The Container Store

“Yeah, it was our unilateral decision. They never thought that we would ever agree to that thing.”

“So we interviewed over a hundred private equity firms when we chose the, our private equity partners. I'm told nobody's ever interviewed half that many, but it was the most important decision we've ever made”

“There were no plastic storage boxes as we know them today. There were no corrugated boxes for sale, as we know and forget.”

“35,000 dollars was all we had to start with.”

“So the products that we started with were all commercial and industrial in nature, and I would say, 90% of them had never been retailed before, and we were thrilled by that.”

“The most fanatical customer is going to make your best employee.”

“You know, later on Fortune Magazine's running around saying we're the best company to work for in America, but the way we measured that was by having single digit, less than 10% employee turnover in an industry that had triple digit turnover.”

“Yes he suggested probably 50 or 75 names. This was one of those. He was a good friend of John Mullen's, the father of his famous sons.”

“The problem with furniture stores is they're boring. There's no traffic, and you can hear the drone of the air conditioner. You know, there's no people. There's no air of excitement. So that, that steered us away from furniture and the housewares.”

“Our products weren't going to sell themselves, so we were Highly, highly dependent on the training of our salespeople and also just the inspiration that they got from Kip and Garrett, inspiring the salespeople that being a salesperson was really a noble profes…”

“But, you know, I think at the end of the day, there needed to be a little bit more focus and strategy to pull everything together and to make sure the customers really understand that we were selling solutions, not items.”

“So you almost need to buy equity in these little vendors, because as we make them rich and famous we get squeezed out in favor of the mass merchants.”

“Garrett sourced the shelving, which was actually the fixtures that all the products were sitting on. So, and the shopping baskets were also for sale. So we could literally sell the entire store all the way down to the fixtures if we wanted to.”

“Each of those steps dramatically changes the business as you begin to worry about things like equity and partners, You know, until then, you're able to focus on employees, product, and customers, and Wall Street banks and equity owners are not a distraction. Y…”

“You're not really genius unless you're not just using logic at work, you're using intuition at work. We want you to use your intuition. We authorize you to be brave enough to you. You'll make more mistakes, but you'll also be much more genius by using your int…”

“We paid each other 700 dollars a month for a long, long time, and then we went to a thousand dollars a month. We didn't spend money on anything except growing the business, and so that, that went on for many, many years like that.”

“We figured out that we could grow about 20% per year safely and securely without the RPM needle getting into the red, without screwing everything up. Faster than that was a little frightening, and there was enough money for us to grow at 20% a year.”

“Our average customer drove 21 minutes to get to our store. 21 minute drive time on average. So we began to lose our under 25 dollar sales. Because if you're going to buy three sweater boxes you might as well just buy it online from Amazon, you know, sweater bo…”

“Trying to explain it before we actually put the products on the shelves and opened the store was embarrassing.”

“It was the ultimate Way to design a closet, and it was about 25% of our sales.”

“If your best-selling product's also your highest gross margin product, you're going to do well.”

“Jim Senegal, the Costco guy, and I had a running debate for years. We had 10,000 products. He said, you should have 1500 products.”

“Frankly, not everybody's interested in what the old founders have to say about how something should be run today, but you're still, it's still your kid, you know, it's, if your child goes through a time where it's not doing well, that's painful, and if they're…”

“We certainly didn't want to, you know, raise capital and add new investors, and we didn't do that for many decades. We generated a lot of earnings, and then we put that money back in the business. We just incrementally grew Totally financed by the earnings of …”

“So we would hire great people, train them, Pay them twice what anybody else would pay them, and then hope that they would interact for an hour with our customers to reorganize their linen closet.”

“He walked into the store the first week or two we were open, and he walked in and he said, You know, this is the greatest retail store I've ever been in.”

“Soon after, you know, we spoke, the Container Store, which you are not involved with at all anymore, but it announced it was filing for bankruptcy, and then I think a few months ago, it was actually acquired by Buy Bed Bath & Beyond for about a hundred and fi…”

“I always pegged our growth at 20% a year, which in those days, 20% growth was astronomically fast. Now, it's not anymore, you know, with technology companies and that type of thing, but it, boy, retail back then, 20%, and I just stopped it at 20%, because goin…”

“Sharon and I built this business together, and I love, I think you should work with the people you love. People say, oh, you shouldn't work with your spouse. You shouldn't work with your friends. Yes, you should. That's who, that's exactly who you should work.…”