Should business continue to boom for the next few months, Dataworld will embark on capital improvements it had delayed. Ironically, as the head of networking and computing, Jeff Mcintosh would have been the one to implement such changes. Doherty says with the benefit of hindsight about his overextending himself, he's leaning toward using a $200,000 SBA loan to hire an outside contractor to move forward with the development plan, rather than getting off track again by doing the job himself. Reservists on active duty, by law, can't be fired by their employers. Not that Doherty would anyway. As an American, he says the country owes its troops a debt of gratitude, including his chief network guy. --Rod Kurtz
Creative Marketing Keeps the Music Going
J&R MUSIC AND COMPUTER WORLD, NEW YORK CITY
New Yorkers spending time at home glued to CNN meant "business as usual" for Rachelle Friedman, 52, who founded J&R more than 30 years ago with her husband, Joe, using money given to them as a wedding present. Occupying an entire city block across from City Hall, the 300,000-square-foot J&R store stocks everything in audio, video, cameras, home office, music, and movies. The World Trade Center site is directly visible outside of J&R's windows.
"We were psychologically getting prepared for the worst," says Friedman of the war. Friedman took no specific steps to remedy a possible downturn, but J&R had already been aggressively marketing itself since it reopened October 25, 2001, after serving as a crisis center for the 9/11 disaster. She and Joe wanted to bring business back to lower Manhattan, so they lobbied successfully for sales-tax-free weeks. They also hosted 60 free musical fetes, with appearances by artists such as Judy Collins and Wynton Marsalis. Friedman has also put in place agreements with local radio stations for live in-store broadcasts. It worked. Thousands of consumers flocked downtown. But the loss of tens of thousands of daily downtown workers still reduced traffic into the store by about 20% compared with pre-9/11 levels. Between layoffs and early retirement since 9/11, J&R cut staff by about 50 employees, from more than 600. When the Iraq war started, Rachelle was leery. But business was, in fact, better than usual, as homebodies new and old poured into the store -- which prominently advertised itself as having the lowest prices and biggest selection around. Big sellers? Home air purification systems, vacuums with HEPA filters, security products, appliances, shortwave radios, large-screen TVs, surround-sound systems, digital cameras, and video products. By week three, sales increased by 15% across all of these categories. "When things get tough, people gravitate to the companies they feel comfortable with, and they are loyal to those that have always given them good service," Friedman says. "Our customers have shopped here for 32 years and know we will always be here for them."
Controlling the Bleed
IMG HOME, SAN FRANCISCO
Tony Abrahim doesn't like to talk about war and business in the same breath. For the Afghan native, who immigrated to New York City with his twin brother, Sam, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, "war is misery." And business, "well, that's just about money." He knows both. He and his twin brother were born Mirwais and Masud Ibrahimi 43 years ago in Afghanistan, the last two in a family of 11 children. Their father was a successful merchant. They lived in luxury, "like princes," Tony is fond of saying. All that changed in the 1970s, with a civil war followed by a Soviet invasion. The boys were about to be drafted into the military. "We needed to leave," Tony says. "Everything was destroyed." Sam left for Germany. Tony went to New York City. The brothers ultimately met up in New York, and worked as dishwashers, busboys, waiters, and bartenders until they left for San Francisco in the early '90s.
On the first day of the war, the Abrahim brothers did little work. Instead, they sat in their offices above their flagship showroom on Harrison Street in San Francisco watching CNN for most of the day. Their offices are adorned with photos of the brothers standing beside some high-profile friends such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil. Surveying their showroom stocked with imported new and antique tribal rugs, kilim pillows, ethnic furniture, and objets d'art from Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Morocco, and Turkey, Abrahim worries: "I think we're going to see some of this stuff collect a lot of dust. I think this may be the beginning of something very bad."
IMG Home is a $12 million business that includes 11 stores (nine of which were opened in 2001 alone) and showrooms in California. More than 300 retailers throughout the U.S. carry its wares. The brothers began their business by selling rugs out of a truck. Today, they have about 120 employees stateside and more than 600 weavers and artisans overseas in places such as Morocco, Egypt, and Pakistan. Year to year, the brothers grew revenue by $2 million, up from $10 million in 2001. With a loyal customer base of about 20,000, and what Abrahim calls "high-quality goods and the lowest prices in California," the brothers are struggling to maintain revenues at about $12 million for 2003. "We had some really good years," says Tony during week one. "This year, let's just say kind of bad. I can't tell you if it's the economy, if it's uncertainty, if it was the war, or all three. All I know is that once the bombs started to drop, business went to crap."
