My experience growing a real world, brick and mortar business

[woodguy]

This is a thread to discuss experiences starting and/or growing a business.

There had been some interest in relating my story after I had posted this in Jurollo's "Biggest Accomplishment Thread"

[ QUOTE ]
Taking a $1M/year hardwood distribution business unit bleeding red ink and turning it into a $9.5M unit that is nicely profitable, while helping direct the overall company (7 business units) grow from $30M to $75M while increasing margins 35% (overall 20pts to overall 27pts), all inside a industry that is stupidly price competitive with very little barrier to entry.

Took 6 years for this growth, but by managing overheads my business unit was profitable 3 months after I took it over.

I love wood.

[/ QUOTE ]


In business, like poker, it never hurts to be lucky. I think I have been lucky in 6 (almost 7) years in growing my business, but again like poker, often to have to recognize when luck has struck and act accordingly.

I want to express a few thoughts which I truly believe before getting into the tl;dr part:

1) It is better to have "A" people and a "B" product, than an "A" product and "B" people. I had heard this from a number of sources, including angel investors I have talked with as well as venture capital fund mangers. It is true.

2) Hard work will out perform talent in most cases.

3) In wholesale, if your customer will not let you be the #1 supplier of your type of product, make damn sure you are #2 and are the first call they make when #1 is dropping the ball.

4) Know your customer. Ask your customer what they want, they will tell you.


Note: I ran this post by one of my partners and they asked me to change the names of the businesses. We are a private company and although this info isn't that sensitive, we don't exactly want to advertise it either. I will refer to my business unit as BU and the whole corporation as CORP.

Also, I wrote this 1 day after quitting smoking (again), so it’s quite rambly and not really coherent.


My Background & The Opportunity

I have a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta. I had a job in investment banking lined up coming out of university, but that job was dissolved due to a takeover by the Bank of Montreal and I graduated without a job in a bad economy in 1993. I drove a forklift at night and golfed during the day for about 8 months (went from learning the game to shooting mid-high 80's low 90's that summer) then moved down to Calgary (from Edmonton) without a job, and stumbled into a job in the wood business. I was an honours student in high school. Spent more time partying that studying in University, but still got my degree with average marks.

In August of 1999 I was 27 years old and the Sales Manager of a wood moulding, hardwood lumber, hardwood plywood, and door distributor in Calgary, Alberta. They bought these products from manufacturers and sold them to retailers....pure wholesale. I was made Sales Manager when I was 26 as a reward for good sales work, and to keep me happy. The company I was working for was called Sauder Industries (now split into 3 divisions called Moulding & Millwork, Hardwoods Inc, and a door division whose name escapes me) Sauder is a privately held company by the Sauder family of Vancouver, B.C. It was a very well run, and very profitable company, whose revenues from all divisions are approaching $1 Billion Canadian....and I'm sure 99% of the population has no idea they exist. A significant part of what I had learned in order to run a successful company was learned at Sauder.

Sauder was rapidly expanding into the U.S. through acquisitions. It was let known to me that I was going to move to the U.S. to either run a small branch on my own in a small market, or run a large branch in a larger market in the same building as the division manager (to keep an eye on the new rookie manager). This didn't really appeal to me as I wanted to have a much larger chunk of the profits my efforts produced than were available at Sauder, and Sauder tends to move management around a lot so eventually all you know is your family and the COMPANY.

I was lamenting my impending move to a customer of mine who is one of the partners in CORP. CORP was at the time comprised of 5 retail outlets that specialized in Hardwood flooring & finish materials like doors and mouldings, and two hardwood wholesale outlets. He mentioned that they had a small wholesale hardwood flooring unit back in Edmonton that had revenues of $1M/yr but was bleeding red ink and had no real management in place. I didn't really want to live in Edmonton (still don't [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ), but thought I'd be dumb to not even look at the opportunity so I went up and looked at the business with my Dad (who still lived in Edmonton at the time and was retired from being an owner/operator of a drywall business, and then later owning a piece of real estate franchise and also being an agent).

The business was pathetic. There was no real management, and there was a total of 3 staff - that mostly read the paper and played ball hockey in the warehouse. There was no direction, little understanding of the market, and no customer base. On the other hand, it had no where else to go but up [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I also thought that if these guys can get $1M/yr in revenue, then imagine what was available with a concerted effort?

I had no idea about the hardwood flooring business, but I did know about business to business wholesale sales. I knew the prospects for Alberta were very positive. They were just starting to exploit the oilsands in Northern Alberta and there were starting to be multi-billion dollar commitments to build plants to extract the oil from the sand. (The oil in the sand in Northern Alberta is the second largest oil deposit on earth, next to the Persian Gulf...Google it, its pretty interesting stuff) These billions would filter down to Edmonton and Calgary and heat the economy, so the economy looked good, but I still didn't know about industry. So I did some fact finding.

What I found out about the industry wasn't too appealing for a wholesaler. Hardwood was still a minority when it came to floor coverings choices, and a lot of flooring stores were just starting to sell it. Most of the market was owned by the hardwood specialist stores and hardwood contractors. Most of the hardwood specialist stores didn't buy a lot through wholesale, but rather bought directly from hardwood flooring mills and sold directly to the public or the builder. So basically the ways that hardwood flooring got to the end user looked like this:

1) Hardwood Flooring Mill--------->Retailer----------------->Homeowner
2) Hardwood Flooring Mill--------->Retailer----------------->Builder------------->Homeowner
3) Hardwood Flooring Mill--------->Wholesaler------------>Retailer------------>Homeowner
4) Hardwood Flooring Mill--------->Wholesaler------------>Retailer------------>Builder------------->Homeowner

There are more Hardwood Flooring mills than there are wholesalers or retailers who have the funds and storage and volume to buy direct, so there are always mills with no representation in your market. If a mill cannot get good representation from a wholesaler, they sell direct to retailers.
There is essentially no barrier to entry, except that of money. If you have $50K you can buy a truckload of flooring from any number of mills that are not represented in your market and either be a wholesaler or retailer tomorrow. This happens often and usually the start up goes broke, but some make it. This also allows a number of traditionally non-flooring companies, mostly well financed lumber yards and Home Improvement stores, to buy hardwood flooring from mills and sell direct to the end user as well.

So after investigating the market I was turned off, wholesale prospects looked bleak....yet these guys managed to get $1M/yr...How and why? I called and talked to a number of current customers and heard the same story, "BU seems to have good products and can usually get them when I need them, and the price is fair". This heartened me a little, so I then spent a day in the public library and wrote down the name & number of every prospective full line flooring retailer (not wood specialists) in Northern Alberta (about 100 at the time) and called/planned to call all of them and ask:

1) How much Hardwood Flooring do you sell? Do you see this going up or down?
2) How much of what you sell do you buy from wholesale distribution?
3) What products or services do you want from your current suppliers that you do not current receive?
4) Would you consider adding products from BU to your current line up of hardwood?

The answers I received were generally (I stopped after about 25 calls):

1) "We are selling a healthy amount of wood every day and wish we knew more about it because the trend is up."
2) "We buy all our wood from distribution. We do not sell enough to buy direct, or have no desire to tie up funds and go through the hassles of buying direct."
3) "There is little expertise, poor inventory, and average quality products from our current suppliers."
4) "Who is BU?"....or worse, "I wouldn't buy from them, they are my competitor."

So there was a lot of good news, but also some bad news.

The good news was that there seemed to be enough of a market in #3 & #4 ways of hardwood getting to the end user that a good wholesaler could exist, and this market was growing. It was also good news that this segment of the business was under serviced. I had retailers, who didn't know me at all, telling me very good information without too much prodding.

They needed some good suppliers in the market.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the biggest potential market for me was the #4 way the consumers get hardwood flooring. Many new home construction builders like to buy all their flooring from one supplier so they have a bigger hammer to swing when it came to negotiations, service etc. A fair chunk of the builder market is supplied via the #2 way of getting wood to the consumer, but the majority is still #4. This is what allows my business to exist.

The bad news was that BU was viewed by some retailers as a competitor. BU is a division of CORP, which is one of those Specialty Hardwood retailers that I mentioned earlier, who take hardwood flooring to market direct from the mills (the #1 & #2 ways that hardwood goes to market). CORP has a large store in Edmonton that competes directly with a lot of BU customers. BU also was selling some builders and a little retail, and some of my prospective customers who knew this had no desire to support a business that competes with them.

After digesting all this information, I still came back to one thought. They had still managed to get $1M/yr in revenues, and the breakeven point (after I tinker with overheads a bit) was probably 1.4M at current margins; everything after that would be gravy. I was young and single and it seemed like a reasonable opportunity. If I failed I could easily find another job in wholesale and start the career climb again. The percentage of flooring that was hardwood was increasing, the economy looked good, and I would be joining a company that had solid long term suppliers. I decided to do it.


We agreed to a deal in November of 1999, but I didn't take over until April of 2000 because of two things. Sauder paid bonuses once a year, in January and I was in line for about $17K (my salary was 53K). I offered to quit immediately if my employers would match the bonus...but they said they could wait [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] So once my bonus check cleared, I resigned from Sauder. They tried like hell to keep me and even asked that I stay on an extra month to help with the transition of a purchase they made in Baltimore. I said okay and ended up counting inventory in Martinsburg, West Virginia in the middle of an ice storm in February...yay! I did have some amazing pork ribs one night when we traveled to the Cork Street Tavern in Winchester, Virginia. Highlight of the whole trip.

Growing the Business

I started by checking in with all of my current customers to see if I could grow the business they were currently doing with us. This would be the path of least resistance, and in order to get the business out of the red I needed to pick off all the low hanging fruit in a hurry. During this time I also worked the phones with my list of 100 prospective customers and set up appointments to see all of them.

The immediate resistance that I got from the a lot current customers is that they didn't want to do more business with us because they saw us as a competitor. They only bought from us what they had to when they were in a jam. They saw us as a competitor because of our association with CORP and the fact that BU would pretty much sell to anyone who asked. I came from a pure wholesale background, so one of my first actions was to stop all sales to anyone who was not a retailer or professional flooring installer, and trumpet this fact to all the retailers in town. So basically one of the first steps I took towards profitability was to cut off about 25% of our current customers [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

This was essential to getting the trust of the retailers.

It’s difficult to convey in writing, but it was really tough to get my customers’ trust. No one believed me to start. I was the 3rd manager this business had in a year, and none of them had changed the business. I had to explain who I was and where I came from, as well as my vision of pure wholesale. Slowly but surely some retailers came around and started buying from us on a regular basis. We detailed every order and set out (and achieved) to service our customers better than all of our competitors. Lucky for us it wasn't too tough to out perform our competitors. Wood flooring was "new" to the other flooring distributors and they didn't really understand it. The few that did understand it, and do a reasonable job, were not well managed and were complacent. They were not tough targets to knock off once I had some trust.

In the early days, every single enquiry was followed up with a call by me, and then a sales call in person. It was so crucial to get my foot in the door that I took every opening, no matter how small. The relationships have to start somewhere, and I was determined to make good impressions and build from there.

I remember one day we had a call out of the blue from a store that I did not know. They needed to fill an order another wholesaler had dropped that ball on, and the only thing I had to show them was a big 3ftx5ft floor sample that I could barely get into my car.

When I showed up at their shop with this giant sample (most samples are 10”x18”) the owner just shook his head and laughed. In the ensuing years, this customer has bought more wood from me than any other customer. I now fly him and his wife to Vegas every year and put them up at the Mirage in a suite every year for the Surfaces flooring show to show my appreciation for their substantial and hassle free business.


BU only sold wood, and the staff I inherited had good product knowledge and had been in the industry for a few years, which put us miles ahead of most competitors. The staff I got was actually pretty damn good. They needed direction, but they essentially were good people. I opened the books to them and showed that we were not profitable, and then immediately put them all on a profit sharing plan [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] They would have every reason to make sure they worked hard, and it worked. I inherited 3 staff, but that was one too many, so early on I had to let the warehouse guy go, which left me and 2 other guys.

The structure of the wholesale arm of CORP at the time was the operation in Calgary which had revenues of about 5M/yr and the Edmonton operation with revenues of 1M/yr. The Calgary revenues were almost exclusively from selling unfinished wood and finishes to professional installers. They did not sell much at all to the retail market. The professional installer market in Edmonton was, and is, much small than it is in Calgary, so in order to produce profit I had to concentrate selling pre-finished wood flooring to retail outlets. This market was brand new to both my business unit and the Calgary branch, so I had some tools, but I was starting from scratch.

The Biggest Problem I had to Overcome

Initially I was selling the same brands wholesale that the CORP retail store was selling. CORP was selling them cheap too.

In order to get our key brands removed from CORP stores my partners insisted we had to increase the wholesale sales until they were 50% of total brand sales for all divisions.

This was a huge mountain to climb, but after about 2 years, we did it. Once we had brand exclusivity through wholesale, the sales really started to heat up.

I had initially written about 2 pages about this struggle with brands and CORP stores, but it was a terrible read so I axed it. Basically, this was one of the toughest things I had ever accomplished and the day we removed our key brand from CORP stores is one of the best days of my life.


Increasing Profitability

Once our key line was out of CORP stores we had the ability to raise our prices without worrying about CORP retail. We couldn't just raise our prices at will - we still needed to stay at or near the market. This is where all your hard work and branding come into play though. If you are good at what you do, you can ask a little bit more for your product than your competitors. We are, on average, about 3% higher on our prices than our competitors. That may not seem like much but when your revenues are 30M, that's almost 1M of pure profit dollars. Not everyone can ask for more, but if you consistently supply a very good product, and give good service on this product, then you become a supplier of choice and your customers do not grind you on price nearly as much.

So every time we had a price increase (or decrease) from our suppliers, we would add 1% in there for ourselves. Over the last 6 years we have gone from having a 15% average margin for the 3 wholesale divisions to 22% average margin. (competitors going broke during that time helps margins too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

If you are good at what you do, you can ask for more than your competitors do for similar products. If you know the market well, you can get 5%+ over your competitors, and that’s all profit.

I was the driving force behind our entry in the Chinese flooring market. We were one of the first companies in North American to exploit the cheaply made Chinese products. Chinese and other Asian hardwood products had come and gone before in our market, but about 5 years ago we started seeing more and more Chinese mills come on line, so we did our research and aligned ourselves with some of the better companies over there. By being one of the first in, we were also able so set the market. The Chinese products average cost about $3 where a comparable North American product cost $4-$5. Many companies would take these cheaper products and try to make a long dollar from them, but we had a different vision.

We knew that soon many of our competitors would have these products so we set the bar LOW for margin. We sold these products for only about 20pts wholesale, and 30pts through retail CORP stores. You may think we have left $$$ on the table, and we have left a little, but what we have also done is make this product not that attractive for other wholesales (to keep competition disinterested), and more importantly, create an image in the mind of the consumer that these Chinese products are cheap (which they are).

This strategy has helped CORP stores get both a margin and market share gain, and has kept them in a dominate position for low priced hardwood flooring.

So now when we combined our domestic sources on solid hardwood along with our import sources, we were able to create a good, better, best type of offerings at both the retail and wholesale divisions of the company. When you can have different products at all the price points all at healthy margins, it helps to keep your margins from eroding on all of your lines. If a certain price is needed, you just direct the customer to the line which fits the $$$, rather than take less margin to get a sale.

The overall effect of this raised the wholesale margins from 15pts to 22 pts (all divisions), and the retail margins from 25pts to 31pts (all divisions). If you blend all these #'s, the overall margin for the company went from 20pts to 27pts. All while over doubling the size of the overall business.

A lot of this seems just like its common sense, but when you are inside of it trying to build it, it’s not as easy as it looks.

It’s a balance of being competitive to market, while maximizing your margin, while keeping the margins low enough to not invite competitors…….yeah, its simple.

Having good business partners

I'm not referring to my actual partners, but our suppliers.

It’s all well and good to have a quality company that is great on service, etc, etc...But if you do not have good products when your customers need them, then your life will be much more difficult than it needs to be.

All wholesalers struggle with their suppliers....after all, if it was easy, then everyone would do it right?

The CORP has been in business for over 25 years now, and I was lucky to be able to take advantage of their expertise in having the right suppliers. We have some of the best quality lines from the most reliable suppliers, and for that I am eternally grateful.

I see a lot of start ups and new competitors just grab the first available mill and start to promote them in our market. It can be frustrating because often they come in cheap to make a splash, but I have learned to just wait it out because inevitably you start hearing stories about stock shortages, poor product etc.

I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation:

My customer: "Hey woodguy, can match Competitors X's price on Product Y?"
Woodguy: "Why do I need to match?
MC - "Well they are $4, and you are $4.50"
WG - "So why aren't you buying it from them?"
MC - "…umm, well...they are out for a month, and I need it next week"
WG - "You can have it next week, but I need $4.50 ok, my stuff costs a little more, but that's what I have to pay to have a supplier who delivers."
MC - "Can't you come down a little?'
WG - "Ok, I'll come down to $4.40, but that’s it, ok? It’s easy to have a cheap price if you never have to deliver on it."
MC - "Ok, here's your PO."

As a wholesaler I will pay more for a good product that I can always get than I will for a great product that has a poor fill rate from the supplier. In fact, I just won't do business with the "great product" supplier.


Keys for a healthy business

Relationships with Customers - This is most important aspect to our business. I have a very good business relationship with all the key accounts. I have worked hard to get their trust over the years, and I never betray that trust. Your reputation is hard earned and easily lost, so protect it with your integrity. I am often the first call when my customers have any questions regarding wood flooring, even if they know I do not sell the particular product that they need. Often they just want my opinion. This is gold.

Cash flow/Receivables - Your bank likes to see healthy cash flow and when you run a wholesale business you are often selling your product on credit accounts. On average my division has about $700K in receivables outstanding at any given time. My target is for 95% of that money to be "current", which means that the bill isn't due yet on that $$$. This can be a struggle, but I firmly believe that more attention that you pay towards keeping your receivables current, the more current they will be. This is important because the bank grades you on your receivables. The more current you keep your receivables, the better the rate you get from your bank and the more $$$ they let you have at that rate. We train our sales staff to think "no sale is a sale until it is paid for". By making the sales people accountable for collecting on their sales, they become involved in making good financial decisions for your company.

This is where I see most start ups in my business fail. Remember that you can buy $50K worth of hardwood at any given time and be in business tomorrow. What many people do not get is that if you sell that $50K and have to wait 90days to get your $$$, you really need $150K just for inventory, plus you have opportunity costs on leaving your $50K out there without making any interest on it etc.

The easiest customer to get, and therefore the one that start ups often sell to first, is the one that never pays their bills on time. This is a trap that many fall into. If you are starting a new company that sells on credit, be very careful to get a good credit profile on your customers. It can hurt when you have to tell someone that you can't let them buy more stuff from you until they pay for what they already took, but it will save you from going bankrupt....or at the very least save you from higher bank charges.

Inventory - Turning the inventory is the key to making $$$ wholesale. Think of it this way.....If you have $50K for inventory your goal should be to sell and replace about $40K of it per month. Your $$$ goes out, you get paid, make you profit, then you get to turn your initial investment, plus the profit into more inventory (after paying the bills), rinse repeat. (Notice that you have to get paid on time for all this to work [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ) I see so many companies load up on inventories that do not sell, which then bogs down the whole process, ties up cash, and turns a good company to a money loser, even if sales are healthy.

We run about $750K in inventory for $9.5M sales at 20.5pts margin at my location. So we sell $7.5M cost worth of stuff a year, yet we only have to have $750K for inventory because we turn that inventory 10 times per year.

If you are only getting 5 turns a year and you need to sell $7.5M cost of inventory, then you have to have $1.5M just for inventory.....its simple math, but very smart people seem to ignore it, or be unaware of it. Holding costs can suffocate your business.

Good sales volume =! Good profit unless you are managing your inventory and receivables properly. Most competitors that I have seen go broke have had good sales figures. They lost their money on dead inventory or bad credit risks.


Keeping overheads low - I never spend any $$$ unless I know it will make me money. This doesn't make me cheap, just frugal. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] My staff makes more than industry average (way more in a couple of spots), but they earn every cent. I have a total of 9 staff (including myself) which is about 1 staff/$1Million Sales. The industry average is $500K/staff. I have to add at least one more person, but my staff isn't afraid of working hard because they see the result in their profit sharing checks. The other overheads are pretty basic, building, fixed assets etc. We have average monthly sales of almost $800K, and our current break even point is $450K.

People – A key to any business, and also your largest cost. Screw up on people and your business is dead. I have made one main error with people. I hired a salesman who was more talk than action, and by the time I had this figured out he had been with me for 18 months. He picked off some easy business that we didn’t have, but never worked hard on growing the business. I had flat revenues when you compare 2004 & 2005. He (and therefore me) was the reason. I spent a good amount of time finding his replacement and it has paid off.


Revenue Review

Some are going to ask, so here are my revenues from the last full year before I took over until today, along with the overall margin.

1999- 1,188,694 16.5% Margin The last full year before I took over.
2000- 1,473,408
2001- 2,745,021
2002- 3,582,007
2003- 4,767,844
2004- 5,908,555
2005- 6,182,435
2006- 7,295,096
2007- 9,500,000 (projected, only 2 months left on the year) 21.5 Margin


After I cut 25% of the customer base in 2000, we had to work just to get sales back to where they were, but it worked out well in the long run, I think…….


I just read what I wrote and its easy to see that this post has become far too long, and risks becoming more boring than it already is.

I also deleted the whole section on how I helped direct the CORP stores to increasing their sales and profitability as it was bogged down in minutea which doesn't read well. Ask if you are curious.

I'm just going to stop it here.

I hope this post is a good jumping off point for some discussions.

Regards,
Woodguy

[7ontheline]

Very interesting read, thanks. When you started out were you working a ton of hours a week? Also, with regards to personnel, what traits have you found to be predictive of success? Obviously you want someone smart and hard-working, but what do you look for when you're searching for people that tells you that will be the case?

[Shitabyss]

Great post, and a great addition to what seems to be a series of good threads exploring the early stages of doing/building/etc business. Relevant to so many posters here myself included. Thanx Woodguy, and Diablo as well for quickly turning this into a non-poker forum on twoplustwo where gems aren't one in a bagillion. I like it.

[matt2500]

Woodguy, great post. I, too, was involved in a business that went from very small to very large, and can identify with a number of your points.

Fortunately, so could our founder. I completely agree with the points you make about hiring smart people. From the time I joined, the hiring mantra was 'hire people that are smarter than you.' Especially in a rapidly growing business, this is key. Smart people can adapt and figure things out for themselves. You can fill positions from within, and not take huge training hits. This upward mobility inside the company leads to high morale as people achieve their career goals, or (as happened often at my company) discover career goals when they'd just come in off the street looking for a temp job originally.

Hiring an average achiever can be even worse than hiring a flat-out dud. A crummy employee is usually quickly identified and can be removed, where the guy who's just sliding along, getting the minimum done but no more, tends to get entrenched. Opportunities that a smarter, harder-working person would jump on are missed. This is true at every level of a business. If the hourly warehouse guys or accounts-payable folks who just review invoices are all whip-smart and looking for a better job, you'd be amazed at the things they point out.

[woodguy]

[ QUOTE ]
When you started out were you working a ton of hours a week?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, somewhere between 60hr - 70hrs. Now I pretty much work 7 AM - 4PM or 5 PM. Mon-Fri. More when I have to, but that's not too often anymore.

[ QUOTE ]
with regards to personnel, what traits have you found to be predictive of success?

[/ QUOTE ]

The desire to succeed and the willingness to work at it.

None of my staff have anything past high school education, but that's the reality of this business. It doesn't look like something you would want to do when you come out of university.

[ QUOTE ]
Obviously you want someone smart and hard-working, but what do you look for when you're searching for people that tells you that will be the case?

[/ QUOTE ]

Have converstations with them about who they are, what they have done, what they like to do in their spare time. When I interview its more of a conversation than an "interview".

The quality of their questions for me are also a decent guide.

Regards,
Woodguy

[woodguy]

[ QUOTE ]
This is true at every level of a business. If the hourly warehouse guys or accounts-payable folks who just review invoices are all whip-smart and looking for a better job, you'd be amazed at the things they point out.

[/ QUOTE ]

So true.

You are right about the average acheivers too, they can really be a drag on morale for the guys putting in the effort. Keep the guys who make you money happy can be a full time job itself.

Regards,
Woodguy

[El Diablo]

woodguy,

"how I helped direct the CORP stores to increasing their sales and profitability ... Ask if you are curious."

Asking.

I'll write up a similar growing a business account for this thread when I get a chunk of time.

[crazy canuck]

Thanks for taking the time to write this up....insightful story.

So when you called up the 25 stores, how come they provided info to a potential competitor? Would you answer if somebody called you with the info?

[woodguy]

[ QUOTE ]
Asking.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sure.

I'll have some time Wed or Thurs, will post it soon.

Regards,
Woodguy

[woodguy]

[ QUOTE ]

So when you called up the 25 stores, how come they provided info to a potential competitor? Would you answer if somebody called you with the info?

[/ QUOTE ]

When I called up and told them that I was currently a sales manager for Sauder, but was thinking about entering the wholesale hardwood business and asked if I could ask them some questions.

Eventually we would get to the part where they asked "So, Sauder is entering wood flooring?", and I would then tell them I was looking at buy 50% of BU....that's when I would get their opinion on BU, usually unasked [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

There were some who were hesitant to share any info, but most were fairly forthcoming.

Regards,
Woodguy