Part 1 of 3 of a Conversation with B.J. Orsi, Regional Manager, Bed Bath & Beyond.
B.J. Orsi is one of twelve Bed Bath & Beyond Regional Managers, each overseeing about 40-50 Store Managers, who, in turn, each manage about four Department Managers. B.J. has been at the company for over twenty years. I recently had the pleasure of talking with him about how his company operates and what sets it apart in the marketplace. I am sharing some key ideas from that conversation in three blogposts, of which this is the first.
B.J. believes passionately that Bed Bath & Beyond is a teaching organization with a strong culture and a commitment to customer-centric merchandising (adapting to what matters most to customers). The company is quite decentralized compared to most other large retailers and is much more autonomous at a local level.
Management encourages independent thinking and an entrepreneurial spirit. There is a real desire to avoid a cookie-cutter approach or mentality. Bed Bath & Beyond merchandises to the local customer and believes each store should feel different. The stores all have access to the same product categories but each store has a unique local flavor and some may have a distinct product category that other stores don’t have, like a luggage shop.
According to Orsi, managers have to work their way up the ladder. So, it is a very diverse working group. He states that everyone starts at the same level and earns his or her way up from a department manager to a store manager, and that may take up to a year and a half.
One of the key dynamics is that employees get promoted by teaching the people below them so that in time they can take their place. So you get bumped up as opposed to bumping someone off. You have to be hands on; you cannot delegate everything.
Here is part of my recent conversation. We began by discussing how his company gives each of its stores flexibility in what it sells:
B.J.: My office negotiates the price and the shipping and so forth from each vendor, but the product ships directly to our stores so it allows our store managers some flexibility. So, Newtown, PA can order a $200 toaster oven or 20 of them, or 60 of them and then maybe in another market they can order two or three and maybe in another market they might not carry it at all. The store managers have the ability to local-manage their assortment.
Jose: So, could they decide to source a product that is not in the master catalog, for example?
B.J. : They could and we have plenty of examples of that, as well. A really unique thing about our company is that there is a core assortment but above and beyond that there is a protocol and process to go through. The store managers can find a local company who has something they want to carry and negotiate carrying that item into their one store, or a district manager can put it into the whole district—we can do that as well. So, we really want the store to reflect the community and feel like the neighborhood store and not feel like that national chain.
Jose: So, towels with seashells on them might be locally sourced because it is unique to that need, at the Jersey Shore, for example?
B.J. : Exactly.
Jose: Well, that also implies a certain level of autonomy for every store. As long as they hit he numbers then everyone is happy. That’s the whole point -managers know what is happening at ground level with local customers. So what kind of training culture or measureable protocols are there to ensure that managers are actually engaging with customers and not just in the corner office studying spreadsheets? How are they getting close to the people?
B.J. : They are held to a lot of different standards and criteria. They are all home-grown and they have been brought up in these stores. The people training them have a vested interest in training them well because those who are doing the training want to get promoted. That is the way you get promoted in this company. It does not matter if you’re the department manager; your goal is to develop the next manager. So the only way to get to the next level is to really teach, train, develop, and mentor the people who are below you.
____________________
I’ll share more of B.J. ’s comments on how Bed Bath & Beyond fosters a teaching organization, in my next blog.
