The Road So Far… my retail management journey.

It seems like I have been working in retail management since before color entered the world. I began working at the mall in my home town slinging fresh cut boardwalk fries and hopped into clothing for a short stint. At the time I just knew that working hard would get me a paycheck. I was able to afford some of life’s pleasantries but was not aware that the skills I was learning would have far more value than the dollars that trickled into my bank account.

After clothing I began my journey into home improvement retail by joining the team at Rickel Home Centers. Now dissolved, I learned to manage inventory, improved my customer service skills and found out what poor management can do to your company and workforce. When I left home to pursue higher education in computer engineering and computer science, I discovered my leadership affinity at the student building center of Virginia Tech. I ran a team of eight to maintain the building’s cleanliness, schedule and set up for student events.

After leaving college for the greater DC area, I dropped into a bookstore opportunity where I quickly rose up to the point at which I could truly run a business on my own. I was given the opportunity to oversee an annual calendar pop up store. This required the culmination of all my prior knowledge and much more to successfully launch, run and shut down. I feel in hind sight that I was not nearly as effective as I could have been in this role. Knowing what I do now, there would have been many other processes and structures I would have put into place to improve my success.

That book company, Borders Books in Woodbridge Virginia, as since departed and no longer is in existence. At the time when I could see Amazon budding, I knew that if we did not keep ahead of and embrace technology that the book world would collapse from a brick and mortar perspective. However, these lessons have strongly stuck with me over the years.

From that point I had come into that big orange box… Home Depot. This was around 2007, when they still gave a shit about customers and their people. It was a huge volume and culture shock to me, but I picked up lightning quick and within four months was running several departments that controlled $10M in sales. Here is where I was able to grow my merchandising and sales skills, learning customer behaviors and working with a much larger team. My direct reports grew up to 30 associates and to this day I still hear from them asking when I will come back, how I was the best manager ever because I truly cared about them. I feel this feedback even after years was the greatest lesson I had learned from my time bleeding orange.

Next I was derailed from retail with a swift change in management at Depot. So, being uncertain as to where my career would turn, I needed money and stuck it out for almost two years moving furniture. When I tell you that’s rough work, believe me. This was not only moving 10,000 lbs of furniture and anything else you can think of in a house, but loading, driving and unloading all in one day. That required stamina that I could not maintain for the rest of my life. Not to mention the fact that I felt my skills and knowledge were being wasted doing grunt work. I did diversify with that small business though. I helped the owner build his online presence, crafted a website, and honed his marketing through direct customer interaction and digital communications. Shortly after I parted ways with Three Daves Moving, he was able to sell the company for several million and retire. But my journey was still going.

Next stop, Lowe’s Home Improvement. Here was much like working at Depot, but the hours were shorter, the pay a little less and autonomy restricted. It was a bigger volume box, leadership was falsely genuine, but many of the merch, sales and management principles the same. Now I had doubled my total volume and direct influence to $20M in sales. But that wasn’t working either for my own growth.

So we come to the present day where I have been working with Floor & Decor for the past 4 years. This company has provided for me and my family in exchange for a combination of heavy lifting and operational prowess. They paid to move me across the country and aid an ailing store and now my volume has doubled again to be responsible for $40M in sales, 80 associates and a much broader understanding of the operational side of a retail business.

But this is just the beginning. I know that my passions and experience can lead to much more where I am the boss, I am the beneficiary and the one that can create a better life for others just as all my professional experiences have done for me so far. Where this road will take me I do not know, but I have faith that my success is guaranteed.