There are certain guys in the construction industry that you admire. Some do commercial work and some do residential work, but unerringly these guys have one thing in common, they never sacrifice quality for price or convenience. As a supplier of flooring, I know anytime we walk onto these builders’ jobs, we better bring our best work to the job. We are very fortunate to be a part of some of these builders’ teams. One such builder is Mcchargue Construction, a design build firm out of Houma. We have had a working relationship with this company for over 7 years now. It may be an older relationship than 7 years, but I am going off of how long I have been in active in the Houma store. Briggette heads the account for us and has done a great job keeping communication clear and concise on our various projects with them.
The latest project we completed with Mcchargue is a school in Morgan City, La. As you can see below, the finish project is beautiful. We love doing work with Mcchargue because every job we complete with them, our company is that much better. We know that our mechanics will leave their job proud of their work and better employees for the time spent on the job. A challenging job completed well instills a sense of pride in a company, and that is exactly what happened on this job. Notice the intricate patterns and detail work. You do not get the end result illustrated in this movie without careful planning and an uncompromising want to provide a great product to your client. Everyday my mechanics would tell us about how much effort Mcchargue would go through in keeping their job site spotless. The job was “dust free.” For those that are not in construction, this is a huge undertaking. However, what a large amount of construction companies do not understand is that a clean job site leads to a better finished product. If there are no nails or rocks lying around a job then no floors will be scratched because someone has something caught on the bottom of their shoe. A clean working atmosphere also sends a message to all suppliers that this jobsite is one that cares what kind of work is done on it.
Mcchargue takes numerous big and small steps to turn in a finish product that exceeds the client’s expectations. I could list them for days, but I think I will let some photos do the speaking for them. Thank you to Mcchargue for giving us the opportunity to be a part of this project. Perque Floors believes in a, “Value Given and Value Received” concept of business, and it’s these types of projects that keep us passionate about that motto.
I want to impart a conversation I had with a buddy the other day. It got me back to thinking about what I needed to do for my company. I figured I would share it, no telling if someone else is running into similar issues. My buddy works in the oil field. We will often compare our jobs, duties and general work experience. Comparing a retail construction company with an established oil field production company has led to some interesting conversations in the past. There is no reason whatsoever that these companies should share the same problems. In fact, we should not even speak the same language. But we do, no matter the field, business is similar to math in that they all share patterns and problems. I would go a step further and say: no matter the business, big or small, GE to a snowball shack, or McDonald’s to BP Oil, their problems and successes all revolve around three facets: People, process, and culture.
The sky was overcast and the wind was howling. It was Sunday about an hour before the Super Bowl began. In my hand, I held a golf club with the letter “p” on it. My buddy stood to my right, his club had a “d” on it. I am unsure what the “d” stands for but it was not a driver. My buddy was telling me about some changes in his company. Someone up the corporate chain had decided they wanted to increase revenue by ten percent this year. I was rolling the ten percent around in my head and hoping I would not miss the plastic whiffle ball in front of me. I could hear my buddy’s swing and the flat smack of his club on the ball. I thought about 10 percent and the amount of business his company generates in a year. I eased the club back, turning my front foot slightly, shifting my weight, feeling the club head accelerate, thinking: I’m a regular Fred couples, tin cup, poetry in motion is what people call this swing. The ball stubbornly stayed put as my club head swung harmlessly over, missing it completely. I leaned on my club and looked at him, “So management wants a 10% bump in revenue…” He replied, “Yea, the only problem is we are not a sales generating company, generally our clients approach us because we have an established business relationship or they were referred to us. It’s not like we can run an advertisement and generate more business. We are a supplier in a limited market, our business is relatively consistent. Growth can happen. It just does not happen because someone decides a 10% climb in revenue will happen. He cranked a swing out driving the ball a good distance for an exclamation point. I was thinking he had a flare for drama as I prepared for my next golf triumph.
I was readjusting my stance when I said, “You being upset about this tells me you are not necessarily concerned about the 10%, either you can do it or you can’t, no point worrying if the guy is wrong.” I let the club rip and smiled as I heard the sweet melody of metal on plastic. I put my hand over my eyes to try to find the ball against the grey sky, not finding anything I glanced down to see the ball bouncing about a foot from where I left it. “Nice swing.” He smirked and commented, “You’re right I could care less about the 10%. I don’t think it will happen. My concern is I think they are looking in the wrong place. I think we should be looking to raise margins not revenue.” Tink, he had connected on another swing. I watched the ball arch through the air, and prepared to mimic his success. I prepped my swing with a statement I thought might slow down his golf game, “You are right and wrong. You are pointing to management’s inability to decipher the correct solution from your set of problems, but you are missing the forest for the trees.” Here’s the swing and there is the miss. Crap. I was going to have trouble making my point if I couldn’t hit the damn ball. He quipped, “Yea, and you are missing the ball for my lawn. Stop digging holes in my yard. What are you talking about?”
I knew from previous conversations he was logging some major hours. Knowing his position in his company, I figured their manufacturing side was just as busy. I also knew that he had issues with efficiency within his company. I also knew that he had changed some of the processes within the company to try to help their efficiency along. I asked, “How can you raise margins in a company?” He said, “You can charge your customers more for your service.” I answered, “Yep, and that might be the answer your company needs, but you can also cut the cost of producing those services, and leave your prices the same. You are also forgetting that a revenue increase will not help your company if you are already running at capacity. In fact, it would actually hurt your company due to quality drop off. So its not just that your company doesn’t generate sales by nature, you are pretty well booked up already.” He nodded. I was not telling him anything he did not already know. He inquired, “Forest, Trees?” I answered, “People, process, culture.” He stopped his swing and looked at me for a second.
I could see him rolling the words around in his head. I knew he understood what I meant when he looked back down at the ball, “People, processes, culture…” This was my queue to expound. I thought about making him wait till I had taken another swing to build suspense, then looking down at the same ball I had started with, I quickly decided against it.
“All of a mature company’s ailments begin and end with people, process, or culture. If you need to raise margins because your cost of production is bloated, it will flow back to too much bureaucracy in processes, an incorrect decision made by a person, or the culture in the business may not be conducive to an efficient operation. Likewise, if you need to charge a customer more and cannot justify the quality of your product over your competition’s product, then it will also trace back to those same three facets. I think the fact that your company wants to raise revenue, but does not inform the team how to do it, is an example of a process or cultural problem.”
He nodded again. He knew all this information already; I was just trying to put it in the terms I used to deal with my problems. He asked, “I know how you change a process, but what about people and culture?” I laughed, “I don’t think anyone can change people, as far as culture goes, I haven’t figured it out yet, I’m trying to do it at the shop, and it’s harder than I thought it would be.” He grinned, “A lot of help you are.” I sniped back, “The first step is identifying the problem.” He replied, “Well, let me help you out, your first step to take in golf is hitting the ball.” I asked him if he had ever seen Happy Gilmore…
I spent some time on vacation with the Missus over the Christmas/ New Year break. One of my guilty pleasures during down times is perusing the internet for current events and news. I stumbled across some news stories about the political struggle currently underway between the U.S. and Iran. There’s plenty of political posturing, veiled and unveiled threatening, and all around hand wringing happening right now. I rolled my eyes disillusioned with our inability to separate ourselves as a nation from this part of the world. I am not pointing to any political shortcomings or agendas, rather drawing a correlation between the Middle East having oil and our incessant need for oil.
The ability to produce energy related products is the most valuable trade in the world. Just look at our history as a species. The largest improvements in our standard of living as a species has come on the heels of energy related innovations. First fire decreased dietary restraints and gave the ability to fashion better and stronger tools. From fire came all the metallurgical ages, which of course led to the industrial age. Edison created the light bulb and infrastructure for power plants and the like. Next, petroleum allowed us to transverse large areas of our world quickly through travel, and eventually the silicon from petroleum by products allowed for the creation of computers capable of allowing me to write these ramblings one minute and have them read the next by someone thousands of miles away from me. Energy and the ability to transfer its state into a usable entity for consumption by humans have repeatedly proven to be an invaluable ability. The titans of industry have traditionally come from the energy forum. There are plenty of exceptions, but the huge fortunes of the 19th and early 20th century usually had direct tie-ins to energy related fields. We all need energy in one form or another to sustain our lives.
This line of thought led me to the “conservation of energy theory” prevalent in general physics and quantum physics. Founded in its most basic sense by Joule in the 19th century and later reinforced by Einstein in the 20th century, the law states in its most basic sense that energy cannot be created or lost. It can change states, but it cannot be gained or lost. So if a piece of wood has 5 Joules of potential energy, and it is set on fire, then 4 of those Joules are transferred to the state of heat and the other remaining Joule changes form from the unburned state of wood to ash. Granted, this is the most basic expression of the theory but I think it serves our purpose.
So there I was sitting in Tennessee, thinking about Einstein, Joule, Ahmadinejad, and Obama, and wondering if 2012 would bring any changes in all these happenings. I realized that barring the invention of sustainable cold fusion in the next 12 months, the problems in the Middle East would persist. Then I thought about the economy, believe me everything ties into the economy when you are a business owner, would it change? For the better? For worse? I looked at the trouble of the Euro, China’s deepening recession indicators, and our media’s pension for Chicken Little reporting, and concluded: nope, the economy is probably going to stay exactly the same. The economy will be no better, no worse, a reflection of the disillusionment the average American feels when viewing our current leadership.
So what does this mean to Perque Floors? What does Einstein or Joule and the Conservation of Energy Theory have to do with a flooring retailer? Well, in short, it will be the single most important factor to the continued success of our company. To continue the success we have had we are going to disprove the “Conservation of Energy Theory.” It is easy to be excited, passionate and kinetic when your company is breaking records and growing quickly. It is a much more difficult to find that same verve for success when your competitors are closing doors, your suppliers are whining, and your customers seem care worn and tired. In order to give 2012 a fighting chance, we will have to prove Einstein was a hack, and create energy and passion from thin air. We will turn off our radios and TV’s that say we “can’t grow, can’t succeed in this economic climate.” We will create a world within the walls of our stores where the laws of physics are bent and broken. A place that customers will recognize as wholly different from everywhere else they go because the energy will saturate the air. Customers will be able to forget their worries because they recognize in a company the want to take on challenges and complete them. This atmosphere will inspire our customers to continue to believe in what we stand for and how we treat them. Perque Floors will be excited, kinetic and frankly, ignorant of the “economy” and its threats. 2012 is going to be a great year for us. It might not be measured in numbers or figures, rather by the ability of a company and the individuals that comprise it to rise above the rules that govern other institutions. You want to get away from the malaise of everyday drudgery in 2012? Walk into one of our shops in Bayou Vista, Houma or Thibodaux, maybe by that time we will have disproven the law of gravity.
The amount of people I interact with on any given day has dramatically increased in the last four weeks. The two new store openings has put me in touch with many more business owners, customers and community leaders. An alarming amount of my conversations turn towards common themes. They run along three or four topics: people are disillusioned with politicians and the supposed leaders of the country, people are exhausted of not getting ahead financially, and most of all they are beaten down by the barrage of bad news. Many people feel as if there is no hope.
Let me relay one of the conversations I had this weekend, it might help you out if you are feeling the same way. A customer walked in the Patterson store. He said he was really glad to have another store in town. I thanked him, and we began walking around the store. After some small talk, I learned he was not actually interested in any flooring. He was a business owner from the area, and he was there to ask me, “How we do it?” I asked, “Do what?” He said, “How are you opening two new stores while other stores are going out of business?” I told him that we are struggling just like everyone else. We try to keep out costs low and do everything we can to service out customers. He then asked, “So why are you opening two stores now?” I could have answered him in many different ways. I could have told him we actually were lowering our cost of doing business by adding the new stores. I could have told him the market research we had done indicated the two new markets needed another flooring supplier. He would have understood if I had answered that the talent we have around us in employees demanded we open another location. I did not tell him any of these concepts. Something about the way he was looking at me said he was asking a completely different question. He was not asking about business, he was searching for a reason to persevere.
I told him, “Cause they don’t get to say what happens.” He asked, “They?” I answered, “The media, the government, the economy.” He liked that answer. He was grinning ear to ear, and after I few expletives that I cannot commit to paper concerning “they,” he asked the one question I was dreading. “What if you don’t make it?” The million dollar question we all ask ourselves.
“What if I don’t make it?” What if I cannot meet the power bill? What if I fail? What if the wife or husband gets laid off? What if we have an unexpected medical bill? I wanted to tell him that then maybe “they” would bail me out like we bailed them out. However, I was not about to start lying to my new friend. It was an interesting segment in a conversation. I inherently understood that he was comfortable letting me think about my answer.
He was not really asking, “what if you don’t make it?” He wanted to know, “How do you keep going, how do you deal with the pressure, the uncertainty?” The answer mattered to him, so I took my time trying to put my feelings and thoughts into words. Finally I said, “Right now, my blessings outweigh my regrets.” I wanted to tell him I have to keep telling myself this 10 times a day, sometimes 20. He never gave me the chance. I could see him tallying in his head. After a minute, he gave me a small nod, an excellent handshake and a grin. He had done his personal balance sheet, he was ahead, he was winning right now, no matter what “they” said.
He left the store buoyant. I hope he stops by in the coming months. I hope his worries dissolve like a politician’s promise. Most of all, I hope he shares what got him through today. I do not understand why the media wants us to listen to their hopeless drivel. I will never understand a politician or their motives. However, I do understand at the end of the day, blessings are not controlled by these people. We may be poorer due to “they,” we may have to work harder, but in the end, “they” can only get what we allow them to take, while we earn only what we are able to create. That difference between the two means the world to me. It gets me up in the morning. Hopefully the notion can help someone else get through their day.
This job turned out excellent. Brian helped coordinate the design scheme and installation with the customer. Corey’s team did a wonderful job in maintaining a high quality installation and keeping to the schedule the customer desired. Leave some comments letting us know what you think about the job and products.
We recently finished a job for a customer. The job went great, and the customer was kind enough to call and thank us for our service. I have had this exact conversation a hundred times. The customer thanked us for the installation, promised to send us more business, and then professed wonder at the fact that our prices were the best in town. I enjoyed every part of these compliments, except the section about price. Perque Floors of Houma has always had a policy that we beat anyone’s advertised price. However the message has somehow gotten lost over time. I believe it has to do with the quality of service we offer. Overtime, the brand of Perque Floors has become synonymous with quality. I would not alter this reputation for anything. We have worked extremely hard to earn this reputation. The problem is how do we combat the misconception the Perque Floors is a high priced company because of the high quality service we provide?
I am not exaggerating when I say that Perque Floors of Houma has not lost a job to price in the last five years. It is our policy that if a competitor gives a better price the Perque’s salesperson will beat that price, no questions asked. So with a unique policy like this, how does that misconception still exist? I think the problem lies in our message. We are not delivering our message in the proper format. So from now on, the Perque Floors of Houma policy is:
Perque Floors of Houma, Thibodaux, and Patterson will beat any price or your floors are free. Guaranteed!
I hope this new simplified version of our message will clear up this misconception. I am always saddened to hear a customer bought flooring from a Lowe’s or Home Depot because they undoubtedly overpaid. I know it seems strange. Most people believe that the bigger the operation, the better the prices. This is incorrect. The bottom line is the bigger the operation, the more money they spend on advertising. They can spend millions hammering the message that there prices are the best. In reality, that big advertising budget, huge rent for gigantic stores, filling those big stores with personnel (who are not experts in their departments because they are constantly shuffled around), and selling more than one type of product forces these big operations to sell their products at a higher price. How else are they going to pay for all these facets of their business?
So next time you think you are getting a great deal, give us a call, you will be pretty surprised at what the little guy can do.
