The One Order Relationship

Welcome Ceremony In India

One of the hardest concepts that I have found to explain to factories is Pomeroy’s particular way of working.  In the beginning of a relationship even when I explain how we work to a factory owner, in most cases he or she only expects to snag one order if possible, and the notion of a repeat order is as foreign as the person standing in front of them.

We typically work with the same factories for years, never on a single order basis. This can be unusual.  In the beginning a factory will quote on a project and if they get the order, will not expect to ever see that customer again. The buying habits of major retailers has created this environment; as they typically work with buying agents or trading companies and have little personal contact with the factory owners.  This style of working makes it pretty easy to drop and add factories at will without ever really developing any type of relationship.  I know a particular case in which an off price retailer, not particularly interested in design created a system of buying brass, whereby they would simply weigh the pieces and pay by weight.  This system for buying product certainly removes the need to create a relationship, or getting to know the factory’s capabilities, much less the possibility of generating repeat business.  Often is the case where a factory will have significant business built with a customer, working through an agent, only to have it stripped away without warning for whatever reason; which of course leaves the factory vulnerable to the whim of the person in control of the relationship with the customer. 

Pomeroy works best with a trading company when our products, being diverse, require a wide range of raw material sourcing and production techniques as well as consolidation of components.  A trading company is also critical in a situation where language is an issue making direct communication impossible. In this case unfortunately, while I make a point to meet and work on developments directly with the factory,  the customer is the trading company, and not Pomeroy.  This creates a situation whereby as much as I might like the work of a particular factory I cannot always control whether we maintain a relationship or not.  They may want to raise prices in the middle of a season and do not understand that we in turn cannot raise our pricing as there are retail programs in place where pricing may not change, and indeed in my experience it is simply better to terminate a particular item in lieu of trying to raise a price on an item; as our retail customers will not accept increases anyway.  This dynamic forces the trading company to constantly search for additional sources for production to maintain consistent pricing.  And while this does not foster the kind of long term relationships that Pomeroy espouses, it can have a positive effect in the end by effectively challenging the factory to improve their cost structure or efficiency to come back and work with us again in the future.

In other countries Pomeroy deals more or less directly with the factories using an agent for communication relating to orders, product development, quality control, printing, and shipping.  I have worked for twelve years in a particular country, mostly with the same factories, and have been able to maintain relationships with the owners, which is rare.  Wherever possible, the factory should try to develop and maintain direct communication with the customer; if for no other reason than to learn and understand the other side of the equation relating to these global transactions. While it may sound positively byzantine at times to learn how major retailers function in the U.S., it is important that they make the effort.  A better understanding of case pack requirements, pre-ticketing requirements, packing label requirements, testing, etc… will improve communication between the customer and the factory.  And no matter what the category of discussion, in the end more communication between the customer and the factory will only create more opportunities for both.

Orders From Chaos

Well-Appointed Showroom

Looking for the "Crown Jewel"

One of my favorite things is to skulk around in the back rooms of factories, scouring the floor, peering onto random shelves, and into dusty bins.  I move like a cat when I’m working in a factory; not a fast cat, but rather a slow hunting sort of cat; because I cannot afford to miss something that can become something else that I desperately need for my collection. In the heart of these rooms filled with dusty bins and shelves, most factories have an area which is full of parts, broken bits, and buckets of who knows what’s, with all sorts of things lying about which have not yet found a use and indeed may never. Nestled comfortably amongst the bits of this and splashes of that, is a cup of cold tea, ashtrays, small bowls of paints, cans of thinner, and all kinds of mysterious powders and such.  This is usually where the “tinkerer” spends his or her time if a factory is lucky enough to have such a person.  It’s usually in a room like this; dirty to the point of grimy, disorganized to be kind, and utterly fascinatingly rich in smells (I’ll leave that to your imagination), that I find something truly inspiring.

This is the” crown jewel” of every factory even though they would never recognize it. Most factories aspire to have a lovely well- appointed showroom with refreshments and snacks in which to entertain buyers, and it would never occur to them to take a buyer to the area I am describing, yet this is where I long to be, because this is where I’m going to find a castaway component or fragment which will help set me apart from the teaming mass of designers and buyers out there all lurking in the well-appointed showrooms with refreshments and snacks.  The showroom is still a critical component to any sales effort to be sure, but many new items will be picked to display in the showroom arbitrarily and many other potential unique finishes or shapes lie in the chaos that is the crown jewel which may speak to a new rising color trend or technique albeit buried under some rags, or fragments of other things that “went wrong”, and for whatever reason were not developed into a new range of product.  

This is the part of the job which can be truly fun and invigorating, because when I find something in a place that looks like a whirling dervish, and buried under a bunch of ” random artifacts”, I can be assured that it has never seen the light of day (in a product sense), and indeed the owner of the factory probably does not realize that it exists, because it never made it out of the whirling dervish in the first place.  This is Nirvana for someone like myself because I can take a new finish and create an entire range of new product and combine with other unexpected raw materials to create extensions to the original idea and in the end have a new driver for the business which all started under a tarp, in the corner of a room, which was full of other tarps, and broken things, all waiting for a guy like me to bring a little order; or maybe a big one! 

Neutral Is A Color

Ceramic Fragrance Diffuser Pots Ready For Firing

Todd In Central China

Many years ago when I was a protégé senior majoring in graphic design, working at the University of Houston, with my mentor (we’ll call him P.B.) , I recall asking the question, “Hey, why don’t we do this particular exercise in color; why always black and white?”  Without hesitation he said, “if it looks good in black and white then it will only look better in color.”  

I live by those words to this day; even when I’m working on something I think I already understand and have a solution for; even when I am so confident that I can jump ahead in my process (which never works for me), I always come back to that tired old axiom.  Well, old certainly now that I’m over fifty but still as true as the day he uttered those words. 

I remember working with a ceramic factory in Vietnam some years ago and the sales manager there was making fun of me because she always thought my color direction was so boring, “Always browns!.”   “Why don’t you ever use colors?” While I do recall feeling somewhat inadequate and dull as a designer when she said that, and while I have begun using a lot more color in my collections, I am still very cautious. Admittedly mauve to normal people is bright pink to me; as my color ranges are usually pretty muted.  That being said; one can have too many colors, textures, circles, whatever.  One can have too much of a good thing.  I blame my love of neutrals on my training as a graphic designer, as well as my experience designing for the home, and probably my childhood (just kidding!)  Neutral does not have to be boring and indeed can be positively striking if used in an interesting way.  Black and white is about as basic as it gets; but add a warm brown and make something a texture, etc...and voila!  Start with a cold gray straight from The Eastern Bloc fifty years ago,  add contrast, and warmth, and you have a new urban basic. 

In the end I let my customers tell me what is right.  Karl Lagerfeld said it best when he said, “We as designers can only propose ideas, we cannot make the customers buy anything.”    Our customer will always make her feelings known, her preferences heard; and in the end, she will have a lot of basic neutrals in her closet, as well as in her home.