Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Don’t Get Bogged Down In The Small Details

My world is not perfect? Is your’s?  Businesses are not perfect.  Nor is fabric perfect.  With that in mind, the question today is how does one deal with imperfections?

As I said, fabric is not perfect.  Sometimes we ship out a perfect 15 yard bolt and sometimes it may be a 15.2 yard bolt or even a 14.9 yard bolt.  Some people measure by counting the folds.  Some people weigh the fabric.  Some people actually roll out the fabric on a table and measure it.  Sometimes the fabric is perfectly tight on the board and other times it’s a little loose.  The point being that one can measure the fabric in a number of ways and end up with lots of different, but similar measurements.

The other thing I must say is that if you happen to get less than a full 15 yard bolt, that we are DEFINITELY NOT doing this intentionally.  It also goes to how the double and rolling machine is calibrated and so many other variables.  Unfortunately it isn’t a perfect science, but rest assured that we are not instructing anyone to cheat customers out of fractional yardage to make an extra couple of pennies…it just happens. 

What’s a person to do about the imperfect measurements?  As a shop owner, that is just a matter of how tight you want to manage your business and how precise you want your inventories to be recorded.  We at the Jaftex companies try not to work on such precise details and get bogged down in the minutiae.  In the end, the shortages and overages on bolts are probably close to even or a small loss at worst.  The point is that the number is not dramatically significant and it will not have a material impact on our bottom line when we take an inventory at the end of the year.

In business, and this applies to all businesses, you have to decide how granular and detailed you want to be.  Since our overall volume is large, we can’t fret over every little thing or we would go absolutely nuts.  In other words, we try to focus on the big picture.  We do seek out and focus our attention on larger issues that do have a more meaningful impact on the bottom line.  A lot of the other stuff is just noise.

This is something to think about if you are getting too bogged down with the little details and taking precious time from the things that are going to make you more profitable.  Don’t lose sight of the important and big things, those are the things that really move the dial and make the difference from being in the red or in the black at the end of year.  In the end though, you will be a lot less stressed and more productive by not letting the little stuff get in your way.  Finally, please note that this doesn’t only apply to inventory, it applies to just about everything in business.

Staying Focused On The Big Picture Stuff Scott

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