Billings, Mont. — Conlin's Furniture is becoming a professionally managed retailer while at the same time holding onto many hallmarks of a family-owned and run enterprise.
President Joe Conlin, son of one of the 17-store chain's four founders, said the transition comes after a long entrepreneurial stage that stretches back to 1965, when Ed, John, Clem and Frank Conlin opened a furniture store in Bismarck, N.D., and lasted until 2000, when Joe teamed with GERS to bring the company into the era of 21st-century technology.
"We had to figure out how to conquer the distance," Conlin said, referring to the 900 miles separating the company's easternmost Bismarck unit and its store in Kalispell, Mont., the farthest west. "We are in four of the least-populated but largest states in the country. It made it very difficult to have any time sense in our business, both with our employees and in quantitative terms."
Tapping the 'benefits of size'
Conlin set out simultaneously to develop a senior management team more in touch with the far-flung stores, and a sophisticated computer system that could give the team planning, budgeting, forecasting and customer relationship management, or CRM, capabilities.
"We needed to get the benefits of size, sharing the workload and creating more functional expertise," Conlin said. "But our modernizing couldn't dilute or detract from our great legacy of customer service," a legacy Conlin says is part of the organization's DNA.
The Conlin's GERS system is heavily customized, and it co-exists with a desktop computing system that Conlin spearheaded the development of for better decision support. The IT infrastructure, now complete, has "significantly" boosted gross profit margins, though Conlin declines to share specifics, and it informed a near-total makeover of the chain's product assortment (see related story).
Also improved since 2000 is the productivity ratio per employee, in part a reflection of better knowledge among sales associates about why products cost what they do. This pricing credibility, enabled by better, faster information, has made Conlin's salespeople far more efficient, said Lollie Ray, the chain's controller.
"They can now share knowledge," said Ray, who has worked for the Billings-based chain for a quarter-century. "There is much better communication throughout the organization."
Better information and faster communication of that information has shortened delivery times. From about ten days, deliveries now are promised within a week and they often require only three days.
The improved performance of salespeople is an emblem for the two-pronged approach to becoming a professionally managed enterprise — information technology combined with good personnel.
"We've always had the good people," Ray said. "We weren't flailing out there (before the transformation), but we knew there was probably a smarter way to do things."
Before the Joe Conlin-led changes, the company operated much like any traditional mom-and-pop operation, Ray said. The situation in 2003 is much different. The chain's 17 stores are centrally fed by a Bismarck warehouse running on a sophisticated IT system.
Part of the people-side of the solution was moving from mostly autonomous stores in far-flung locations to a district management approach, a switch that took effect in January of this year.
Three district managers now coordinate the Conlin's message and they make sure the 17 different floors are merchandised appropriately for what are three very different markets. What sells in the Midwestern Dakotas probably will not perform as well in Kalispell, where large, lodge-style homes attract California transplants in great numbers.
"It would take us four months to change our (upholstery) colors," Ray said of pre-2000 norms. "With the district managers in the stores guiding them, keeping them on track, we're always tweaking the floors throughout the company."
Rapid response
Conlin said the new management approach helps the chain solve another paradox — accomplishing central merchandise planning while enabling rapid responses to changes in demand at any one store location.
The district management approach also has helped each store's employees feel more a part of the Conlin's team effort and more in touch with Billings, which previously found itself referred to disdainfully as "corporate."
"It's no different than with kids," said Vicky Mading, district manager for the eight western stores and a long-time Conlin's employee. "When you give them attention, they grow. We were stunting our own growth."
Mading, who re-joined the chain last year, is typical of the three district managers in at least one respect. In addition to responsibilities for her eight stores, mostly in Montana, Mading has a dual role — product buyer in the chain's buying-by-committee process. Justin McCollough, a district manager hired in August this year, also has dual roles. McCollough coordinates the chain's sales training, a critical function complicated by the unusual geographic distances separating Conlin's locations.
A hands-on team
Maintaining a lean top management team is a part of the Conlin's formula.
"No one says, 'That's not my job,' " said Ray, who in her 25 years has driven delivery trucks, sold on the floor, worked in the warehouse and managed a store.
For Joe Conlin, the store's current corporate evolution seems ideally suited to his background and capabilities. His father, Ed Conlin, and former president Paul Gunville were entrepreneurs.
"They created it," said Joe Conlin, a certified public accountant and controller for most of his professional life. "I couldn't have done that.
"I am pretty good, though, at general management, control, finance."
Gunville retired in 2000. Joe Conlin, who had served as the merchant's chief financial officer since 1994, when he moved back to the family business from NBC Television, took over as president.
Conlin readily confesses that he is not a furniture man, having never been in the family business until 1994. He does not pick fabrics or frames, leaving product decisions to "furniture people" like Jim Beneke, also a district manager. A veteran of 34 years with the company, Beneke directed the overhaul of Conlin's' product assortment.
"It's exciting," Conlin said of the transition. "I really like the people we have. I like just being around them. I think they like being here."
