Kahl also reviews the company's profit and loss statement at monthly partnership meetings, which include all employees. He will admit that, on occasion, it has hurt him a little to be so open. But it's better for an executive to make himself vulnerable than to act in a more typically defensive manner, he insists, since that leads only to rejecting outside ideas. "We need to constantly bring ideas to one another," says Kahl. "We don't have any choice. The world doesn't make exceptions for small companies. Nobody says, 'You're a nice little guy, you should survive.' "
Certainly nobody who knew Manco from its earliest days would have predicted much more than survival for the company. When Jack Kahl joined the business as general manager, in 1963, it was strictly an industrial distributor of tape, bringing in all of $80,000 a year. Over the next eight years, he built sales up to $800,000 by expanding into five states. But, says Kahl, who now owns the company, "I wanted the romance of retail."
There was nothing especially dreamy-eyed about his vision for Manco. Stores sold tape in different sections -- masking tape resided beside paints, electrical tape with small appliances, and so on. Kahl envisioned a display that consolidated all the tapes. But he figured it would take years to make it happen. Giants like Mystik and Arno dominated the business. Then an unexpected opportunity creaked open in 1977, when an energy crunch, combined with arctic temperatures, sent demand for weather stripping soaring. Kahl committed himself to pushing his way into the business. At a trade show late that fall, he stuck around even after the lights had been dimmed. Then he was approached by a buyer for Wal-Mart Stores. That night, they shook hands on a deal for $80,000. It was Manco's largest order ever.
Five or six other major accounts -- hardware chains, home centers, and convenience stores -- soon scrambled to climb aboard. "The dam broke, and we got in everywhere," Kahl says. In 1978 he found himself running a $5-million company with "windfall profits." After so many years of struggling, he knew exactly what kind of company he wanted to build.
To articulate that vision, Kahl and Corbo wrote a 10-page booklet that set down Manco's goal of becoming a high-quality retail supplier. As evidence of their big thinking, they hired an ad agency -- for the first and only time -- to produce the tome, which cost $20,000. They sent it out to customers, suppliers, and employees. Now all they had to do was convince people they were serious.
It wouldn't be easy to do. For help, Kahl found himself devouring business books and exchanging them with Corbo. Case histories piled up on Kahl's desk. Magazines took over the front seat of his car. Stacks of books grew at his bedside. "He began to know that he didn't know," says Bob Dorfmeyer, who heads Manco's advisory board, a group that Kahl decided to form one morning at 4:00, after reading a magazine.
The bookworms soon lifted their heads and began exploring the outside world. Kahl and Corbo visited Cooper Hand Tools, in Raleigh, N.C., a big company they admired for the way it merchandised its products. "I realized you can learn a lot just by talking to these companies," says Kahl. "They are doing things in a bigger way, but you can see the quality, and it sinks into your bones." He also joined the Conference Board, mingling with some major-league CEOs. "It was like standing among the redwood trees," he says. "But I figured if you need to learn, you should learn from the best."
Kahl doesn't pretend that his list of role models is comprehensive. Some he got to know in the course of business. Others he uncovered in his research. Then there are those, like Domino's Pizza, that slipped into his consciousness via more pedestrian routes: his taste buds, for example, or other aspects of his daily life as a consumer.
The lesson from the Domino's coupon? "Domino's is always trying to exceed the customer's expectations," declares Corbo. How can Manco apply that lesson? Maybe the company can give customers whose shipments arrive late a 1% discount on their next order. Jack Kahl vows to bring the matter up at the regular Thursday night meeting, at which employees bat around their discoveries.
"This is our biggest competitive weapon," admits Kahl. "We learn from everyone -- and we learn faster than anyone else."
Here are some of the big-company role models he has found most useful and their major areas of influence at Manco:
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The Walt Disney Co.: Merchandising and Marketing
Since Kahl believes retailing is show business, he decided to study a company that had a commanding grasp of that world. So around 1979 he got hold of some books about Walt Disney.
An art book alerted Kahl to the emphasis Disney put on color. Kahl himself had studied color in college, having researched the use of it in greeting cards. With Manco profitable, he decided to hire a designer to come up with a color that would unify and draw attention to Manco's products. The designer proposed a shade of blue; Kahl preferred green. When they opened the argument up to employees, "everyone loved the green," brags Kahl. A retailer later suggested a Sea of Green theme.
Seeking to get closer to Disney's thinking, Kahl and Corbo even hired a former Disney executive for a day -- Kahl persuaded him to accept only $4,000, about one-quarter of his usual take. What particularly struck Kahl was the one question that Disney had posed about every marketing move: "How can we engage the five senses?" A product as boring as duct tape rarely brought any people to their senses.
