Delight the Customer or LOSE YOUR JOB: Restoration Hardware CEO Sends Scorching Memo
- Scathing memo to employees calls for ‘massive’ culture shift
- ‘DELIGHT OUR CUSTOMERS’ or lose your job, CEO tells his staff
Restoration Hardware CEO and chairman Gary Friedman. Photographer: Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post via Getty Images
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Gary Friedman, head of Restoration Hardware Holdings Inc., painted a dire picture of the furniture chain in an internal memo to employees, comparing its operations to a burning building with people on fire.
Upset about customer service and late orders, Friedman fired off the message to the entire organization in late January. The Corte Madera, California-based company, which suffered declining profit and slowing sales growth last quarter, had just held a meeting with executives and vendors. During a discussion about problems with its RH Modern business, Friedman made the burning-building analogy.