Success Stories

Paul Thompson
Chairman, Furniture Factory Warehouse
Captain, 67 TRW, U.S. Air Force (Separated)

“We purchased a small furniture retailer a few years ago and upon digging into the company found that the business was much more complicated than we first thought. Competition was fierce and selling the product was just the first step in a multi-step process to book revenue. We decided right away that we needed to put the pre-acquisition growth plans on hold and learn all we could about the industry and what it would take to succeed. We decided not to make any waives in the industry and “Stay Under the Radar” (chapter 17) as long as we could during the process.

During this time we improved our buying and back office processes, got a much more streamlined and effective distribution system in place, and incented our store managers and sales people in a different way – it was clear that we needed to “encroach” upon some of our biggest competitor’s customers but needed to do it in a way that would not call much attention to ourselves - until we were ready to compete with them head to head. Now, two years later, the final chapters have yet to be written, but I am convinced that if any of our big competitors had caught wind of what we were trying to do it would have been very easy for them to vanquish us on the battlefield.