Honesty Still Best Policy for This Retailer
Published Apr 17, 2007
Furniture maven Jake Jabs once listed “68 reasons we can sell for less,” including “[no] vice presidents or senior vice presidents.”
After more than 50 years in business, Denver furniture maven Jake Jabs says the most important lesson he’s learned is the value of honesty.
“Today’s customer is intolerant of a lie,” Jabs says. If you’re honest with customers, “you don’t have to worry about your backside.”
Customers appreciate honesty, employees appreciate it, and besides, Jabs says, it’s more fun to conduct business the way it should be.
The 76-year-old businessman learned about hard work growing up in rural Montana. Today, Jabs and his American Furniture Warehouse are household names in Colorado. The business is known for its distinctive television commercials often populated by exotic animals.
Also noteworthy is the jakejabs.com Web site, where Jabs once listed “68 reasons we can sell for less,” including “no bureaucracies to slow down decision-making” and “[no] vice presidents or senior vice presidents and corporate officers with huge salaries.”
When Jabs purchased a struggling furniture store in Colorado in 1975, he was no stranger to retail trade. Twenty years earlier, he had opened a guitar store in Montana.
By 1979, his American Furniture Warehouse had $17 million in annual sales. Today, as president and CEO, Jabs oversees 11 stores with combined sales exceeding $286 million.
Jabs works hard inside and outside his business. He is an avid community supporter who donates more than $1 million in cash and in-kind contributions annually to a variety of organizations.
Despite obvious success and the awards and honors that prove it, Jabs is driven by a fundamental need: to satisfy customers. Asked what he enjoys most about his business, he replies, “keeping up with the latest styles, buying what people want and seeing that it sells fast.”
Story by Sue Lenthe
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