A hard-luck industry knows what matters
By Clint Engel Senior, Retail Editor -- Furniture Today, September 23, 2001
Sometimes it seems there's no escape from bad news, but please don't give up on this column just yet.
A few weeks ago, I was thinking about asking my bosses to change my title to senior bankruptcy editor. That's what it felt like. HomeLife, Krause's, Ames, Heilig-Meyers, Roberds, This End Up — all bankrupt. Some gone. Some going. It's scary. It's tiring.
Then the terrorist attacks. Then the stock market plummets. What's next?
Over the past two years, I've gone from learning about good business practices to learning how to retrieve court documents quickly. I've done more on retailers trying to straighten out messes. There's little time left to write about the champions out there who are weathering the storm.
I started thinking how incredibly challenged this industry is. How we sell a product, a big-ticket item, that can be put off and off and off. We lose when things look like they're under control. We lose when they're not.
But take heart. Not everyone is drowning in a half-empty glass. There are many in this industry that push on despite great obstacles. Some can even take bad news and turn it upside down in their favor.
For every HomeLife and Heilig, there's a Nebraska Furniture Mart, which shifted mediocre business into high gear with a hard-hitting promotion around Labor Day, one that led to the best two sales days in the company's history.
There's a Jake Jabs of American Furniture Warehouse, who listed the names of high-profile bankrupt companies in his commercials and pointed to them as reasons consumers should do business with a hometown winner like American.
There's a City Furniture, which continues to ignore the economic blahs with steady same-store sales gains and which is about to unleash new home office and outdoor furniture programs that will no doubt blow the socks off customers.
And if this isn't enough to remind you there are plenty of winners out there, we need to remember the heart of this industry, which is responding to the terrorist attacks with energy and creativity, donating everything from cots to time and money for the victims.
"The main thing is to look after the families that lost people and how this will affect everybody's life forever," real estate expert Julius Feinblum said two days after The World Trade Center toppled. "The business we will replace."
This puts things into perspective for me. I felt small when the world changed Sept. 11. I feel tiny complaining about this hard-luck industry, which overcomes adversity with brainpower and heart.
A few weeks ago, Feinblum participated in an industry event on the Hudson River, a dinner cruise that must have passed by the twin towers at least 10 times that night. On the Wednesday after the attack, the towers were gone. And Chelsea Piers, where the boat embarked, had been converted into a morgue for the bodies being removed from the disaster scene.
"What a difference a week makes," Feinblum said.
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