Searching for Seventh Avenue
There is a world of commerce so private and so misunderstood that little is known of it. Nothing about it has been written; nothing is taught in the business courses of our universities; no principle of economics applies to it. It emerged a hundred years ago with the invention of the sewing machine, and it survived in the cramped and filthy quarters of the worst loft buildings of New York. It hired mostly women and then it treated them badly, asking them to work long hours on lumbering machines, and paying them piecework, a system of compensation that should have been retired during the Middle Ages. It produced the pajamas, the blouses, and the unmentionables that we all wear and don´t think much about. It went under many names−the garment center, Seventh Avenue, the rag trade−and none of them complimentary.
I can tell, you don´t believe me. You tell me you know about this world of commerce. You mention Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani, the supermodels, the fashion magazines. Indeed, you are irritated to be told that the lovely evening dress you searched all over town for had such shabby origins. I´m sorry about that but I don´t make the rules. The garment center has nothing to do with Giorgio Armani. Armani is to the garment center as the crown jewels of England are to every neighborhood shop selling gold bracelets and half-carat diamonds on time payments.
Into such a no-man´s-land of economic chaos did I find myself many decades ago, and in such a world have I always worked− waiting still to meet Giorgio Armani or a supermodel−but making a living nevertheless.
Well then, you ask, there still must be principles like riskâreward and diminishing returns. Surely they apply to garment production. In fact, nobody knows; maybe they do and maybe they don´t. There is no instruction manual, there are no rules. Did you ever hear of a book that codified the principles of garment production? Did you ever hear of a book that said anything about the garment center?
This is ridiculous, you´re thinking. There have to be rules of production, of quality control, of salesmanship. Certainly salesmanship, certainly customer satisfaction, certainly supply and demand.
I don´t want to sound like the Neanderthal man, but if there are principles of salesmanship I´ve never seen them in practice, and I´ve been running a small apparel company for forty years. I don´t mean to suggest that selling doesn´t go on; I merely mean to suggest that selling, as it is practiced at Procter & Gamble or General Motors, has never trickled down to Seventh Avenue.
I know you are still incredulous, and I thought, to make a point, I would tell you a story. It is a story of how selling works in the garment center.
There was once a salesman named Sheldon, who worked for my company for thirty years and is now retired and playing gin rummy in Florida. Sheldon, you have figured out, did not go to Wharton, and actually did not go to college at all, but was one of the respected salesmen on Seventh Avenue.
Sheldon spent most his time at the barbershop, where, like it or not, all of the top garment salesmen hung out. It drove me a little crazy but that´s the way it was. Sheldon hung out in the barbershop and of course he had his own barber and his own manicurist. Status at General Motors might be measured by a corner office, but in the garment center it was measured by how much time the salesman spent at the barbershop−certainly twice a week, and not less than an hour and a half at a sitting. This included a trim, a touch-up of the graying sideburns, a blow-dry, a shoeshine, and a manicure. A salesman who did not rate a manicure was nobody. Do you think sales are conducted this way at Chrysler?
Of course this aggravated the hell out of me but Sheldon brought in the business. In our little company he was king, and the barber´s chair was his throne. There he was attended by his court: his shoes were shined, his hair was cut, and his nails were polished. It was like sending a Cadillac through a car wash.
Are you sure you want to hear this story? This preposterous story of an old-time salesman and an industry that never grew up? You could read Fortune and actually learn something. Well o.k., fair warning. You will at least understand why they don´t teach garment center at Wharton. Among other problems, where would they find the professors?
The barbershop production, like a Broadway play, never took less than ninety minutes because it was an acknowledgement that the salesman could afford ninety minutes−that his customers would wait for him and he would write his orders easily in the remaining hours of the day. He would appear at the barber at nine in the morning and then stroll into his showroom at about a quarter to eleven, smelling of aftershave, and envied by the hard-working bookkeepers who arrived at eight thirty.
Lesser salesmen got to work at nine because there was a lot of work to do. But for the princes of Seventh Avenue to have arrived even at nine thirty suggested that they were hustling−that their sales were determined by how many phone calls they could make rather than by the sweet science of selling.
When you watched Sheldon at work you had to concede that there was magic involved. I never quite understood it but I knew it was happening. It was like David Copperfield on stage; you know the lady isn´t being sawn in half, and yet there she is, dissected at the waistline.
Mary Callahan, the Kmart buyer, would appear in the showroom and the drama would begin. It would be apparent that Mary had gained fifteen pounds since her last visit, but Sheldon would look at her adoringly and say, "Mary, you look great; how many pounds have you lost? Tell me how you did it. Pritikin? I´ve got to start on a program."
In any world that operated on reality, the buyer would throw Sheldon down the elevator shaft, but in the Alice in Wonderland universe of Seventh Avenue the buyer would giggle and say, "Oh Sheldon, cut it out. Well, maybe a pound or two."
And then Sheldon would begin his trip-to-Paris dialogue. "When are we running away to Paris, Mary? You know I can´t wait any longer, I´m desperate." And Mary, loving every moment of it, would say, "Sheldon you naughty boy, you know I have four children at home."
This was the magic, and the reward was the barbershop−not because the barbershop made Sheldon look beautiful, but because the king sits on his throne.
So it was a calamity of no ordinary proportions when Salvatore the barber one day retired, closing his barbershop and leaving unemployed Dolores the manicurist and Patrick the shoeshine boy.
Now you might reasonably ask why Sheldon did not simply bring his considerable business to another barbershop where he would also be treated like royalty. But the question reveals a failure to grasp the garment center mentality, which operates on psychological principles that have eluded analysts for centuries. Sheldon had to have his barbershop; it was the essence of his being.
Sheldon slipped rapidly into a state of depression. His initialed shirt cuffs became threadworn, his neckties lost that certain panache, and his stories around the office simply lacked a punch line. Worse, Kmart sales were down 25 percent.
Everyone in the company knew what was happening and they all tried to cheer Sheldon up by telling him how snappy he was looking and by laughing at the unfunny jokes. But it didn´t work, and Sheldon could often be seen sitting in his office staring at the ceiling, an activity not especially recommended for writing orders. It wasn´t that he didn´t get haircuts, of course, but they were only haircuts.
This is when a normal business calls in a consultant and the consultant does a sales analysis. Maybe he recommends early retirement for Sheldon. Maybe he recommends Prozac. I don´t know because I´ve never met a consultant. We don´t have consultants in the garment center. We do solve our problems, but in ways that nobody can understand. It´s a little like the Mafia; they also solve their problems, but their solutions are not written down in any textbook.
The inability of the outside world to appreciate the fundamentals of this problem did not change the fact that, although this wasn´t bankruptcy, it would be bankruptcy before long. The chemistry between Sheldon and the Kmart buyer was the lifeblood of the company. Imagine: A company that measures success by telling a two-hundred-pound buyer who is in a Mallomar frenzy that she lost five pounds. Does Microsoft operate this way?
As the owner of the company it was my problem to solve. I could have called on Mary Callahan myself, but Mary couldn´t stand the sight of me. I was rather obsessively dedicated to charts and graphs, and prone to speaking to Mary Callahan in a language of percentages, none of which she understood. And, I´m afraid, I did not display the proper respect for Mary´s weight-losing schemes.
I actually thought of bringing in a consultant or an efficiency expert, but I knew there were no barbershop consultants in the garment center or anywhere else in the world except perhaps in Sicily. And anyway, how would I word the question? "My key salesman´s barber just retired and the salesman can no longer write orders. . . ." No, I knew that I had a once-in-a-lifetime problem that would defy the psychiatrists at the Menninger Clinic. So, after making a number of inquiries, I got into my Buick one afternoon and drove to a part of town that was best known for calzone.
Weeks passed; business got worse; the phone didn´t ring. We laid off two bookkeepers and almost half of the sewing machine operators. There was an air of Death Valley in the company and I began to think about who might hire me after the business closed. This was an unnerving thought because you can guess how effective is a resume that emphasizes garment center skills. Sheldon was on Valium−it was before Prozac became popular−and was given to long naps in his office with the door closed. And then, one day, I got a phone call . . . from way downtown.
I don´t want to seem immodest but the next thing that happened was the smartest thing I´ve ever done. It was smarter than any consultant would have thought of, and smarter than any business professor at our distinguished universities. When they do write a garment center manual, a hundred years from now, maybe they´ll include it. And I only tell you about it, if you are still listening, because I began by saying that this is a private, misunderstood world of commerce, and if my idea doesn´t prove it, nothing will.
One day, when Sheldon straggled into the showroom looking like a heart patient in intensive care, I led him to a vacated office, of which there were now many. There, inside the office, stood a person who Sheldon hadn´t seen in three months.
"Buon giorno," said Salvatore.
"Bwen journal," said Sheldon, approximating the garment center pronunciation for good day in Italian.
Behind Salvatore stood the barber chair−the real thing−and behind the barber chair stood Dolores.
"Who´s been doing your nails, sweetie? They look terrible," said Dolores.
The office had been turned into a miniature barbershop, and Sheldon climbed into the chair, leaned back against the neck rest, and let his fingers float into the cup of soapy water next to Dolores.
Salvatore flashed his broad Italian smile and looked at Sheldon´s hair with disapproval. "We have to do something about this," he said.
Sheldon rested in the chair and three month´s worth of anxiety drifted out of him as though he were getting a Swedish back rub. His face lightened and he nodded as the bookkeepers and junior salesmen passed the office and looked in with astonishment and admiration.
The grey hairs were blended out; the eyebrows were evened; the cuticles were shaped, and the grand figure of Sheldon the salesman seemed to expand in the barber chair like a parade balloon being inflated.
The next week Mary Callahan came waddling into the showroom, another fifteen pounds heavier, and clearly in a state of distemper. "Where´s Sheldon?" she growled.
And then Sheldon appeared, tailored and expansive, courtly and elegant, or at least what passes for elegant in the garment center. It was like the Academy Award winner stepping onto the stage; it was like the president walking down the aisle before the State of the Union address. There was a glow−it filled the air−and we all caught our breath.
"I can´t believe it," Sheldon said.
"You can´t believe what?" said Mary, not notably impressed.
"I can´t believe you lost another ten pounds on Pritikin."
Mary hesitated, narrowed her eyes, and then broke into a huge smile.
"Oh, you are impossible," she said.
It was Houdini breaking out of the chains; it was Moses parting the Red Sea. Mary Callahan hoisted her considerable bulk onto a chair and wrote the largest order we had ever seen. The king was back on his throne.
There are many classic texts about business in America. You can study the rise of the Ford Motor Company or the astonishing growth pattern of Microsoft. You can consider the advice of America´s CEOs on wealth accumulation or decision making. But you can´t study the garment center. You can´t find a training manual or a book written by an apparel executive. The world of apparel is in a twilight zone; in the third world of industry. There it functions, with its Sheldons, with its barbershops, and with its owners, like me, who once in a while come up with a good idea. In this strange, grey area it has always survived, resisting advancement, resisting technology, resisting innovation, but carrying on. We all have to wear clothes.
