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Monday, March 30, 2009

Dedicated to Mr. Caris

I’m dedicating this article to Phil Caris, a man who taught me a great deal about business and more importantly about life. Mr. Caris, (as I always called him) passed away last month. In writing a condolence letter to his family, I couldn’t help but realize that the way he lived his life could teach us all a lot in these difficult times we’re facing.

Phil Caris first worked with my Dad at my Grandfather’s famous store –
Ben Tipp Diamonds on the corner of 3rd and Pine in downtown Seattle.
Ben Tipp was my Grandfather - my Mom’s Father. Working for Ben, I’m sure, was no picnic. Ben had a far-reaching reputation of being a very tough guy. Being the son-in-law, I’m pretty sure my Dad had it tougher than anyone.

However, from what I’ve been told, my Dad’s hard work ethic and integrity earned Ben’s respect and they ultimately struck a deal whereby my Dad after so many years would ultimately buy the store from Ben. However, after my Dad had worked in the business for approximately seven or eight years, my Grandmother passed away unexpectedly. Afterwards, Ben became quite despondent and within days sold his landmark store to Zales.

The following day, Grandpa Ben came over to our family’s house in Magnolia and shocked my parents with the disturbing news that he had sold the store. My Dad was crushed as he had been told that he was going to be able to purchase the store and he had worked extremely hard toward that goal. However, he soon recovered and subsequently decided it was time to move on. So the family packed up and moved to Southern California, where Dad would open his own store.

After searching for the right opportunity for almost a year, my Dad bought a store in Pasadena, CA from a gentleman named William Pitt.
I was only about four years old at the time, but I can still remember meeting Bill Pitt at our North Hollywood house.

Upon buying the store, the first person my Dad asked to join him in this new enterprise was Phil Caris. Mr. Caris and my Dad had worked together as sales associates for quite a few years at Ben Tipp Diamonds and over that time had earned each other’s friendship and respect. At first Mr. Caris (Phil) didn’t want to leave Seattle, but my Dad persisted and after a while, he persuaded Mr. Caris to move to Southern California with his young family and manage this new store.

From the time I was in grade school and on, I had to work in the family store every Christmas season after school got out and in later years every summer as well.

I sure didn’t want to be there, but I did get a great education by working in that store and I got to know Mr. Caris pretty well over the years. It was obvious that this affable man could sell ice to an Eskimo, but what was more obvious was that you could instantly see how much he was loved and respected by the associates that he managed as well as the thousands of customers that he helped over the years.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I found out more about Mr. Caris’s personal life. And it wasn’t from Mr. Caris that I learned it, but rather from my Dad. I knew Mr. Caris had a wife and three children because he’d occasionally talk about them with even more of a twinkle in those vivid blue eyes of his.

But my Dad told me the full story - how Mr. Caris had married the love of his life, a beautiful woman by the name of Rose. And how Rose, not long after giving birth to their third child was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Anyone who knows anything about MS, knows that this dreadful disease can cause the body to deteriorate over time until one can become totally incapacitated. This is what happened over the years to Rose Caris, the mother of his children and the love of his life.

Mr. Caris eventually had to hire a full-time nurse to care for Rose when he was at the store. Then when he returned home after a long day at work, Mr. Caris spent the remaining fifteen or more hours providing loving care for his invalid wife.

He would bathe her, turn her so that she wouldn’t develop bedsores, clean her, and feed her first by mouth and in later years, through a tube. One can only imagine how heart-breaking it was for Mr. Caris to hour by hour, day by day watch his beautiful Rose slowly lose control of her body until she could not even perform the most basic of human functions on her own.

Yet, every day that Mr. Caris worked in that store, over the forty-some years until he retired; you would never have known that Mr. Caris had a care in the world. Not even once did he ever complain about his life.
When he walked in that door first thing in the morning until he locked up the store and left in the evening, the man had a smile on his face and a new joke or a funny story to tell. And every remaining hour of his life was spent taking care of Rose until she finally passed on, just a year or two before Mr. Caris finally retired.

Mr. Phil Caris will forever be one of my heroes. A man who smiled and laughed, because he knew he had a job to do. And he would do that job as well as it could be done because he knew that was the only way in which he could provide the best possible care for his wife and three children.

There is no doubt that these are difficult times and they’ll likely get worse before they get better. We’re in the throes of the worst economy any of us have ever experienced. Some of us are making less money than we need to pay our bills. Many people have lost their jobs and many more will. Most of us have likely lost some or all of the money that we have invested or saved. Thousands of families are losing their homes.

However, what I might suggest that if we and the ones we love have their health, we truly can count ourselves fortunate. And to remember that whatever happens to us, feeling sorry for ourselves will only make matters worse.

There’s a saying that goes, “the optimist survives”. Mr. Caris never complained and never stopped smiling, even in the face of great tragedy. I’ll always be grateful that I had Mr. Caris in my life to remind me to keep smiling.

Posted By Emerson At 1:24 PM •

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Long Term Risks of Short Term Thinking

I absolutely loved and respected my father, not a day goes by when I don’t still miss him.

As a young boy, I had to work in the family business every summer and Christmas vacation - believe me it wasn’t by choice. There were many things that I saw while working in my Dad’s jewelry store that I didn’t agree with. One of the main things was that the store had many customers who could barely afford to clothe and feed their families – yet, we were supposed to sell them jewelry and get them to make payments at high interest rates…

As soon as they approached their final payment, the goal was—they had these little payment books—to try to sell them something else to keep them “on the books”, so to speak. I was never successful as a sales person in that store because I didn’t believe in it. I felt people should be spending their money in other ways.

Those payment books are, in many ways, a dinosaur in today’s world. Businesses often extend credit to their customers. Used carefully, credit can benefit both the consumer and the business. However, done without regard to the customer’s financial health, it poses serious risks to the customer, and ultimately the business.

A salesperson with strong sales incentives as their primary focus, may pressure a customer to spend more than he or she can really afford. Today, with access to a customer’s credit report, the salesperson can spread the purchase across several credit cards to maximize a sale. This additional debt can put the customer in financial danger. Although the business has met a short-term sales goal, it’s been at the expense of a customer now too in debt to make future purchases.

Another example of this short term thinking is the way credit card companies encourage students to take on debt they aren’t in a position to easily repay. Colleges and alumni groups sponsor these credit card companies onto campus, providing lists of student names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for event marketing and telemarketing campaigns. The college collects hefty participation fees in exchange for their cooperation. Did you know that today the average college student graduates with $20,000 in debt?

Students get cards with the college logo or mascot and a teaser rate that quickly escalates to a much higher rate. One of my sons goes to college and he somehow was given a credit card in his name. I’m not sure how, as he doesn’t have a full-time job and cannot really afford to make payments. Now if a college student has a job, no problem. Let them have a credit card just like everyone else. The question is how do you give a credit card to someone who isn’t working?

Anybody who has been a parent knows there are things that our parents would do to us when we made mistakes. The message is, “Here’s what happening to you – here’s why it’s happening, take responsibility – learn from it. When your earning power is bigger and you have the ability to get even more credit, you’ll realize that credit is a two edged sword. One side is dull and it’s fine, touch it. The other side will cut you wide open.”

Lending and borrowing without thinking about the long-term consequences, affects our entire economy. The current crisis in the U.S. financial markets is the result of irresponsible lending to service a need for short-term growth in profits. Consumer savings are down, household debt is at historically high levels and personal income has actually declined (when adjusted for inflation) during the last seven years. When people are that choked with debt, their ability to purchase goods and services is severely limited.

The wise use of credit is a mutual responsibility. In the long run, a stronger customer makes a more prosperous and sustainable business.

Posted By Emerson At 12:30 PM •

Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Conflict over Conflict Diamonds

As a businessperson, you always worry about how customers might react to news in the media that has a direct bearing on the products you sell. However, in some cases silence may be an indication your customer has assumed the worst. One such example is conflict or "blood" diamonds.

A few years ago, a controversy erupted over conflict diamonds, fueled in part by a movie called Blood Diamond starring Leonardo diCaprio The story was about diamonds sold to diamond merchants by rebel groups in Africa to pay for arms. The UN officially defines conflict diamonds as "...diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council." While conflict diamonds never represented more than about 4% of the diamond trade, retail customers were rightly concerned that their purchases might be funding atrocities taking place in war torn countries. It concerned me too.

At E.E. Robbins, we had serious discussions with our primary vendors asking: "how do you know", "how can you tell", "how can you be sure." Those kinds of questions. It was important that we were not carrying or selling any conflict diamonds and contributing to something so horrible.

Diamond Trading Company (formerly known as DeBeers, the diamond cartel, took immediate action attempting to remove these diamonds from the market and provide assurances that customers would not be sold these diamonds. First, it worked closely with the United Nations, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to create the Kimberley Process Certification System This system was formally adopted in 2003 and guards against conflict diamonds entering the legitimate diamond supply chain. Seventy-four countries have now incorporated the process into their national law. The diamond industry also adopted a voluntary System of Warranties to assure consumers that their diamonds are from sources free of conflict. We issue a Guarantee Care with every diamond and actually laser inscribe on the girdle of each diamond a Conflict Free Guarantee so our customers could be sure that they are not in any way contributing to the atrocities committed by these rebels. We chose to be among the first in our industry to guarantee this for our customers. Today, conflict diamonds are estimated to be less than one-half of 1% of the diamond trade and tremendous progress has been made in countries like Botswana.

A crisis like conflict diamonds can happen to any industry. Recently, the pet food industry was rocked by reports that tainted pet food imported from China had caused the death of thousands of animals in the United States. The pet food was manufactured in China, but marketed under familiar U.S. brand names. The industry, at first in denial, quickly took action to discover the problem in the manufacturing process. Then they made changes in the supply chain to eliminate the problem. The broken trust with American pet owners may take longer to repair.

Situations like this allow us to examine our beliefs and make a commitment to follow our moral compass. I think about people before I think about profits. I think there is a right and a wrong. If it was critical to our business, and had not been handled, I wouldn't be in this business. However, we are also customers. And we have to ask ourselves: would we want to do business with companies that wouldn't do what is right for our communities and us?

Posted By Emerson At 5:28 PM •