Hello, welcome to Container Store. What is it about some stores that creates raving fans that swear by them? At the Container Store, there are now 49 of them across the country, co-founder and CEO Kip Tindall believes his success is due primarily to one thing. We focus on the employee the most, not even the customer, the employee.
Wait a minute, did he say the employee, not? the customer? If you take better care of the employee than anybody else, they'll take better care of the customer than anybody else.
And then wonderfully and ironically enough, the shareholder will be very happy too. Tyndall believes that by paying higher wages, $46,000 on average for salespeople, and offering health plans even to part-time employees, he can create a work environment that generates excitement. You walk in the store and you can feel it.
Everybody that's in the store. loves to be there. The customers love to be there.
The employees love to be there. Awesome. Thanks. Veteran employee Allison Copeland remembers when she first heard about the company's distinct culture. And I'm thinking, really?
Is this for real? And 15 years later, it's absolutely real, still true, and still so alive. Thanks a lot. Have a great day. Newbie Greg Heft has only been with the company six months.
Container store is nothing. Like any other retailer that I've ever worked for. One big difference is the company's approach in worker hiring and training.
Applicants are subjected to up to nine interviews, and only 3% of them are hired. Once on board, they get about 260 hours of training. That's over 30 times the industry average. Tyndall says the investment is worth it. When you're selling empty boxes, you better have great people.
Of course. Of course, the Great Recession hit retailing especially hard, and the container store was not immune. You can't go around calling yourself an employee of First Culture and then lay people off, so we didn't do that. But benefits were cut. Everybody was very happy to not get 401K for a couple of years, to freeze their salaries, because they knew they were literally saving their fellow workers'jobs.
You know, a team is a really beautiful human experience if it's done right. And now, profits are up and the 401K match is back. But Tyndall is...
critical of how other businesses have handled the recession and its aftermath. On average, if you look at the top 50 companies in the United States, how are we doing? C minus.
C minus. Tyndall's peers have given him an A. This year, he was awarded the National Retail Federation's gold medal.
I think everybody's becoming a little bit more conscious in the way they do business. I think customers demand it. They vote with their pocketbook.
Tyndall calls what he's doing conscious capitalism. We're not just being nice, it's a successful profit strategy as well. And if it's profitable, maybe the employee-focused culture won't be contained to the container store.