Letty and Lucy Land in the Soup

Laurie Karzen and Charlotte R. Morrill -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 12/1/2000

Letty and Lucy have owned Linens & Luxuries Ltd. for 11 years. The pretty store, on the first floor of an old house in Ashley's Grove, does very well. Letty and Lucy have turned such a good profit that a few years ago they were able to buy the house. They rent out the two top floors. The money helps pay the mortgage, and last year there was enough left over to paint the Edwardian building in eight shades of buff and white. It looks like a big lace doily!

Lucy, who was probably an architect in another life, enlarged the first floor windows and replaced the panels in the ornate double door with glass. The walls and floors of all the rooms are taupe and beige. The rooms are light, but contrast with the store's white linens. The kitchen, dining room, and pantry are set up to display the linens that would go in those rooms. The living room has a huge antique bed in the center that shows off bedding. The old library is a showcase for shawls and scarves and umbrellas and gifts. The conservatory is used to display aprons and table settings for terrace and poolside dining. The store-and the merchandise in it-is delicious.

Linens & Luxuries Ltd. does a good business in custom-made table linens, custom monogramming, and even chair covers for weddings. If a client brings in her monogrammed stationery or an old monogrammed silver hairbrush, Letty and Lucy will reproduce the monogram on her linens. If the customer does not have monogrammed stationery or a monogrammed silver hairbrush, Letty and Lucy will create one for her. They will monogram placecards to match her monogrammed napkins. If a customer has trouble finding a laundry to wash and iron the fabulous monogrammed linens, Letty and Lucy will find one for her.

Labor-Intensive L & L

You may be thinking how labor intensive all this monogramming and starching must be. Linens & Luxuries Ltd. is a labor-intensive business. The bridal season (when the big wedding and shower orders come in) is particularly busy. Babies lucky enough to be born in Ashley's Grove are brought into the world in a delightful haze of monogrammed linen. Every granddaughter in town has monogrammed sheets.

Christmas is celebrated at Linens & Luxuries Ltd. in a swirl of personalized cocktail napkins and holiday tablecloths.

Very popular are the red Christmas stockings, made just to fit a knife, fork, and spoon, with a tiny gold loop to go around one's little finger while one is balancing a plate in one hand and a glass in the other. The store will make them to match any cloth.

Things usually go swimmingly at Linens & Luxuries Ltd. But last Christmas, Letty and Lucy landed in the soup.

Profits were up and problems were down all year.until three employees left in September. It was not anyone's fault. Margaret's husband was transferred to Toledo. Sherry got accepted into a graduate program. Betty moved to Maine.

The store was busy. Letty put off hiring new people. It was difficult to find three good prospects. There was a flurry of early holiday business just as the three new employees started. Lucy's daughter, Leonie, got the flu, and then Lucy came down with it. Lucy was away from the store for two weeks. With no other choice, Letty greeted the three new staff members, taught them how to run the cash register, and turned them loose.

Employee Woes

The trouble started, as trouble often does, quietly. Letty overheard one of the new employees ask Mrs. Gotrocks if she needed help three times in one hour. Letty made a mental note to teach her how and when to approach customers, but was unaware that Mrs. Gotrocks was annoyed. Mrs. G. stayed away for two months.

Lucy met the new employees later in the week. She liked them, but wished Letty had warned them that chipped nail polish was not allowed. She forgot about it, but Mrs. Leroy certainly noticed it when the chipped nails held a lace tablecloth for her to see. She did not buy the tablecloth. Somehow, it did not seem.wonderful. She bought less expensive placemats instead.

One of the new employees got confused while she was checking on Mrs. Portnoy's credit card. The transaction took longer than necessary. Mrs. Portnoy found some French candles in a display in the library while she was waiting. She thought of adding them to her purchase, but, by the time the sale was finally approved, all she wanted was to take her purchases and go home. She did not buy the candles.

Letty was taking a complicated monogramming order when she heard one of the new employees tell a customer that a damask bedspread could just be thrown into the washing machine. Letty managed to correct that mistake, but lost track of the order she was writing and had to redo the monogram later.

Another time, Lucy had to interrupt a customer four times to answer questions from one of the new staff members about some Italian linen. The purchaser of the Italian linen grew bored with the interruptions. So did Lucy's customer. One customer did not buy. The other bought less than she might otherwise have.

Letty totally lost it on December 4, when she found dust kitties along the ruffle of the antique bed. "Your job is to dust!" she cried to an amazed new staff member. "I thought you hired me to sell," replied the affronted employee.

The Final Straw

Letty said that they would continue the discussion later and fled to the kitchen. She lost her temper again when she found that someone had rearranged the kitchen display with all the wrong colors. She redid the display, and retreated to the pantry, where one customer was tangled in tea towels, one was waiting to be served, and one new employee was making a date for dinner on the telephone!

Letty and Lucy struggled through Christmas somehow. Sales were good, but not as good as they had been projected to be. Letty and Lucy were exhausted. One of the new employees left the day after Christmas. She said she liked the shop, but working there was too confusing. "There isn't even a store manual!" she said.

Letty and Lucy were truly amazed. It had never occurred to them that they might need a manual for such a small store. When they thought about it, they remembered that they had once attended a seminar at which the presenter had discussed writing a store manual. They had dismissed the idea as ridiculous for a store the size of Linens & Luxuries Ltd. The idea did not seem ridiculous now. But it did seem like a lot of work.

"I don't know anything about writing manuals," said Lucy. "Where would we start? And it would take us years to do. And how does one do it?"

"I don't know," said Letty, "but I am going to learn. We really got into the soup this Christmas. We lost sales. And, no matter how awful it is to write a manual, it can't be more awful than what we've just been through."

Next month.Letty and Lucy get out of the soup!

Laurie Karzen and Charlotte R. Morrill are the principals behind CRM & ME, a design, marketing, and consulting company.