Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Communication & Trust

After being at market and meeting with so many customers, there were 2 important themes that I want to address:  communication and trust.

Let’s start off with communication.  I consider myself an OCD responder.  What I mean by that is if you contact me, I will get back to you very quickly.  I can’t stand to have lots of emails to read or reply to filling up my inbox.  I also know that if you have a question, that you want it answered quickly so you can move on to the next thing.  I don’t want to hold you up from having a productive day.

When I am out of the office and come back to a slew of emails and voicemails, I am almost sick.  I always want to die when I see someone’s phone and they have like 32,731 unopened emails.  I have to sit down immediately when I see that and splash water on my face.  I just don’t know how some people do it.  In any case, that is not me.

With that being said, if you reach out to me by phone 800-294-9495 x218, by email scott@jaftex.com or in any of the other multitude of ways to get in touch and you don’t hear from me pretty quickly, something is wrong.  Maybe you have the wrong email.  Maybe you wrote scott@jatex.com instead of Jaftex.   Maybe you have the wrong extension.  Therefore, if a couple days pass, you should check things out again or just try me again because something likely went wrong on your end.  I don’t blow people off ever.  Even if I can’t answer your question right away, I will acknowledge you and let you know I need a little more time.  And of course, if I am out of town, I will have my email away message on.  You got it?  Good.

More on communication.  We are a family business and not a big corporation.  We care greatly about our business, our customers and our future.  We are not thinking about things in the short term as that is very short sighted and that is not a strong way to build a brand.  We are thinking about building our brands and our business with our partners all over the world for the long haul.  You don’t make it in business for almost 90 years by being short sighted or at least that’s not how we Fortunoffs do it.

What I am trying to do is urge you to communicate your issues right away.  Don’t let problems or concerns fester.  I really wish I was a mind reader, but unfortunately that isn’t the case…shucks.  Don’t let days go by and get madder and then blow up on me when you see me at market.  Pick up the phone and call me and let’s work things out right away and move forward.  Oftentimes, the issues are just misunderstandings or something that can be easily fixed.  Sometimes holding your issues back makes them not fixable at a later date too….so keep that in mind too.  I promise you that we will talk on the phone and we can come to a mutually agreeable conclusion as quickly as possible.  Then we can all move upward and onward in a positive way…which is how it should be.

In business and life, things that are going well don’t need to be addressed or touched because they are going well.  You know the expression, “If it ain’t broke…” It’s how you deal with the problems is what differentiates a good company from a bad one or good customer service from bad customer service.

I always like to tell the story about a store that buys lots of flannel from my A.E. Nathan division.  I went to visit the customer and I ask the boss how things are going.  The first thing she says is I have 5 bolts of this bicycle print that just won’t sell.  And I say, “Ugh, sorry to hear that.”  Then I ask, “How are the other 150 flannel prints selling for you?”  She said, “Those are all gone.”  HA!  You see what I am getting at?  The good things work themselves out, but people are very focused on the bad things.  It is very logical.  The goal of course would be to have no problems at all, but that only exists in Shangri La and my dreams.

Now I want to move on to the trust issues.  In speaking with many FreeSpirit customers who are new to working with my family, I sensed some people were suffering through trust issues.  You can rest assured that we run our businesses on the up and up.  I am not trying to cheat, steal or scam you in anyway.  That doesn’t even cross my mind ever.  That would be very bad for business and would not allow us to be around for as long as we have been.  Those negative qualities are usually discovered pretty quickly and are usually the demise of a company.  With that, please put old trust issues aside and know that we are not trying to pull any wool over your eyes.

I have a story about trust that I always like to share.  A customer calls me and is complaining that her 15 yard bolt is actually 14.8 yards.  Then the customer starts accusing me of scamming her.  As if I am calling the people who are cutting our fabric and saying, “Hey, make sure to cut every bolt a little short.”  That is craziness.  We are not trying to make a couple extra pennies by doing that.  We try to cut exact 15 yard bolts, but it isn’t a perfect science.  Sometimes the machine calibrations are slightly off.  Sometimes the customer measuring the fabric doesn’t fully lay the bolt out and measure it how it should be.  Measuring using arm’s lengths isn’t a science either.  All that being said, there are times when we ship you more than 15 yards.  In any case, stealing and cheating is not part of our long term business plan…or the short term plans either.

That’s my spiel for today.  In summary, I ask that you over communicate so we can be better partners.  I also ask for your full faith, trust and confidence in us because your success is our success and we don’t want to detract from that.  We want to win together!  Thanks for listening.  Have a great day and week.