A Uniform Business
In the 1980s, I became president of that small apron manufacturer.
The aprons we produced were not the type people buy at
retail stores to wear in their kitchens, but the kind you see employees
wearing in bars, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, and
the like. These garments have a dual purpose: protecting an employee’s
clothes and serving as an identity tool for the business.
Aprons serve as a highly effective uniform look at a relatively
low cost.
In a manufacturing-based economy, the word uniform connoted
something different than it does today—a shirt, a pair of
pants, or maybe even a hat that was worn in a grimy industrial
environment. Invariably, these uniforms were provided by an
industrial laundry service, which had been contracted by the
employer to regularly deliver clean, well-fitted garments. The
employer paid for this service for a primarily male workforce.
This system worked because the employees were of one sex,
stayed in their jobs for a relatively long period of time, and were
centralized in a single location, making distribution of the garments
efficient.
As we moved into a more service-based economy, all of
this began to changeWomen began entering the workforce
in droves, and people began to take jobs for shorter durations.
Much assembly work was moved offshore and, by the mid-1980s,
the majority of jobs were in the service sector, the fastest growing
employment segment. The existing modelof a uniform—what it
was, where it was purchased, who paid for it, who wore it, and
even why they wore it—was changing forever.The lowly apron became the perfect uniform solution for the
emerging service-based economy, where employers were looking
for a low-cost, unisex way to protect and identify their diverse,
short-term, decentralized workforces. It was a fundamental shift
that anyone who had a vested interest in aprons or uniforms
should have seen early. Yet, very few did.
Two leading apron companies that we competed with directly
were small businesses, although they were many times bigger
than we were when I took over the management of the company.
I knew both presidents from industry functions and the occasional,
“Can you help us out on a fabric overage?” that periodically
cropped up.
HINDSIGHT IS 20/20
It is now apparent that neither of the two leading apron companies
had a macroview of the changes in the overall market and
the opportunities they presented. One would have described her
company as “making tea aprons for maids and waitresses sold
through specialty retailers and department stores.” The other
would have described his company as “manufacturing sewn
products made of woven fabrics (including aprons) that could be
sold to screen printers.” But neither would have said: “We provide
the growing service economy with a low-cost substitute for
traditional uniforms.”
Thanks to our ability to see and react to the macrochanges
taking place in the general market, sales at our small apron company
grew more than 2,000 percent in less than seven years. Our
growth represented a tremendous loss of opportunity for our chief competitors—one failed to grow in the apron market, and
the other eventually went out of business.
THE LESSON LEARNED
Why did this happen? Not because we were so smart, but instead
because the other guys were so slow to first recognize, and then
adapt to, fundamental changes in the marketplace.
I would also
argue that it was my relative ignorance about the “proper” dayto-
day operation of this kind of business that gave me the time to
see the macroview. Had I known more about fabric utilization
software or the latest sewing machine attachments, I might never
have taken the time to consider the fundamental, near-term future
of our company and industry. Ultimately, seeing the macro
proved to be our most important competitive advantage..
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