One Step at a Time

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The morning meetings provided a forum for collectively monitoring progress. If anyone was falling behind or pursuing a project that was diverting precious resources, other managers would insist the culprit address the delivery deadline. "What you end up with is a fair amount of group pressure," says Crisafulli.

Marmot's suppliers were also under the microscope. Marmot dispatched its quality-control gurus from Santa Rosa to Asia to ensure that products were made right and shipped promptly. The quality-control people hit the road 10 times -- up from the 2 trips to Asia they'd made in the previous year.

To reach its new goal Marmot had to limit growth temporarily. Cooley forbade the commissioned sales reps to open accounts for 18 months -- until Marmot could service its most loyal buyers. The reps signed on to the strategy because Marmot's problems had become their problems; if Marmot could fix itself, their jobs would be easier. Cooley imposed the same restraints on marketing: advertising and marketing budgets were diverted into production and more quality-control trips to Asia.

"The decision to have a single goal looming taints or filters all small decisions," Cooley explains. "Whether you are talking about a new label, resizing a jacket, or introducing a new product, if it modifies the overarching goal, you change your smaller goal. It becomes very tangible."

Even Marmot high priest Randy Verniers compromised. "In design-committee meetings, we got to the point of saying, 'No, it's too late. If we start making changes now, it will delay product delivery.' Late changes would just have to wait till next season."

The summer of 1992 progressed, the delivery deadline loomed, and Marmot's people worked nights and weekends to ensure that no last-minute glitches arose. When a Chinese supplier threatened to delay a shipment of parkas because it hadn't received the correct fabric, a Marmot staff member headed to China and found the giant roll of fabric lying in a neglected corner of the factory. When U.S. Customs in San Francisco sat on a shipment because of faulty Hong Kong paperwork, a Marmot employee traveled to the docks and sat on the customs agent until he released the freight. The Marmots could taste success, and they were hell-bent on showing the outdoor industry -- and themselves -- that they could both manufacture and deliver right.

In one feverish late-August week, Marmot filled orders, loaded boxes, and dispatched trucks filled with Marmot products to dealers -- two weeks ahead of schedule. Marmot had battled tirelessly on its weakest front and slain its enemy.

At 9 a.m. one day last January, Sheryl Harten, Marmot's vice-president of operations, like Pavlov, walks around ringing a silver bell. Ten casually dressed people respond, migrating to a small conference room. This is Marmot's daily "stand-up" meeting -- "We stand so it doesn't go on too long," explains Crisafulli -- a 10-minute ritual in which members of the management team keep one another posted. "We're gonna deliver spring '95 early!" proclaims Neide Cooley, director of merchandising. A spontaneous whoop is followed by applause.

The managers' enthusiasm stems in part from the investment they have in their achievement. They are members of the group that includes all the sales reps, several retailers, and a few individuals who had bought the company from bankruptcy court about a year and a half earlier. The following year had been the first in Marmot's 20-year history that the company was profitable. And sales have been nothing short of spectacular since then: after hovering around $5 million in the early 1990s, they grew steadily to $11 million in 1994, and the company expects to increase that figure by 50% this year. The moratorium on new dealers, imposed in 1991, was lifted in 1993 -- after three seasons of on-time deliveries. Crisafulli predicts that Marmot will grow around 40% annually for the next few years.

Marmot continues to hammer away at its problems -- one by one. The company holds a strategic meeting each February, during which Marmot's management agrees on its primary goal for the coming year. In mid-1993, believing that its products were "going stale," Marmot management directed resources to new-product development. Randy Verniers headed up the four-person design committee. But he got stuck and was in danger of falling behind schedule. So Cooley proposed that he, Verniers, and a leading sales rep get out of the office and brainstorm. The three drove around Europe, stopping at outdoor shops. They examined designs, products, and styles of clothing and sleeping bags. Inspired, they returned after a few weeks to design, develop, and release 1994's line of sleeping bags -- the company's first new bags in more than a decade -- and a waterproof breathable fabric to rival Gore-Tex.

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