Get over it! There's no whining in furniture
Ray Allegrezza, Editor in chief -- Furniture Today, January 26, 2003
Anyone who has seen "A League of Their Own," that great movie about the first professional female baseball league during World War II, remembers the moment when manager Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks, looks over at one of his teary-eyed players and tells her, "There is no crying in baseball."
Don Henley, formerly of the rock band The Eagles, said essentially the same thing in the song, "Get Over It."
I think that's good advice for those in our industry who spend more time complaining about the flood of imports than they do attempting to put together an imports strategy. To that group I say: There is no whining in furniture. Get over it. Step up to the plate, take your cuts and put the ball in play.
I know business is spotty. I am aware the consumer is perhaps more fickle and unpredictable than ever, and the only predictable consumer spending pattern may be the no-pattern pattern. Even so, in every market there are factories and stores that not only are hitting their numbers, they're crushing them.
If you are a retail competitor, the question you need to answer is this: What do those guys know that I don't? How is it that, in the same trading area, one store is thriving and the other is floundering?
On the factory side, take two companies distributing essentially the same products at the same price points. One may be going nowhere but up while the other, sad to say, is basically going nowhere. Why?
I believe much of it comes down to knowing what you don't know, then going out and finding out all about it.
Take Wal-Mart. One might argue that it's tougher for a big cat like that to grow in a rough economic climate. Yet while competitors are struggling, the beast from Bentonville is embarking on an amazing expansion from some 3,400 U.S. stores to about 5,000 over the next five years. And it will continue to open stores in China, Brazil and Germany.
I cite Wal-Mart as just one example of a retailer that's scoring and moving forward at a time when competitors are sitting still, or worse.
And in our own backyard, consider Magnussen Home. Of course, they aren't a giant like Wal-Mart, but ask anybody familiar with the company — or better yet talk to Magnussen's employees — and you get a sense of the can-do attitude that's translating directly to the bottom line.
The upbeat attitude of those employees stems from a clearly defined plan, a plan everyone at the company understands and has a role in.
There is still gold in the hills, folks. We just have to dig harder and smarter to find it. But until you put away the handkerchief, swing the pick and break ground, there just ain't no way you're going to hit paydirt.
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