Collaboration

by Shannon Hurd Collaboration Creative MB Bride staff unites to make Greensburg, Pa., bridal shop a major success. Financial discipline and the willingness to constantly change are key to this store’s success. W In the beginning, it came down to this: opportunity. Reed Pederson, a recent University of Pittsburgh MBA graduate, was living in California in 1991 and working as a territory manager for an oil company. Then he got the phone call that would change his life. Rich Konop, owner of a Pennsylvania-based bridal shop, Modern Bride, whom Pederson had done small-business consulting for while working his way through graduate school, was selling his business. He wanted to know if Pederson was interested in buying it. He was. “My wife , Maja, and I had always wanted to own a business together and (bridal) seemed like a good industry to get into,” Pederson says. “We figured it would work out well because she could do the fashion stuff and customer service, and I could handle the back room, advertising and numbers.” To g e t h e r, t h e Pe d e r s o n s scraped together $20,000 to purchase the 2,000-square-foot store, which Reed remembers as “looking fantastic. . . from the mirrors to the carpet, everything was new, which is partially what drew me to the idea of getting into this business.” When the newly renamed MB Bride & Special Occasion opened its doors on November 1, 1991, the Pedersons had three employees, 16 wedding dresses, 25 bridesmaids’ gowns, and some mother and flower girl dresses. Not to mention lots of energy and enthusiasm. “I was amazed at how much I was learning and how much there was to learn,” Maja recalls of those early days, where she couldn’t wait to come to the store and work her 12 hours. She continues, “Every time we reached a sales goal or expanded it was so exciting, a major milestone. The best time in my professional life was starting this store and seeing it grow.” And grow it did. After several years and an initial expansion to 3,000 square feet, three years later “we were just going nuts,” Reed recalls. “We did so much business out of that space that people didn’t believe me when I told them how much,” he says. (MB Bride was pushing $1 million in sales annually.) To accommodate the booming business, Reed began searching for a larger building to move H E R E I S I T ? September/October 2009 MB Bride & Special Occasion is located in Greensburg, Pa., a major business and cultural center about 35 miles southeast of downtown Pittsburgh, whose population (estimated at 15,889 people in the city, and 57,255 in the greater Greensburg area) nearly doubles during the work hours. Brides come from a three-hour radius, including central Pennsylvania, Ohio,West Virginia and Maryland, to visit the store, which was voted “#1 Bridal and Formalwear Store” by readers of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2007 and 2008. page 122 VOWS: into. In the meantime, he expanded the original store an additional 1,700 square feet and, in December 1998, opened a small-town Sears appliance-dealer store, a supplementary business venture that appealed to him largely because “there were lots of changes going on in bridal and I wasn’t sure where things were going.” Ultimately, the Sears store didn’t work out (“We were trying to do everything and it was too much,” Reed recalls.) So, in early 2001, he sold it and jumped back full-time into bridal, actively resuming his search for a bigger building. It took four years, but he finally hit the jackpot in the form of a nearly 80year-old former lumber store that needed extensive renovation work. “It looked terrible, but the minute I saw it I could envision where the parking lot and everything else would go,” he recalls. The Pedersons purchased, then completely renovated the building. In December 2005, they moved into their new 15,600-square-foot home, a gamble that ultimately paid off. Today, MB Bride & Special Occasion, which services approximately 10,000 customers annually and has an average price point of $1,000 for bridal, is wildly successful, doing more in sales in an average hour than they did in their entire first month of business. “It’s almost hard to believe, honestly,” Reed says. “We just look at it like oh my God, how did this happen?” First Thing’s First: All Employees Deserve Credit Reed is quick to point out that his store’s success is truly a collaborative effort. “Really, Maja and I are just part of the puzzle,” he says. “Our store managers and employees are an integral part of everything, and they deserve a lot of the credit, too.” MB Bride’s 42-person staff, which ranges in age from early 20s to mid-60s, includes a prom manager, Heidi Alcorn; a tuxedo manager, Rachael Crosby; and a shipping and receiving manager, Lynn Howell, as well as dozens of seamstresses and sales consultants. (See sidebar, “MB Bride’s Other Key Players.”) In addition, there is Maja, the selfdescribed “engine of the ship,” who handles primarily human-resources tasks such as bookkeeping, payroll and vendor relationships; and Reed, “the ship’s captain,” who is constantly looking ahead, deciding where the store needs to go and planning how best to get there. Together, this group functions as a well-oiled machine, working together to achieve success. One of the main keys? In addition to giving employees and managers lots of freedom, Reed and Maja maintain an open-door policy, which liter- MB Bride’s success is a collaborative effort;every employee plays a role. “Impulse items” are located immediately to the left after entering the main doors. All brides must walk down “bridal row” to get to the showrooms to try on gowns. page 123 VOWS: September/October 2009 ally means that “anyone can barge into my office any time they want and tell me they don’t like anything,” Reed says. “And they do all the time.” He continues, “If you want to change and be better, you’ve got to be able to criticize yourself and everyone must feel like they can contribute.That’s the environment we try to have here.” To further the communication process, the Pedersons speak openly with their employees as well. In addition, they provide occasional perks, such as catered lunches on busy Saturdays, and are also understanding when it comes to scheduling matters, making sure employees have time off for things they want to do. In turn, during the store’s busiest Co-owner Maja Pederson works in her office. “It’s very important that we maintain great relationships with our vendors, like by paying our bills on time,” she says. “Sometimes we need them to do us a favor, and they are there for us.” times when extra staff is needed on the sales floor, employees return the favor by working extra hours and changing around their schedules, a mutually beneficial partnership that keeps people happy and a sense of loyalty running strong. An added benefit? The strong camaraderie that has developed amongst the staff. “We’re all friends, we do things together outside of the store, and we know what’s going on in each others’ lives,” says Jennifer Mason, the store’s sales and buying manager. “It’s really like one big family here.” Change Is In The Air; Few Things Stay The Same While MB Bride’s staff remains loyal, other elements are in flux. Reed is constantly pushing his store into new ways of doing things, with the goal of always trying to improve. “After 10 years of running this business successfully, I thought I couldn’t know everything,” he says. So he decided to switch up his thinking and assume everything the store had been doing in the past was wrong. As such, Pederson purposely starting trying things he didn’t believe in, such as advertising further away from the store, hoping to learn from the experience. “Previously, I never believed brides would drive from great distances to see you, but I discovered they would,” he says. “If you provide good service and what they want, they’ll drive for hours.” He also switched staff from hourly pay to commission, discovering in the process that “you can get people psyched up to make more money if you give them more money.” Finally, MB Bride changed the way they organize dresses, switching from wear date to alphabetical order, a move that has left the store “a lot more organized, which is important because with the volume we do we need to be able to find gowns quickly.” “I live for the future,” says Reed, who keeps a notebook full of stuff he still wants to change, including training techniques and software upgrades. “I think since we’re always changing pretty rapidly, my competitors are a few years behind at least.” Constantly challenging old beliefs has helped this store improve. September/October 2009 The Mothers’ department has two dressing rooms, with four tuxedo dressing rooms around the corner that get used as overflow. overflow. page Excellent Customer Service Is Given At All Times While certain elements at MB Bride & Special Occasion regularly change, others – such as the top-notch service given to brides – remain the same. “Ultimately, the way we treat our customers is always going to be the bottom line (to our success),” Reed says. Excellent customer service at MB Bride means many things, from greeting brides right away and providing free coffee and snacks, to personally delivering gowns if necessary and working outside of regular store hours to accommodate customers’ needs. On the rare occasion when a problem arises, employees go out of their way to solve it. In the case of a supplier being unable to deliver a dress, for example (“Fortunately, very rare!” Reed says), customers would be able to pick out a replacement gown, no matter what it costs, free of charge. “You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to make it right – you can’t look at the dollar amount,” Reed says. “If it’s reasonable, you’ve got to do it. If it’s unreasonable, do it. Only when it’s outrageous do you have to stop and say no.” 124 VOWS: Speaking of saying no, as a gener al r ule , MB Bride refuses to do it. “We don’t have any policies on the wall like you can’t bring food in or no kids,” Maja says. “I think it turns customers off if there are too many things that say you can’t do this or that.” Instead, the store aims to work with everybody, even refusing to insist that customers must pay for their gowns within a certain time frame. “We very rarely get burned, but finding the golden ground is our biggest challenge,” Maja says. There are no policies telling customers what they can’t do. The MB Bride & Special Occasion team – (back row, left to right): Joanne Evangelista, Sandy Leonard, Nikky Litvik, Cathy Dempsey, Jessica Loucks, Lynn Howell, Angie Shaw, Aubrey Diethorn, Alicia Pocratsky. (Middle row): Emily Shaffer, Lisa Bugosh, Linda Mikosky, Kim Overly, Sue Petrulak, Rachael Crosby. (Front row, left to right): Heidi Alcorn, Judy Holliday, Jennifer Mason, co-owner Maja Pederson, Debbie McVay, Susan Leach. In The Spotlight: MB Bride & Special Occasion September/October 2009 Business Established: 1991. Store Size: 15,600 square feet, divided into two floors of equal size. Total Staff: Varies depending on the season from anywhere between 40-55 full and part-time employees, and 8-13 contractors. Compensation: Sales associates work strictly on commission, plus incentives. Support staff and alterations are mainly hourly. Management is on an incentive-based plan. Alterations: In-house. Advertising/Marketing: “We do a little bit of everything, including radio, direct mail, the Internet and a Web site (www.mbbride.com),” says co-owner Reed Pederson of his store, which has yet to make the jump into social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter but plans on considering it in the near future. “The only exception is I’m getting out of print like the Yellow Pages and newspapers because fewer people read it anymore.” Recent Good Business Read: Pederson prefers to spend his time perusing newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and the Pittsburgh Business Times. “That’s where I keep up on business trends,” he says. “(These publications) give me interesting ideas and inspiration that I can apply to our business.” Local “Must See”: Fallingwater (a.k.a. the Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. Residence), a famous house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1934, which is built partly over a waterfall and well known for its architecture. “It’s about 45 minutes away and a pretty big destination point for a lot of people,” Pederson says of the National Historic Landmark, which hosts more than 120,000 visitors each year. page Financial Discipline Is Extremely Important In this day and age, it’s more important than ever to be fiscally conservative, something Reed believes in firmly. “I only buy what we need, and I’m always projecting on the conservative side,” he says. “We’ve grown rapidly, but without wasteful spending.” Reed gives a budget to his buyers and allows them to use it as they like, but he won’t hesitate to say no if their requests exceed the amount allocated. In addition, he makes sure to handle profits carefully, understanding that not every year will be the same. “There have been many years where we have grown 30-40 percent,” he says. “The tendency when all that money comes in is to spend it on anything you want, but that’s not what we do.” Instead if he projected a 20 percent increase in sales, he’ll buy for that 20 percent, then save or reinvest the rest, often on store improvements. Perhaps due to Reed’s financial savvy, MB Bride hasn’t been deeply affected by the recession that has devastated other businesses. In fact, not only is the store hitting numbers from last year, but the second half of 2009 is “shaping up to be real good.” Not only has the average price of a bridal gown gone up (“Brides in the $4,000 or $5,000 range are coming 126 VOWS: down to us, and consequently we’re looking at adding higher price points,” he says), but prom business “has been tremendous this year.” “My theory is that families have cut back on vacations and cars, but they’ll still spring for a new prom gown because important life events take on a different meaning when times are tough,” Reed says. You Can’t Beat The Huge Product Selection “We always think if a bride comes in and can’t find what she’s looking for she might not find it anywhere else, either,” Maja says of her store’s enormous product selection, which includes 450-600 bridal gowns; more than 1,600 bridesmaids gowns; 280 mothers gowns; a full tuxedo store; and a prom department whose space is as big as the Pederson’s original store. “We try to have everything,” she says. “I hear all the time, ‘Your selection is great.’ Customers get to see a few hundred dresses, not just 50.” Despite the enormous selection, the Pedersons designed MB Bride to look and feel very boutique like. Each department (maids, flower girl, mothers, tuxedo store, prom, alterations and bridal) is walled off and pretty much separate. “We try to keep a simple, clean and focused look throughout the store,” Reed says. “The merchandise is to be featured; not the decor.” To help achieve this goal, Store Manager Debbie McVay says employees will frequently spend an extra hour after closing to make sure light bulbs are screwed in, doors are fingerprint-free, carpets are vacuumed and dresses are straightened. “For the magnitude size of our store, it’s kept very well, and this is impressive,” McVay says.“People comment this is the cleanest store they’ve ever seen.” To help spread the word about MB Bride, Reed, who acts as the store’s marketing department, tries many things, including trunk shows, clearance sales and a promotion where brides who visit the store receive a complimentary lunch at a local restaurant. His marketing budget is 4-5 percent of annual sales, an amount Pederson is MB Bride’s Other Key Players Susan Leach – Alterations Manager With MB Bride Since: March 2005. Leach, whose passion is sewing, started working as a seamstress on her day off from another bridal store, where she was employed fulltime. Within three months, the former entrepreneur (Leach owned Susan’s Bridal Shop 25 years ago in Clearfield, Pa.), was promoted to manager. “I’ve made a commitment to be here until I retire, if I ever do,” she says. “This store is just incredible; I feel at home here.” Duties: Leach, who works as many as 65 hours per week during peak season, handles a variety of tasks including custom work, quality control and training seamstresses. In addition, she schedules appointments, oversees fittings and – the big job! – makes sure customers are handled in a smooth, timely fashion. “One of my main goals is that I don’t want a crisis at the end, or surprises the day before the wedding,” Leach says. “Everything should go out the door looking like it wasn’t altered. Most Memorable Moment: About a year ago, a quadriplegic prom customer came into the store in her wheelchair. Caretakers helped her try on a dress, then Leach fit the bodice and hemmed the gown. “She was so gracious and happy that she could at least try to do something the other girls were doing; a young boy was taking her to the prom!” Leach says. “It was a good feeling, a blessing really, to fit her and see her have that joy.” Debbie McVay – Store Manager With MB Bride Since: July 2007. McVay, who had her own interior design business for 15 years, enjoyed planning her own daughter’s wedding so much that when she spotted a newspaper ad for an MB Bride consultant position, she answered it, thinking she might as well give the job a try. By Jan 2008, the mother of five was promoted to manager. “I can’t imagine being anyplace else,” McVay says. “Reed is an awesome person and I’ve learned so much from him.” Duties: McVay handles “pretty much everything” involved in making the store run smoothly, from employee interviewing, hiring and training; to dealing with customer complaints and compliments; and maintaining the store’s appearance. “I really appreciate (Maja and Reed’s) approach,” she says. “They tell us certain things, but pretty much let us run the store as we see fit. “ Best Part of Her Job: McVay, who loves seeing how happy brides get when they find their dream dress, also enjoys working to resolve the occasion problem. “Being a mother of five has given me the patience necessary to lend customers moral support and help calm them down,” she says. Jennifer Mason – Sales Manager and Buying Manager With MB Bride Since: April 2002. Mason, who had worked in the construction field since she was 17, was actually an MB Bride bride in 1999. She liked the experience so much that after getting married, she answered the store’s fashion-consultant newspaper ad because she “thought it would be fun and I’d enjoy doing it.” The married mother of three was promoted to buying manager five years ago, and became sales manager last December. Duties: In addition to assisting with sales and training and helping run the floor, Mason on market trips, taking a group of about three employees with her. “I always consider the girls’ opinions (when making buying decisions) because it helps give the diversity our store needs,” Mason says. Secret To MB Bride’s Success: Mason attributes this largely to Maja and Reed’s opendoor policy, as well as the store’s family friendly atmosphere. “It’s a very relaxed setting, and a very welcoming environment,” she says. “The way they treat us shows they care about us and love what they do, and this attitude helps us shine on the sales floor.”. page 127 VOWS: September/October 2009 always trying to reduce. “One of my ongoing projects is to see how little I can get away with,” he says. “I might experiment by deciding not to do something for a year and see what happens. I can’t stay stagnant, and I don’t know why you would.” In the end, it comes down to this: Financial discipline and the willingness to constantly change, which have been the keys to MB Bride’s success. In addition, there is the fiercely loyal staff, who goes above and beyond to make brides’ dreams come true; and the large product selection and excellent customer service that have won MB Bride numerous awards, including the “best” in The Knot’s “ B e s t o f Weddings” for 2008. All of these elements are testaments to the productive, caring way the Pedersons run their business. Looking forward, Reed says his goal is to keep growing the store, doing his best to make it even more efficient. “We are way further along at this point than we ever would’ve expected five years ago,” he says. “Who knows what the future will bring?” “If a bride comes in and can’t find what she’s looking for,she might not find it anywhere.” MB Bride has different sized showrooms, which seat the bride and anywhere from two to five friends. Each showroom has its own dressing room and lighting system. “The bride never has to come out into the main part of the bridal area if she doesn’t want to,” co-owner Reed Pederson says. MB Bride has a full-fledged tux store called Modern Tux, which is advertised separately. It has its own front entrance and four fitting rooms. Four Things You Didn’t Know About MB Bride & Special Occasion 1.They donate merchandise to a variety of organizations including non-profits, schools and church groups. “It makes us feel good knowing the dresses are going somewhere where they’re appreciated,” co-owner Maja Pederson says. 2. In 2007, they were featured on the popular CMT reality show, “My Big Redneck Wedding.” As well, they appeared in an episode of “Bridezillas.” 3.The store is located across the street from Offutt Field, home to the Seton Hill University football team. On game days, MB Bride provides paid event parking, and Reed can watch the game from his office window. 4. Family is very important to the Pedersons, who make a point to attend - and even coach! - sporting events that their sons, Clark, 10, and Sky, 12, participate in. “My wife and I would love to work more but we’ve got to be parents first,” Reed says. Most Memorable Moment Reed Pederson, co-owner of MB Bride & Special Occasion in Greensburg, Pa., had spent about a year and a half writing his own computer program designed to run the store. “I dedicated my life to this pursuit,” Pederson says. “It started as a hobby and became an obsession.” Then, in mid-July 1995, the day he was scheduled to introduce the program to the store, Pederson felt an unexpected pain in his abdomen, which kept building in intensity. “I thought I’d better go to a doctor before debuting the software,” Pederson says. “It was hard to make that decision because I’d spent many months getting ready for this day, but I knew I couldn’t start the program without being there to work through the initial bugs because our business was going to be completely dependent on it.” So he put the launch on hold and went to the doctor.Two hours later, the married father of two was in surgery, having his appendix removed. He spent the next three days recovering in the hospital. “This surgery delayed (the software debut) about three to four weeks,” Pederson says, “but there’s a good ending.” Not only did the unveiling go well, but the custom program, which, among other tasks, keeps track of the history of every single dress in the store, including how many times it has been tried on and purchased, turned out to be one of the keys to MB Bride’s success. Most importantly, however, is the business - and life - lesson Pederson learned. “Everything happens when it happens; you’ve got to go with the flow,” he says. “As much as I wanted to get that software going, health comes first.” page September/October 2009 128 VOWS: