Let's always choose honesty
Ray Allegrezza, Editor in Chief -- Furniture Today, February 15, 2010
With the business being as tough as it has been for so long, it can be pretty easy to feel sorry for ourselves.
And when that happens, the best remedy, at least for me, is to recall a bit of ancient wisdom, “I mourned the fact that I had no shoes until I saw a man with no feet.”
Amen to that, brother. In fact, reading the news reports on Toyota's latest recall — an ongoing public relations nightmare — makes being in the furniture business seem like a walk in the park.
Last week Toyota — the company whose claim to fame has been product safety and reliability — announced its latest recall: some 437,000 Prius cars and other hybrids that have issues with braking.
Earlier, Toyota recalled more than 7 million vehicles globally due to problems with faulty gas pedals and floor mats that can jam gas pedals.
Recalls are nothing new. Carmakers announce them all the time. So, why all the angst at Toyota?
Part of the problem stems from the fact that for years, Toyota set the bar for reliability and product safety. It's been a given that if you want a safe, reliable car, you buy a Toyota.
So, part of the issue is that our illusion — unrealistic as it may have been — of Toyota as infallible, has been compromised.
The other thing, and to my mind far more damaging, is that news reports indicate that Toyota knew of some of the issues and chose not to disclose them to customers.
During the earlier recalls, Akio Toyoda, Toyota's president, was conspicuously unavailable for comment. He was criticized for not seeming sufficiently apologetic and for not having a specific plan of remedy.
Ryuske Itazaki, head of recalls at Japan's Transport Ministry, publicly chastised Toyota for not acting sooner, saying, “If the company had paid more attention to consumers' viewpoints, it could have realized there was a safety problem.”
There's a lesson here for us. Take the word of the late Rose Blumkin of Nebraska Furniture Mart, who sagely advised, “Always tell the truth.”
Granted, consumers don't like bad news. But they like it far less when they feel that you've tried to hide it. Besides, when you adopt that head-in-the-sand attitude, you always leave another part of your anatomy visibly vulnerable.
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