But today Glazer is gone, having officially "resigned" last January. He has moved on to become president of $1.5-billion Consolidated Stores, based in Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, Nourse presides over a company from which numerous senior managers defected in the wake of Glazer's departure -- and monthly same-store sales continue to drop. In October the stock melted down to a four-year low of just $5 a share, an 85% decline from its peak.
Nourse's move to reassert control points to the volatile relationship that often develops between an entrepreneur's identity and his or her company. In Nourse's case, as with most entrepreneurs, his corporate creation generated more than wealth. It nourished his ego and gave him standing in the eyes of his peers.
As Nourse saw it, sales like the one in New Orleans violated more than just Bombay's marketing strategy; such promotions threatened to drain the company of what made it special to him. Having stepped away from Bombay, Nourse was apparently unprepared to see it grow in ways he neither recognized nor liked. He missed the Bombay he had crafted.
As a result, the pain he has inflicted on the business and its employees -- as described by many present and former colleagues, most of whom, fearing retribution, refused to allow their names to be used in this story -- raises troubling questions about what entrepreneurs really mean when they say they love their businesses and know what's best for them. Are they talking about the exhilaration of starting up? The challenges of growing fast? Or do they cherish the kind of emotional "home" that a company provides? It helps to know the answers, because the business will one day, inevitably, change, leaving its builder with a painful void to fill. That quandary makes stepping back in, as Nourse has done, the most naturally tempting -- and the most potentially disastrous -- move of all.
But amid the turmoil, Nourse himself seems unfazed -- he's emboldened, really -- by what he surveys. "Do I think I know the company better than anybody else? Yes, absolutely." Like many entrepreneurs, he seems to sense an opportunity, no matter how dire the circumstances. "We were not a company that had its back to the wall. We weren't losing money," Nourse asserts. "We were coming to grips with these issues early on." That may be so, but perhaps a nearer truth about Bob Nourse is that what he has loved about Bombay has been the building of it. And now he is determined to keep on building, even if it means having to tear down his masterwork to satisfy that need.
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When Michael Glazer joined Bombay, more than 5 years ago, he brought 18 years of experience in retailing to the company. He had spent his entire professional life in the field; most recently, he'd spent 11 years as chairman and CEO of Platt Music Corp., a specialty retailer that operated electronic-goods departments within department stores.
In contrast, Bob Nourse's career bespeaks a certain restlessness. He has a B.S. in electrical engineering, an M.B.A., and a doctorate in marketing. He spent nine years in academia, often as a visiting professor at prestigious business schools such as Harvard and Stanford. From there he turned to the untenured terrain of venture capital, where he worked with and managed a potpourri of companies. Nourse did not create Bombay, but he built it, after buying the Canadian rights in 1979 from an entrepreneur who was losing money on sales of just $1.5 million. Nourse embedded his restlessness into the concept itself: store layouts changed every two months, and consumers who shopped at Bombay could take their furniture home with them, rather than endure the traditional wait of two weeks or more for delivery.
Inside the house that Nourse built, Glazer forged a different sort of creation. More comfortable with people than Nourse -- whose office was on the seventh floor, while his key operating people worked on the fourth -- Glazer inspired a loyal cadre of managers and field people. "Michael was a real motivator. He knew how to excite people and generate sales," says Bill Goodlatte, Bombay's director of human resources. (When contacted by Inc., Glazer cited a clause in his severance agreement that forbids him from commenting publicly on Bombay.)
Since Glazer spent much of his time on the phone connecting with his district and store managers, Nourse was free to travel more with his wife, Aagje (pronounced "Ahkia"), a Bombay vice-president. They met with designers in Europe and vendors in Asia. They wooed analysts on Wall Street. Nourse was Bombay's ambassador to the financial community, always bringing good news as the early 1990s unfolded. And that, oddly enough, opened a rift between the two men.
For the seven years prior to Glazer's arrival, Bombay's stock had languished below $5 a share, even dropping for stretches to below $2. To the investment world, the company was as foreign and as sleepy as its name implied. But by late 1993, Nourse -- with Bombay's impressive operating numbers to back him up -- had become a pied piper to Wall Street. By then a dozen financial analysts followed the stock. In December 1993 the shares hit $32, up from a low of $2 in December 1990, three months after Glazer arrived at Bombay's headquarters, in Forth Worth. The soaring stock price and Bombay's strong growth story became emblems of pride to Nourse. But that, somehow, was not enough.
Trouble first surfaced in February 1994, when Bombay reported financial results for the quarter ending December 31, 1993, which included the crucial Christmas season. The company, as expected, put up big numbers, with earnings per share rising more than 50%, from 26¢ to 40¢. But Wall Street, guided by Nourse's fulsome projections, was expecting 41¢. The 1¢ shortfall sent the stock tumbling.
