Dear Stephen,
I work for a furniture manufacturer that has become part of a larger group of brands through acquisitions. Whenever another business joins the group, we hear about the different customers, price points or markets it serves. I understand the explanation, although when I look at some of the products, the differences are not always so obvious. I am glad the company is investing in the business, but how many different ways can you segment sitting down? At some point, a chair is a chair is a chair.
What bothers me more is that I used to feel very connected to the brand I represented. It had an identity, and I knew what we stood for. Now I sometimes feel as though I work for a collection of logos under one corporate roof. Am I being old-fashioned, or is losing that connection a reason to start looking somewhere else?
Signed,
How Many Chairs Does the World Really Need?
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Dear Many Chairs,
I would not give up a good living just because somebody at the parent company likes buying furniture businesses almost as much as you used to like working for one. I understand why it bothers you, especially if you remember when the owner knew your name and you could explain what made your company special without consulting a presentation. But before you decide that another acquisition is your reason to leave, I would separate how you feel about the company’s shopping habits from how the company is treating you. Those may have very little to do with each other, and you could talk yourself out of a perfectly good job by confusing the two.
Your company may know exactly what it is doing. Furniture is a fragmented business, and if you have the money, buying an established manufacturer can get you into a market much faster than building a business from scratch. You get products, manufacturing capabilities and access to customers and distribution networks that might take years to develop yourself. I can understand the appeal, and there is nothing wrong with making money that way. What I would want to know is how those businesses perform after the sale. Are they winning new customers, keeping their good people and becoming more profitable, or does everybody get distracted by the next acquisition? The revenue will certainly get bigger if you keep adding companies, but I would still ask how much growth the businesses already in the group have generated on their own. Buying growth and creating growth are different talents, and I would want to know the company had both.
Now I am going to irritate some people I know in the furniture business, but they will get over it: sometimes a chair is just a chair. Of course, there are differences in ergonomics, construction, design, durability, sustainability and price, and I understand that a chair for a hospital may have requirements that a chair for your conference room does not. But the owner of a chair company can spend an hour explaining why his product is unlike anything else on the market, and I know because I have sat through that hour. The salesperson learns the distinctions, the dealer decides which ones matter to the customer, and the customer wants something that looks right, feels right, fits the budget and can actually be delivered. Somewhere in that process, a few of those supposedly extraordinary differences become less extraordinary. I am not dismissing the product; I am questioning whether every variation is a reason to buy another company.
At The Viscusi Group, because we recruit for manufacturers and dealers, we get a pretty good view of where the relationships live and who actually gets the furniture sold. A manufacturer may have a wonderful chair, but it also has a salesperson who gets a dealer to return a call, an independent rep who knows every account in a territory or a dealer who has spent years earning a customer’s confidence. I can understand buying a business to get access to those relationships, provided you take care of the people who built them. I can also understand buying manufacturing capabilities you do not have or a strong position in a market you have struggled to enter. Those are all sensible reasons to consider an acquisition, and none requires convincing me that somebody has discovered a new way to sit down. Sometimes the business behind the chair is more interesting than the chair itself.
What makes me smile is when every acquisition is explained as filling a completely unique hole in the portfolio. Maybe it does, but there can be no overlap in the PowerPoint presentation and plenty of overlap on the dealer’s quote. If two brands are regularly competing for the same order, I would like to understand what owning both accomplishes. There may be a very good answer involving profitability, distribution or how the businesses operate together, and I would be happy to hear it. But giving similar products different “segment” names does not answer the question. You can make money owning businesses that compete with one another without pretending they have nothing in common, and I tend to trust the explanation more when somebody is willing to acknowledge the obvious.
None of that means you need to spend your working day deciding whether the investors made a good deal. If the company treats you well, you are making good money, you believe in what you sell and your career is moving in the right direction, my advice is to stay there and make money. Ask what the acquisitions mean for your accounts, your territory and your compensation, because those are matters that belong to you. What you should avoid is becoming an unpaid management consultant, spending hours explaining which brand should disappear and how you would run the company while somebody else is calling customers and writing orders. Have an opinion—I certainly have plenty—but do not get so involved in decisions you cannot control that you neglect the business you can. I have seen furniture I would never put in my own home or office make people a great deal of money, and there is no rule that says you have to fall in love with every chair in the catalog before you can cash the commission check.
The part of your letter I take seriously is that you are losing your connection to the brand, because salespeople need conviction. I would ask myself what has actually changed: Is the product worse, has service slipped, or are you making promises you no longer trust the company to keep? Or do you miss the smaller business where you knew everybody and felt more personally involved? I understand missing that, but it does not necessarily mean the job you have today is a bad one. If you can still look a dealer in the eye and honestly recommend what you sell, there may be plenty worth staying for. If you spend your days apologizing for the company, no longer trust management or would rather have another manufacturer’s logo on your business card, then start looking. Your relationships and your reputation are what you will take to the next job, and neither should be sacrificed to protect a company you no longer believe in.
As for the investors, owning several profitable chair companies may be very good business, but owning more brands does not necessarily mean you own more ideas. At some point, I would want to know whether the next acquisition offers something the business is missing or whether the companies already in the portfolio would benefit more from that money and attention. Sometimes a chair is just a chair, and the question is how many similar businesses you need to own before the next acquisition adds more of the same. “We don’t own this one yet” is a shopping list, not a strategy.
Please, take a seat.
Stephen
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Stephen Viscusi is the founder of The Viscusi Group, an executive search firm specializing in the furniture, furnishings and interiors industries.
He is the author of two books and a longtime commentator on careers, hiring and the workplace.
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