How to lead little-people oriented industry astray
By Michael Greene -- Furniture Today, March 17, 2002
It seems to li'l ol' me that when scholars proclaim history repeats itself, they all must have been cogs in our home furnishings wheel. What better place could they have learned that lesson? A lesson I've been watching for nigh 60 years.
It goes something like this: A Wall Streeter wakes up one morning and thinks to himself that, according to the position of the planets in the heavens the night before, there's going to be a whole bunch of houses sold. Therefore, there's going to be a whole bunch of home furnishings needed.
Therefore, it would be a humongous idea to hustle his cash-heavy clients, or cement makers or pulp manufacturers or pension guiders, to detour their cash into home furnishings.
And sure as shootin', his buddies, alumni of the same MBA programs, also jump at this "new" idea and steer their buddies to this "new" bandwagon, thus starting, with sincerity, to reconfigure the home furnishings wheel into an Internet what-is-it. Wow-e-e!
Promptly, a lot of cocktail parties, PR escapades, conference calls and trips to golf courses follow. Loads of cash go flying around, which confuses old-timer home furnishings execs who have been cash hungry for decades. Before you know it, a virus infects our li'l ol' retailers and they start opening more stores, instead of looking at the record and closing some of the old ones that have been limping along.
What's wrong with this "new" picture? Nothing, because it ain't new. We've seen it over and over again. Little people that know the game get lost in the shuffle and, before you know it, a leak develops in the high-flying balloon and — whoops! — home furnishings takes the first fall. And, as usual, it's the last to get back on its feet.
The basic problem with all this whoop-dee-do financial wizardry is that the successful mamas and papas who built this industry end up turning over decision-making to yellow-legal-pad scribblers who have no notion of what this one-on-one, human industry is all about.
Everyone becomes a number. Everyone loses identity, except for chief honchos who get boxed into conference calls with Wall Streeters who live and breed on MBA "programming" that has nothing to do with a mattress or a nightstand or a sofa.
Say what you may and flash what you want to flash, but this home furnishings industry of ours prospers on thinking individuals who act with grace, who appreciate people, who love what they create 24 four hours a day, and who measure success by how many little people they can make happy every day in an American plant, in a store and in a consumer's home.
That's more humongous, more enduring, more wholesome than numbers, numbers, numbers. Why? Because we as an industry are little people who are little-people oriented.
The same little people about whom it has been said: The Almighty must love them because He created so many of them.
Thanks, again, for listening.
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