer”.

Here’s how drop shipping works.

1.) You open an Internet Store, with a shopping cart and the ability to accept credit cards.

2.) You find a distributor who is willing to drop ship the products you want to sell. The best place on the Internet for this is www.WorldwideBrands.com. This is our website, and our Drop Ship Source Directory and Light Bulk Wholesale Directory are recognized as the best sources for legitimate Wholesale Suppliers on the Internet.

3.) You establish an account as a retailer with the Wholesale Supplier you choose.

4.) You receive images and descriptions of the products you want to sell from the Wholesale Supplier and post them on your Internet Store.

5.) A customer surfs into your Internet Store, and falls in love with a product that you have priced at, say, $80. They purchase the item with their credit card. Your Store charges their credit card $80 plus your shipping fee.

6.) You turn around and email the order to your Wholesale Supplier, along with the customer’s name and address.

7.) The Wholesale Supplier sends the product directly to your customer, with YOUR Store’s name on the package.

8.) The Wholesale Supplier charges you the wholesale price of, say, $45.00, plus shipping.

9.) Your customer gets a cool product from your store shipped to their door, and they tell all their friends about you, and you make even more money.

There you have it. You just made a $35.00 profit on one item. You didn’t have to buy a whole bunch of the product and keep it in your warehouse, hoping you would sell it. You didn’t have to pay to have it shipped to you, and then pay to ship it to your customer. All you did was send an email to your Wholesale Supplier.

Is Incorporating Your Small Business Best For You?

There comes a point in time when every small business person contemplates on whether to incorporate their business or not. A lot of times small businesses start out sole proprietorships, and then become incorporated as the business expands and develops. Small business incorporating can be a difficult decision, and with this article you’ll gain a little bit of knowledge on the advantages and disadvantages.

There are many advantages to incorporating your small business, but limited liability is one of the biggest advantages. When you have sole proprietorship to the company all the liability of the company is on the owner. When incorporating the business, your only liability is to however much you invest in the company.

With sole proprietorship, all of your personal belongings, such as car and home, can be turned over to help pay the debt of the business. As a shareholder in the business, you have no responsibility whatsoever for the debts of the business, that is of course unless you give a guarantee.

Another advantage to incorporating a small business is the ability to raise money so much easier. With the ability to raise money much easier, this increases the odds of the corporation growing and expanding. Yes, you’re saying any sole proprietorship can borrow money and incur debt like any corporation. However, with a corporation you can sell shares and raise equity capital, which is a big advantage in that you generally don’t have to repay equity capital and it has no interest.

There are many tax advantages with becoming a corporation that you can take a look at as well. Some of these advantages include income splitting, potential tax deferral and more. Along with the reasons above, a corporation can have an unlimited life. The life of a corporation is not dependent on particular individuals, but the company as a whole. With this, the company has the opportunity of lasting forever just as long merges with another company or goes bankrupt.

Now that I’ve buttered up the idea of incorporating your small business, let’s take a look at some of the possible negatives.

As you incorporate your small business, there now will be two tax returns to file each year, one for your personal income and one for the corporation. This may not be a huge deal, but unlike a sole proprietorship a corporation cannot deduct its losses from the personal income of the owner. Plus, having another tax return is the last thing another business owner wants to deal with.

As a corporation is much larger and more complex then a small business, therefore the cost to create one is much higher. Just to set up the corporation will cost a lot more, then you have to tack on the increased maintenance fees, accounting fees, and more.

As with everything else, a larger business means more paperwork that must be taken care of. Corporations must keep a minute book, which contains the corporate bylaws and minutes from corporate meetings. Reports and tax returns must be completed neatly and in a timely fashion. All of the business bank accounts and records have to be kept separate from personal accounts and assets. That may sound like a load, but that is just the start of the increased paperwork that comes with the territory of incorporating your small business.

While there are many advantages and disadvantages to incorporating your small business, the decision ultimately goes to you. It is a decision that could make or break your business, therefore much more research is recommended. However, small business incorporating should be a thing that suites you and others associated with you best.

Six Sigma for Small Business

It is not surprising that some people may perceive Six Sigma as being only for large corporations. Major corporations such as Allied Signal, Black & Decker, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Federal Express, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Kodak, Motorola, Sony, and Toshiba have all rolled out Six Sigma efforts and achieved outstanding results. Yet, it is incorrect to think that Six Sigma process improvement results can only be achieved by huge organizations. Small businesses can also succeed in implementing Six Sigma and reap the process improvement benefits that Six Sigma provides.

Certainly, there are factors that can be disadvantageous for implementing Six Sigma in a small business rather than a large business, such as lack of resources and expertise in change initiatives. However, there are also characteristics inherent in small businesses that can speed up the effective implementation of Six Sigma more than in large businesses, such as flexible process flows, a shorter decision-making chain, and higher visibility of senior management.

Six Sigma can work in any size business because the nature of Six Sigma is dependent upon characteristics inherent to any business, not on the size of a business. Six Sigma MAIC (measure, analyze, improve, and control) disciplines work no matter the size of the organization or even the size of the Six Sigma project.

Small businesses do have constraints that limit their ability to initiate a large scale Six Sigma implementation. However, there are ways to overcome these limitations. Small businesses don’t have large reserves of excess cash to earmark for the massive training programs employed by the large corporations in implementing their Six Sigma programs. Small businesses generally can’t afford to have full-time Master Black Belts on staff and may not have the personnel with the skills and expertise to step into the role of Black Belts without extensive training. A certified Six Sigma consultant can act as your Black Belt for the initial projects until you have generated sufficient savings to be able to provide some of those savings for training your own people. Training happens at a slower scale for smaller companies but it still happens. Financially, savings realized from the first set of projects usually justifies the entire cost of the Six Sigma training.

Once some members of the organization have been trained as Green Belts, Six Sigma projects proceed with Green Belts executing Six Sigma processes. Incrementally, Green Belts are developed into Black Belts and new Green Belts are trained. Using a more gradual training approach addresses many of the constraints of smaller companies and allows them to implement Six Sigma at a pace a small business can more easily manage.

There is a benefit to implementing Six Sigma in a smaller business. Because of the size of a small business, the financial results and cultural transformation that stem from Six Sigma will propagate more quickly through a smaller organization. Focusing the Six Sigma tools at virtually any properly scoped project will drive savings to your bottom line and achieve breakthrough change in your organization.

Small Business Planning — Three Myths

Are you — like 70 percent of small business owners — working without a plan? Here are three myths that need to be dispelled about strategic planning for small business.

1. It has to be formal — Not so.

The value of a strategic plan for your small business is in putting the ideas on paper, creating action steps that will get you where you want to go and implementing those action steps.

2. I’m too small — Not so.

Even a one-person business can benefit from a strategic plan. A strategic plan can help you make decisions about time management and budget. You can use your strategic plan to help you determine whether to attend an event or advertise in a publication. It’s a check and balance tool.

3. A strategic plan is like a ball and chain — Not so.

It’s your plan. Too many small business owners feel like once it’s on paper, it can’t be changed. Wrong! Your plan should be an active document that gets reviewed and updated at least monthly, if not weekly. You’re the business owner, you wrote it, you know what’s happening in your market — adjust as necessary.

Why You Need a Business Planning System NOT a Business Plan

When someone mentions business planning we have been conditioned to think about writing a business plan. There are hundreds of books and articles, tons of software, an army of consultants, and a multitude government programs to help you write a business plan. There are virtually no resources to help you set up what today’s business environment really demands – a continuous, ongoing planning system.

A commonly accepted theory is that for a business to survive and prosper it must be flexible and nimble. It must be able to turn on a dime as conditions warrant. Having a written five-year plan is not part of this picture. In fact, trying to follow a long-term plan during rampant change is not logical. It is applying linear thinking to a non-linear situation. It just doesn’t work.

Having a formal, written business plan is so accepted as being crucial to success that there haven’t been many studies or surveys to test this premise. If business plans were such a wonderful thing, there would be a significant and conclusive difference between businesses that have them and those that don’t. Interviews of 100 founders of companies on 1989s “INC 500” list of fastest growing private companies in the U.S. found only 28 percent had “full-blown” business plans. The 1993 AT&T; Small Business Study found that 59 percent of small businesses that grew over the previous two years used a formal business plan. A 1994 survey of the country’s fastest growing companies found 23 percent lacked a business plan. “The Relationship between Written Business Plans and the Failure of Small Businesses in the U.S.,” by Dr. Stephen Perry, surveyed 152 failed and 152 non-failed small businesses in 1997. He found that 64 percent of the non-failed firms had no written business plan. He also found that non-failed firms had more extensive written plans than failed firms, 23 percent compared to 9 percent, respectively.

As you can see the results of studies and surveys are all across the board and don’t prove anything. Clearly, a significant percentage of successful businesses don’t have written business plans. None of these studies reveal the nature of the process that created the plan. Was it the result of an annual process with occasional updates or an ongoing, continual process? As Professor Albert Shapero said, “Companies that plan do better than companies that don’t, but they never follow their plan.”

The focus needs to be on the PROCESS not on the plan. If a continual, ongoing planning process is in place, a written business plan is just not important. Writing a business plan without a planning system in place is a massive effort that is done very infrequently. Many businesses write three to five year plans and update them annually. The plans are reviewed periodically during each year to analyze the plan vs. actual variances. Little, if any, thought is given to strategy between the annual updates. Strategy should be the focus everyday. Setting up a planning system allows and sometimes forces you to focus on strategy.

A planning system consists of two functions. One is a goal setting and attaining process, and the other is a trend watching or environment scanning process. Setting up a planning system takes several steps. The first and foremost task is to set aside or make time for planning on a regular, ongoing basis. It must become part of your routine, not an occasional event that can be easily postponed. In the evaluation phase, the owner or management team and the company are analyzed. From the analysis, key or critical areas of the business are identified. These areas are filtered down to focus on the most important ones. Performance measures are determined and systems to gather and process the necessary data are set up, if needed. A base of current performance is used to set goals.

Now the regular, ongoing stuff begins. Strategies are formulated, tested, implemented, monitored, and reworked until the goals are achieved. Each planning session is split between working on strategies and trend watching. As goals are achieved, the goal setting and strategy formulation process begins again.

Let’s put the focus back where it belongs on continuous, ongoing planning instead of writing business plans. As Karl Albrecht said in his book Corporate Radar, “The majority is not always right, the conventional wisdom is not always wise, and the accepted doctrine could well be flawed. The more fashionable an idea, the more it is likely to be exempt from critical evaluation. Breakthrough thinking sometimes calls for contradicting the most widely held assumptions and beliefs.”

Using SWOT Analysis To Improve Your Business

Analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of a business is a well-established tool that is widely used by academics, consultants, and advisors. Although it is a simple concept, business owners often struggle when trying to use it because it is so broad. It is difficult to determine where to start, what questions to ask, and where to focus. The obvious problems get attention while many other important issues get overlooked. SWOT analysis is a great tool, but its effective use requires additional structure.

Strengths and weaknesses relate to internal factors, while opportunities and threats cover external ones. The internal factors can be divided into five categories: management, workforce, sales and marketing, operations, and financial. The external factors are also divided into five categories: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, threat of rivalry from competitors, and threat of substitution.

To approach the analysis in a structured way, prepare a checklist using the categories mentioned above. Identify factors within each category that are important to your business. Under management for example, a major weakness for virtually every small business is relying too heavily on the owner. What would happen to the business if something happened to the owner? In the workforce category a factor could be employee turnover and the availability of new hires. The threat of new entrants might include the possibility of a big box retailer opening near your business. The bargaining power of suppliers and customers categories should consider the possibility of losing a major supplier or customer. Come up with several factors for each category to complete the checklist. It is important that you do not try to rate or solve each issue as you identify them. If you do, you will get bogged down on each factor and never complete the analysis.

Once the checklist is complete, you should rate each factor based on its importance to your business. Use an alphabetical scale from A to E, where A = very important, B = important, C = some importance, D = little importance, and E = not important. Next rate each factor based on proficiency (internal) or vulnerability (external). Use a numerical scale from 1 to 5, where 1 = very proficient or not vulnerable, 2 = proficient or little vulnerability, 3 = average proficiency or some vulnerability, 4 = poor proficiency or vulnerable, and 5 = deficient or very vulnerable.

The factors with the lowest letter and highest number (A5) are the biggest weaknesses or threats. The ones with the lowest letter and lowest number (A1) are the biggest strengths or opportunities.

Using this structured approach makes a SWOT analysis possible and practical for any small business. To make this process worthwhile you must use this information to take action. Work to fix the worst problems first, prepare for the biggest risks, take advantage of the best opportunities, and build your secondary strengths.

Staying Sane Survival Tips for Small Business Owners

Your lunchtime thoughts are comprised of brilliant marketing strategies and anxiety over bill payments. You’re the CEO, human resources director, janitor, and administrative assistant all wrapped up into one. You open the doors at dawn and lockup when it’s time to wrap up for the day.

Welcome to the world of small business ownership. Lovely, isn’t it?

Of course, the rewards of small business ownership are quite high. Your focus determines your reality and your success, you never have to answer to an angry boss, and (for most owners) you get to work in an industry of your choice. There’s an obvious trade-off with the long hours, multiple responsibilities, and occasional panic attacks of “how am I going to get this done?”

Not to worry. You’re not alone. In fact, almost all small business owners face the same issues you do. And many have survived and lived on to tell the tale (in small business seminars, in fact!), so don’t get discouraged. Here are several easy tips to get your business head out of the clouds.

Become an expert at time management: If you went to college, chances are you learned how to balance midterm studying, paper writing, socializing, and plain old partying into a somewhat successful formula. Dust off those time management skills, because they’ll get your small business running in an efficient fashion. A great way to do this is to use the tools that come with modern office software. Any sort of email program that features a calendar, such as Outlook, will allow you to track appointments, follow-up emails/phone calls, and important dates. It will also allow you to create daily to-do lists while maintaining an organized list of your contacts. You can also use spreadsheet software, such as Excel, to keep track of the progress of multiple tasks, calculate and crunch numbers, and store tables upon tables of information. Get this software, load it on to your office computer or laptop and use it religiously. It will organize your life and allow you to attend to the important things for your business.

Contracts are good things: Here’s a hint – if you’re not an expert at something, don’t do it yourself. Your budgets are stretched and your time and sanity are running low. How about a hired hand? From virtual administrative assistants to business planners to copywriters, hiring out help on a contract basis can free you from the logistics of running a business and allow you to stay focused on what your business really does. Obviously, hiring a professional costs money, but it also means a separate set of eyes specializing in something that you’re not the most adept at. The process could even pay for itself. If the quality of work these contract professionals bring in generate revenue by allowing you to work harder at what you do best.

Seize every opportunity: When you’re a small business, you’ve got to get creative with your marketing. Fortunately, every single moment and action presents itself as a time to sell your business. Writing an email? Then attach your business description to your signature and casually mention your business. Going to the library? Bring some flyers and tack them on the bulletin board. Going to get office supplies? Ask the supply store manager how you can place your business cards on the counter. Every scenario grants you the opportunity to reach another person. And even if its just one person, that someone can tell a friend, who may tell two friends, and so on. Word-of-mouth and grass-roots marketing can be a powerful tool, and it’s cheap – so use it!

Keep your chin up: It might be a cliché, but it’s true – the best way to have run a successful business is to stay positive. Keeping a positive mindset affects you, the ones you work with, and your customers. No one likes to work when they’re down in the dumps. But if you’re chipper, motivated, and ready to go, you’ll inspire yourself and the ones around you. It may sound trite, but it’s the truth. Maintain a positive attitude and work hard and the results will present themselves!

While running a small business is consuming and exhausting, don’t forget that you also need to stay mentally and physically healthy. These tricks will help you run your business more efficiently, but it doesn’t excuse you from running yourself into the ground. Remember to find an outlet for the physical and emotional stress that come with running a small business. You’ll feel refreshed and energized and ready to work hard and efficiently – and that means more business and more profits!

Persistence: A Key Ingredient in the Recipe for a Successful Small Business

It has been said that success is rarely easy or quick and that it is only the product of consistent effort which is repetitively applied. This is definitely the case for the small-business owner when trying to become successful in the cutthroat world of marketing. Any successful business depends upon marketing your product or services to the general public and convincing them to spend their hard earned money or time. It is only through persistence and never giving up on your dreams can success be achieved. Within this article, you will find several ideas of how you can maintain perseverance and understand that persistence is indeed a key ingredient in the recipe for a successful small business.

Finish What You Start

Oftentimes people get off to a flying start in their business endeavor, but as time goes by they get side-tracked never finishing what they started. The history of small business is full of great starters but not-so-great finishers. There has never been a great book left half-written, nor a successful business left half-built. The key to finishing what you started is perseverance and commitment. Remember that many people with less talent, less ability and less experience can achieve greater things than those with greater gifts if they commit to the end of what they begin to do.

Don’t Fear It, Face It

Fear is a terrible thing and when applied to running a small business can end in disastrous results. Most people are afraid of rejection or the thought of failure. Fear of rejection will cause people to accept lives of conformity and mediocrity, while fear of failure will lead people to pass up on life changing opportunities. The small business owner will oftentimes have to take chances and risks in order to survive. It is the ones that face their fears of rejection and failure that survive. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “The men who try to do something and fail are indefinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.”

Decide to Be Decisive

Everyday we make choices. Most of the time we are not even aware that we are making them. In the world of business, indecisiveness can be fatal. To pursue opportunities for your small business and maximize potential, you have to become decisive. Becoming pro-active in making decisions in the direction of your business and staying the course will be for more successful than waiting for choices to happen and then dealing with the consequences.

Never, Never Give Up

This is the definition of persistence. As one Japanese proverb teaches us, the eventual winners are those who “fall down seven times, gets up eight.” We aren’t losers until we give up. This is definitely true for the small business owner.

Persistence is indeed a key ingredient in the recipe for a successful business. You must stick to your game plan and finish what you start. You must be decisive in what you chose and never fear rejection or failure. And above all, you must never, never give up. One final thought from J.D. Rockefeller, “I do not think there is any quality so essential of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”

Why Online Presence Is Essential For Small Business Success

If you are any kind of small business or home operated business, online presence is essential. Majority of web site visitors are from the English speaking population due to the high levels of internet penetration in that category, online presence for all small enterprises cannot be overemphasized. The research data in the US about online connectivity reveals the following facts which may help to understand the importance of the web presence for businesses especially the small enterprise.

70 % of the US households have web connectivity.

In 2004 worldwide online population was 801 million worldwide.

Of these 36% used English as the language. Of this U.S. alone accounts for close to 200 million.

The next major group was European languages with 38 % and major single language next to English was Chinese accounting for 14%.

Home web users were generally affluent, literate, and belonged to the younger age profile. This means the web presence for any business is necessary if you want to succeed in promoting your products and services to a population who can afford them and also willing to buy them online.

The household that did not own a computer or who were were not connected to the web, generally felt it is not useful or needed and cost too much.

What this means for a small business owner is that they are better off promoting their products to people who were online.

You small business success is undoubtedly linked to your online presence

How to Choose the Best Small Business VoIP Solution

Telecommunication cost is always an obstacle for small business owners, especially if you need to call domestic or international long distance. The long distance cost factor alone, depending on the type of business you’re in, can make the difference in the success of any small business.

The telecommunication market today is one of the most competitive. Rates for both local, domestic long distance or DLL (long distance in the same country) and international long distance (ILD) are going down every day. The new player in small business phone systems, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), adds a whole new dimension when it comes to choosing a phone system for your small business or home based business.

There’s so much hype today about VoIP, or Voice over IP, or Voice over Broadband, whatever you want to call it. Everyone’s saying that VoIP is the “future of communication” and that VoIP will replace regular analog phone calls. Is all this true? If it is, how do you, as an entrepreneur, decide how to choose and invest in what’s best for you? Firstly, if you have no idea what VoIP is really about, here’s where you can get educate yourself: http://www.mybusinessvoip.com/start

There are two things you need to consider:

1) Level of investment
2) Cost vs. Quality

To go full out into using VoIP, you’ll need to invest in IP phones, and possibly even in IP PBX. Otherwise, you should go for IP phone adapters, which allow you to maintain whatever system you already have, but also gives you the option of converting some of those phone lines to VoIP. Most entrepreneurs are reluctant to go 100% into VoIP, and yet they still want the benefits that come from it. That’s why IP phone adapters are so popular today. In fact, here’s a list of the most popular providers for comparison: http://www.mybusinessvoip.com/compare

When is comes to quality vs. cost, the direction is pretty clear. Before choosing the proper VoIP phone system for your business, you need to figure out exactly what your business needs. If your business relies heavily on the phone for prospecting customers, providing customer support, or giving out important information through the phone, then you should definitely opt for better quality.

If you use the phone for short communication with your business partners or agents, or any other reason which is NOT your main business function, it would be better to save a little and go with the low cost option. The difference in quality is not very apparent in most cases.

If you are just starting your small business, VoIP phone cards also provide some sort of temporary solution until you can get enough financing to develop a better system. Phone cards usually let you dial international and national long distance at a lower cost because they use either VoIP as the back end provider or through a special promotion or arrangement between telecommunications companies.

Today, you can even get “virtual phone cards” which allow you to make phone calls by dialing a toll-free number in a long list of countries. This is especially useful if you spend more time travelling and doing business overseas than you are at home.

Regardless of which VoIP phone system you choose for your small business, make sure you are getting the most out of the money you spend for these long distance or international plans. Forget the bells and whistles. The purpose of having a good phone system is, and always should be, to communicate and express yourself.