A Dirty Little Secret

I have a dirty little secret. (Actually, I have several, but common sense and propriety dictate that I keep the others to myself.)

I like to move furniture.

And I'm not talking about moving it out the back doors of Schewel's fifty-one retail stores after it's been purchased (but not necessarily paid for, since Schewel finances over 80% of those purchases), although that's what keeps me in business. I'm talking about schlepping (as my grandfather would say, and often do): shifting, sliding, rolling, and carrying sofas, chairs, beds, mattresses, and tables around inside those stores, sometimes with a little help, more often without -- in a pathological exhibition of the pleasures of solitude, although there is an ulterior motive to this madness, which will be disclosed in good time.

Such a revelation will no doubt confirm the assessment of a brutally honest friend who, after reading my last blog and noting my consumption of 2500 books, accosted me at the Country Club a few nights ago and called me a "sick man."

In response to which I maintain: Work and play are relative terms. Or as more felicitously expressed by the proverbial rationalist: One man's meat is another man's poison.

Some people's passionate retreat is their kitchen -- a place as cold and foreign to me as the Antarctic continent where my eighty-four-year-old mother has now flown to escape winter's wrath -- where they delight in the preparation of culinary masterpieces for their family and friends.

Others rejoice in the seeding, nurturing, and maturation of luxuriant plant life, whether it be of the aesthetically-pleasing or utilitarian-nutritional variety.

Closely related are those who find fulfillment in the exquisitely manicured, habitually fertilized, and faithfully watered lawns and shrubs gracing their private domains, the maintenance of which I abhor with a vengeance and have gratefully consigned to a professional service -- for a steep price.

And, of course, I would be egregiously remiss if I omitted from this catalogue of leisure-time dilettantes the superabundant roster of those who revel in more competitive pursuits, like golf or tennis -- both of which I, lacking the prerequisite hand-eye coordination, abandoned long ago -- or in stalking (and slaying) the gentle (and elusive) four-legged, two-winged, scaly-backed fauna of field, air, and stream.

All of these aversions I blame on my gene pool. I never saw my father cook a meal, tend a garden, operate a lawn mower, or wield a rifle or fishing rod.

Compared to these rather tedious activities, how much more compelling, invigorating, and satisfying it is to immerse oneself in a little manual labor and perfect a furniture store display -- at least according to my own creative standards. And since I am the owner, few dare question my design predilections.

The process goes something like this.

I pass through the portals of the store I have chosen to bless with my presence that day somewhat apprehensive about the encounter that lies ahead -- as skittish as a newly-divorced sixty-something going on a first date. In what condition will I find the lucky lady? To be fair, most of my managers keep their displays neat, clean, and orderly, minimally accessorized (to avoid shrinkage as well as breakage, particularly by a rampaging bull from the corporate office), with merchandise soldiered up (as in drill formation -- the way we like it) by category -- upholstery groupings, bedrooms, and dining sets territorily segregated like schoolchildren from a bygone era. But our loosely-disciplined (or entrepreneurially-spirited, as some prefer) system does pose minor challenges.

Schewel managers are not furnished a professionally-designed graphic floor plan for their stores -- a template to which they can refer for the placement of merchandise. While most make an honest effort to maintain the display that was set at the store's opening or during an extreme makeover, not only are they granted the freedom to alter it, they must also add, subtract, and reshuffle, like a gin rummy player, as merchandise moves on and off the floor, the new pieces not always fitting the space vacated by the old. As a result, like an army corps breaking ranks, the display tends to deteriorate, to lose its edge -- at least in the eye of one very important beholder.

In other words, it's passable -- just not the way I like it.

Next, like a quarterback crouched in the shotgun dissecting his opponents' defensive alignment, I survey the floor, evaluating the situation, formulating a plan, determining just how much furniture I want to move in the four or five hours remaining that day. Because I always adhere to two strict rules. Don't start until you know where you are going to end up, lest you subject yourself to painful and time-consuming backtracking. And always finish the job, because, if you don't, the untidy corner you leave behind can spoil all your well-intentioned efforts.

In the face of this daunting task, I am teased with the provocative thought: How much easier would it be to print off a computer report or two, hoist a heavy stack of papers, scatter a few well-deserved compliments, offer the manager some positive feedback -- and then high-tail it back out the front door with clean hands and unsullied clothing. But, girding my strength, steeling my nerves, conquering my inertia, I march boldly back to the warehouse, grab a two-wheeled hand truck -- for toting sofas, loveseats, and chests of drawers (the rest of the stuff has to be dragged or pushed across the floor) -- and move that first piece of furniture. And suddenly the energy starts to flow; the pace quickens; the vision clarifies; the stress dissipates.

Although a helper is usually available, often I choose to work alone -- provided the quantities and weight are manageable -- for two reasons. First, anxious to impress the owner, these eager beavers are just too quick to grab the end of a sofa, which necessitates me lifting the other end, whereas it's much less strenuous to push it a short distance or roll it on the hand truck to a more distant destination. Secondly, these impetuous fellows are always anticipating the next move or placement, requiring me to slow them down or follow in their wake to rearrange an item.

I'm not a decorator or designer -- and don't claim to be able to create scintillating displays. I'm just a compulsive furniture store owner who likes to see the merchandise in his stores square and trim, lined up like soldiers in full-dress review, with broad straight aisles and no unsightly naked dresser backs exposed. And it gives me a sense of accomplishment to see disorder transformed into perfection -- if only for a few days.

And I guess there are points to be earned when the boss deigns to dirty himself performing manual labor in front of and alongside his employees.

The truth is I've been moving furniture for over forty years.

What's a teenager to do when his father informs him the first summer he's old enough to obtain a permit that he's going to work? He lacks the self-confidence to sell, to small-talk his way past his woeful ignorance of furniture style, finish, and construction. Even if he wasn't flustered and intimidated by the brassy women he would be working with, by the time he learned any of the paperwork, his seasonal stint would be over. His mathematical proficiency is wasted since the store lacks even a rudimentary inventory control system.

Abandoned to his own resources, cast adrift in a sea of sofas, he aimlessly wanders the upper floors of this four-story furniture store until he is drawn into the orbit of his polar opposite, a black, glib, illiterate dandy named Henry Jackson, who, when not regaling him with salacious tales of his sexual exploits, instructs him in the finer points of floor display and stock management.

In those days, the Schewel store in Downtown Lynchburg used unfinished space attached to its third and fourth floors to warehouse upholstery. Once or twice a day during those sweltering summer months Henry and I would maneuver four-wheeled dollies topped with sofabeds and two-piece living room suites (sofas and chairs only, no loveseats) in close-out covers (the factory picked them, which saved a few dollars of cost) out of the freight elevator (into which they had been rolled by another crew manning the loading dock several floors below) and into the warehouse.

Once the truck had been unloaded, since my father insisted the display floor be packed with as much merchandise as possible, we immediately went to work: bolting the arms to the sofabeds, screwing on the legs (when we could find the holes, which were often buried beneath multiple layers of cloth undercoating), ripping off the heavy brown wrapping paper (which seemed to be attached to the frames with more staples than the upholstery); tearing loose the fabric cords holding the cushions in place, and then wheeling the presentable product onto the floor. Henry delighted in its proper placement, which involved ingenuity, patience, and labor, since often several pieces had to be scrambled to make room for the new ones.

Every morning Henry (and I) walked the three upper display floors, searching for the odious vacancy -- left behind when a salesman may have moved an item to accommodate a customer or the "shipping department" (not us; we were "warehouse") craftily whisked away a sold order without notifying us. We exercised our own brand of chicanery, studiously avoiding my grandfather, "Mr. Ben" Schewel, who had his own ideas about store display and was always chasing Henry to help him implement them.

Things hadn't changed much by the time I went to work for Schewel full time (though temporarily, that is, until a better opportunity came along) -- except I received a promotion. I was supposed to sell -- a higher calling than moving furniture -- but since my interpersonal skills had only marginally improved -- despite four years at Washington and Lee University and one teaching English at Appomattox County High School -- I availed myself of the perquisite of being the boss's son (and later the boss) and gravitated to doing what I liked: maintaining the floor display (My biggest issues were where to place loveseats, since we didn't carry that many and they took up a lot of space, and whether to set up beds with mattresses and box springs or simply bolt the headboards and footboards together with a clever device known as a "short-rail"); tagging merchandise (which allowed me to become more familiar with it); and managing inventory, trying to keep up with what was selling (a futile effort, since inventory control consisted of marking off numbers on the price tag as stock was sold, a system fraught with errors, as it depended on the diligence and reliability of the salesperson).

Pacing the floors, contemplating my career, inspired by my Washington and Lee Phi Beta Kappa education, I began to imagine that there must be a better way. If, through some judicious buying decisions, we could identify a core group of items that sold well, we could stock those in our warehouse and sell them repeatedly, thus eliminating the need to shuffle our floor display constantly. Without accurate inventory control, this process would depend on considerable guesswork, but at least it would be an improvement and conserve valuable muscle power and time.

Such a system was not rocket science and, in fact, was already in operation on a limited basis. As my father began delegating purchasing authority to me, I endeavored to refine the strategy. I made mistakes, of course, like buying twelve of a quilted floral print Early American living room suite on which I had no sales history and watching them sit idle like cars in a traffic jam month after month.

In 1976, after six years cutting my teeth in the Lynchburg store, my father put me on the road supervising five stores in the Shenandoah Valley. Suddenly, I had not just one display floor to look after; I had a whole handful. A world of painful pleasure lay before me.

At least twice a month I made the circuit -- Harrisonburg to Luray to Winchester to Front Royal to Culpeper -- meeting with managers (all of whom had at least ten years experience on me); discussing personnel issues; perusing recently sold sales contracts; writing orders; reviewing newspaper ads; checking out warehouses; and, yes, changing floor displays to make them more attractive -- to me.

Furniture is big, bulky, and perishable, that is, easily damaged, all of which requires high cubic foot off-site storage facilities, competent assembly, repair, and preparation personnel, and efficient delivery service to the customer. It is a business in which logistics -- moving the product -- is the critical component, although, as you might imagine, the most desirable logistical system is the one that moves that product the least and minimizes changing the floor displays -- by the owner or anyone else. In my forty years with the company, Schewels has made tremendous improvement in this area, yet its system still lacks the sophistication of other high volume operations.

Two practices which today are taken for granted were no less than revolutionary -- and like many revolutions stridently opposed -- when they were instituted thirty years ago: a uniform selection or line-up of merchandise for sale in all stores, and centralized warehousing and distribution. Before their advent, Schewel managers took great pride in choosing the particular upholstery or bedroom groups they wanted to carry (or some did; I suspect others merely asked the manufacturer's representative what his peer down the road was buying) and in determining the appropriate quantities of each to stock -- a matter in which, it is safe to say, judgment varied considerably.

But as Schewel grew from twelve stores in 1976 to twenty-five in 1986, and as business increased in each location, the impracticality and limitations of stores operating as independent entities became obvious to even the most hidebound traditionalist. Some were probably relieved when the responsibility for making bad buying decisions was lifted off their shoulders. That now became the burden of the boss's son, who once again boldly exercised his prerogative of being able to do what he liked: pick out furniture for his stores.

While a standardized line-up simplified the buying process and allowed the company to produce print advertisements featuring merchandise supposedly on display in all stores, the permanence of that display and the availability of best-sellers were still dependent upon managerial discretion and the spatial restrictions of each warehouse. Thus, the next step in the company's logistical evolution was the establishment of distribution centers which were capable of receiving and storing large truckload shipments and then transferring sold or stock items to individual stores as necessary.

For a time Schewel operated three strategically-placed distribution centers, actually three large warehouses, two of which served the company's biggest markets, Lynchburg and Danville, while a third building was purchased in Harrisonburg.

This arrangement enabled stores to "nail down" their samples, sell against inventory on hand or on order in the distribution center, and reduce the movement of furniture on and off the floor, although mangers still had the option of relinquishing any piece to a customer demanding instant gratification.

At the same time that Schewel was transitioning into central warehousing and distribution, it waded into the murky swamp of automated inventory control -- this in a time when the Internet, pc's, laptops, and e-mail were not even figments of Al Gore's imagination and the word computer was more frightening than "Jaws" to office clerks and managers. The primitive system Schewel installed was sku-based, paper-plentiful, batch-configured -- and inordinately susceptible to error. It entailed an exorbitant investment of human and financial resources -- with minimal payback. Nevertheless, I adopted its success as a personal crusade -- devoting countless hours to taking and retaking physical inventories, training store personnel, sifting through stacks of sales orders in a futile attempt to identify and correct mistakes -- not because I was enamored of or proficient with computers (I wasn't then nor am I now) but because I saw inventory control as an essential merchandising tool. Accurate stock counts and rates of sale would yield better buying decisions.

Obviously, in servicing multiple locations, the more product that can be housed under one roof, the more efficient will be the operation. Which is why in 1986 Schewel consolidated its three bulk storage warehouses into one 75,000 (later expanded to 90,000) sq. ft., 30 ft. tall, seven-level-racked distribution center in Lynchburg. While it experienced routine growing pains during its formative years, thanks now to a professional management team, every year $50 million worth of furniture, appliances, and electronics flows smoothly through its twenty-five dock doors -- as eighty containers and trucks are unloaded weekly, the contents of which are bar coded and transported by order picker or forklift to bulk storage or locator racks, from which it is picked, checked, and reloaded onto transfer tractor-trailers bound for satellite stores twice a week in response to those stores' overnight downloaded requisitions.

Other large regional chains -- like Rooms To Go, Raymour-Flanigan, and City Furniture -- bypass the transfer step -- and thus move their furniture even less. No merchandise is taken off the sales floor -- unless it's a discontinued item which is immediately replaced by a new one. Employing sophisticated technology, from their massive distribution centers (which can range up to 500,000 sq. ft.), they deliver orders originating in twenty-five to thirty locations directly to a customer's home and as far as 300 miles -- for a hefty fee, of course. The advantages of such a system are self-evident: expert on-site preparation and repair; fewer damages (as a result of less handling); faster delivery (often the day after the customer's purchase); and the elimination of excess inventory in satellite warehouses.

While recognizing the drawbacks, Schewel has made the decision to retain the transfer model, for several reasons. It operates its stores in rural markets where many customers have access to trucks and are willing to pick up their merchandise (over 50% do), thereby saving themselves an $80 charge. With much lower volume stores than the aforementioned companies, Schewel's density of sales is much more dispersed, which makes direct delivery from a remote warehouse a problematic undertaking. Unlike the new breed of high-volume retailers, Schewel carries appliances and electronics; its stores need on-site storage space, as these are items customers want immediately. Schewel finances 80% of its customers' purchases and must have personnel on hand for those rare occasions when it must make a repossession. And, finally, the development of a centralized retail delivery system would require significant investments in data processing and expanded or redesigned facilities, with uncertain returns.

Which means that, in our stores, lots of people still have to get their hands dirty.

They must unload the trucks bringing sold or new merchandise from the Distribution Center.

Whether it's for delivery or sample, they must slice open the box, peel away the cardboard, and unwrap each piece.

From a myriad of small components, they must assemble almost every dining table, chair, and occasional table, which are shipped flat-packed from the Far East in order to save space on containers. (I've seen four chairs in a carton the size of a serving platter.) They must screw legs on sofas, loveseats, and chairs, and install backs on recliners.

They must inspect all items for rips, dents, scratches, splits, and blemishes, and repair them before they leave the premises.

They must load them on customer vehicles or Schewel delivery trucks, where they must be blanket-wrapped and tied down.

In customers' homes or on the display floor, they must screw hardware on dressers, chests, and chinas, attach mirrors to dressers, and bolt rails to headboards and footboards and slats and center supports to rails.

They must carefully unpack and delicately place glass shelves in dining chinas and curios, lest they look embarrassingly incomplete.

Like a hungry squirrel rooting for a hidden acorn, someone must scour the warehouse, squeezing between sofas and loveseats and crawling over and around cartons of case goods, rummaging for that piece of old or new furniture that yearns to see the light of day on the sales floor.

And since our displays are not "nailed down," as much as we would like them to be, and merchandise comes and goes like a good poker hand, someone must walk around every day and scuffle with a chair or two.

Which is where I come in.

Years ago, when I taught a Junior Achievement Business Class (one hour a week for about ten weeks), I introduced myself by asking the students to name the tasks one would expect to perform in a furniture store. Together, we compiled an extensive list: selling (the most important one, by the way), purchasing, hiring (and firing), training, advertising, delivering, assembling, collecting (customer accounts), negotiating (real estate deals), building (stores), writing business plans. Looking back over forty years in this most unglamorous of careers, I can honestly claim to have spent at least a little time in each of those departments.

And now, having attained the position of CEO of a medium-sized family-owned enterprise, which enables me to delegate all of those duties to someone else, other than having to make a few strategic decisions, I am left with the luxury of doing just about anything.

And so, ten or twelve times a month, I don a casual shirt, khaki pants, and a pair of comfortable rubber-soled buckskin Rockports, drive my company car to a Schewel store I haven't seen in a while and which I think needs my services the most, walk the aisles, grab a hand truck, and -- shush, don't tell anyone, it's a secret -- move a few sofas, chairs, dressers, chests, and tables, until I've got every piece just where I want it.

Because I love the furniture business.