Container Store owner makes customer service a priority

Twenty-eight years ago, a young Rice alumnus and would-be entrepreneur had a simple idea: create a store that carries commercial-grade items with home storage potential, making many items available to the general public for the first time.

Nearly three decades later, the man who first envisioned customers purchasing wire leaf burners — originally designed for incinerating foliage and yard debris — for use as unique toy baskets has opened more than 35 of his storage stores nationwide.

Garrett Boone ’66, founder of The Container Store, discussed “Leading by Values and Examples” as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series April 10 at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

With an initial cash investment of $35,000, Boone and his business partners — Dallas architect and Rice alumnus John Mullen ’63 and Kip Tindell, a former colleague from Montgomery Ward and Storehouse — transformed the seed money into a company that is expected to turn a $500 million profit in 2006.

The first hurdle for the young businessmen was determining exactly what kind of products to market in their new retail store.

At first, the trio thought of selling handmade furniture pieces, but drawing up speculations on cost and production methods showed that the store would be difficult to launch.

It was only after Boone’s self-described “ah-ha moment” that the vision for The Container Store began to take shape. He was driving home from a product demonstration for shelving when it occurred to Boone that they should abandon the handmade furniture concept altogether and focus on something that every American family needed: storage.

The change in direction paid off.

“The store was really quite successful from the very beginning,” Boone said. “The inventory collection was a combination of products that we took from different areas consisting of houseware retail along with a lot of commercial items that no one had ever seen before because they were not able to buy them unless they owned a factory or some other commercial business.”

Almost immediately, it became apparent that The Container Store was going to be a service-intensive business because some products had not been available to retail customers before. “Many of the products had been on the market for a while, but hadn’t sold well because it required actual people having conversations with customers, relating those products to their needs,” Boone said.

At many large chain stores, customer service is secondary, he said. To sell seemingly new products, The Container Store would have to communicate the need to customers really well.

That desire to be the “best retail store in the country” kept Boone from selling to other companies that wanted to take The Container Store mainstream.

Despite offers to purchase the company and even threats to put it out of business, the owners resisted letting go of the corporation that he had invested his entire life in.

“We could have sold, but that’s not what it was about,” he said. “We wanted to empower our senior managerial team and give them the power to make daily decisions to the best of their ability. I think it is that feeling of entrepreneurship that keeps people from leaving. We have some of the best staff in the business.”