Staying Motivated for Others

A few months ago when I had contacted a recruitment agency to hire more sales staff, I had an interesting conversation with the woman who runs the agency. I was describing the kind of person I wanted to hire for the position of a sales manager and I said that aside from speaking English reasonably well, and having a sense of customer service, the candidate needs to be a motivated person who wants to move ahead in her career. The woman replied saying that most people are used to just taking orders rather than thinking for themselves and taking initiative. I feel that is so true of many people, at a variety of levels. Most of us settle into a comfort zone and a kind of complacency where we are just doing our everyday tasks without striving for more. I know that I too am often guilty of this. I go through my phases of high motivation levels, but I tend to burn myself out and then spend so much time recovering that I may as well have done things at a steady pace in the first place. But what is it that helps people to stay motivated?

When I quit my job in New York a few years ago to intern for two designers, I worked for free and used up all my savings. As a general rule I think unpaid internships are a bad idea- I think hard working people need to be rewarded in some way- but for me it was an opportunity to do something in fashion, a field that I knew so little about, and get some exposure before I moved back to Chennai and started my own company. That fact that I didn’t get paid for my work didn’t affect my level of motivation, but what did help was being around highly motivated and driven people (and when my managers weren’t motivated, it definitely set a more laid-back atmosphere that I would imbibe).

I think about Brass Tacks pretty much all the time, awake or asleep. Sometimes I am tired but do my work anyway because I “have to”, and at other times I am really motivated and positive, and do my work with enthusiasm. At all times however, my goal is very clear to me (that I need to put in this effort in order to reach the next step).

Lately, I’ve not been feeling very motivated. The long drives to work, the slow activity at the store, and just the relentless amounts of work have left me feeling a bit frustrated, tired and unmotivated. At times like these I really miss being in an environment where I am surrounded by highly motivated people who are passionate about what they do. If I feel this way about my own business, I can only imagine how my sales staff feel on days when few customers walk into the store. So perhaps it all boils down to how motivated I am, because the energy that I exude does affect my surroundings. I need to spend more time at the store (rather than in the comfort of my home office) to create a stimulating work environment for them. And since there is a high turnover rate with sales staff, there really is no permanent solution to this.

Retaining Staff and Climbing Expenses

Over the last few months I’ve felt the need for a store manager at my shop- someone smart and confident with handling customers, and most importantly someone who will run the store when I’m not around (giving me more time to focus on designing).

Ideally one of my sales people should also act as a store manager because the roles are not too different. Everyone in the store needs to be completely on top of inventory and accounts, make sure stocks are replaced, recognize regular customers (and remember their taste), and inspire confidence in customers while taking alteration requirements. The one differentiating factor is that a manager must be responsible, motivated, and accountable. At my production unit I have a manager who is in charge of production, and anytime I have a problem with the tailoring quality or low productivity, I take it up directly with her. Her job is to ensure that the problem gets solved. I really need someone like that at the store.

I am fully aware that someone at that level will command a much higher salary than a sales person. However, the most promising candidates for this job are also the least likely to stay. I’ve hired a couple of new sales staff through a recruitment agency (and I think the recruitment agency found the candidates through a job website), and while these women are bright and very quick to learn, they are constantly on the lookout for new opportunities that pay them a little more. To me this means they will never fully immerse themselves in their work to the point where they feel a sense of ownership- the criteria for being responsible, motivated and accountable. I still go through the efforts of spending time with them, training them and hoping that they learn the intricate details of store managing as well as the bigger picture of where this fits in with their personal career goals. Hopefully they will stay. If not- I guess I have to fulfill the role of store manager myself or just pay more for that position. Damn, just when I thought it was time to sit back and relax for a few weeks after the madness of February and March.

A fallback for fallbacks

Starting a business (and I know I’m not the first one to say this) is like being on a nonstop treadmill: as some things slowly fall into place, others begin to fall out of place. There are rare occasions when things go well for a few weeks, but sooner or later, something crops up that has to be attended to right away. Last week however, was filled with crises, one after the other, and coming after a few months of work (and my wedding planning) I was so overwhelmed and couldn’t help but feel a bit defeated.

My Spring Collection photo-shoot was scheduled for Tuesday of last week. We (my photographer and I) normally plan the shoot for a weekend for the model’s convenience, but this time the clothes were not ready in time and my photographer was busy until Monday. The model was nice enough to take a day off work to accommodate our schedules (and my urgency to usher in the new collection at least a week before my wedding)!

Now here is a short recap of the days preceding the shoot just to give you a picture of my mental framework on Tuesday: a few weeks before this, one out of my two sales staff at the store told me he needs to take a few days off work from the 8^th to the 11^th. My weekly holiday at my store is Tuesdays, so I thought that between my other sales person and me, we could cover his shift and we’d be fine. On the 8^th morning my second sales person called to say her uncle had passed away and that she would not be coming to work that day. I was okay with the news- this was unexpected and she was in tears when she called over the phone. I went to open the store myself on Sunday and actually got some work done too. The next day I assumed my second sales staff would come to work, but she didn’t. She didn’t call either so I found out late that she hadn’t turned up. I was so busy coordinating the production and making the props for the photoshoot that I decided to not open the store that day. I was so upset that she hadn’t even called however, and I think that was what started to ruin my mood. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to not have high expectations of the people who work for me. In my mind I felt that since she knew that my other sales person was on leave until Thursday, she should have tried to make it or at the very least call to tell me she cannot. I know it’s rare to find people who are accountable and who feel a sense of ownership- but it's hard to accept when I’m upset! I wish I had kept my cool, because I allowed my being upset to completely ruin my mood and I cancelled a meeting with a photographer from the Times of India that was scheduled for that afternoon at my store.

I was at a stage where I decided to just take each step as it came. That evening I picked up the model and we were scheduled to start shooting the next morning at 8am, after the make-up artist was done. We started on time, but by 10am, the electricity supply got cut off. A phone-call to the Electric Board supply told me that the power would come back only at 5pm! I called for a generator. There are less than a handful of companies that will rent out a generator for just one day, and almost all of them couldn’t send one right away. Finally one arrived at around noon, but after 30 minutes of trying to get it started, we realized that it wasn’t going to work. I called another generator, and my photographer called his friend who lived close by and who owned a generator. We used both generators and resumed our shoot at 2pm.

The shoot went well and I’m so glad we had such a patient and hard-working model who kept her spirits up right up until we wrapped up at 8pm. I have hired generators in the past as a backup, but we never had to use them so I guess I got complacent. Now I know better!

The next day I opened the store myself and my fiancé came to help out in the afternoon. On Thursday both my sales staff came back. I’m now on the search for another sales person. It’s important to have a full time backup, so now the chances that between the three of them at least one person will show up to work everyday is much higher!

Below are a few pictures of the creative shots that we took on Tuesday.

This newspaper boat took ages to make. I stuck sheets together to make this stiffer and thicker, and started making the boat from a 10 x 10 feet square.

The newspaper jacket with the pleats was meant to match the pin tucks and pleats on the cotton top, but with the lighting and the bold pleats on the jacket, the ones on the cotton top don't really show.

One Solution to the Tailor Crisis

Last week I was supposed to launch my Monsoon Collection in the store. I had the pictures from the photo-shoot ready to mail out along with my press kits, I had started telling customers at the store to lookout for our new collection on September 6th, and I had planned a trip to Ahmedabad and Jaipur later this month to meet with suppliers after I launched the collection in the store. I had a big problem though: the clothes weren’t ready. In the last month one of my tailors has taken indefinite paternity leave, one has left to join a more lucrative job closer to his home, and another left to move back home to be with his wife and kids where he will take up a job as an auto driver.

I have spent the last two weeks calling everyone I know in the garment industry, but everyone tells me that their situation is similar: it’s tough to recruit new tailors, the existing ones don’t show up for work regularly, many of them prefer to work at a small tailoring shop where the hours are flexible and they get paid per piece (which means no one to question quality as long as they are churning out sari blouses by the hour).

Or, they could leave the tailoring profession altogether for more lucrative jobs elsewhere.

There is a dearth of quality labour in India but the economy is growing and every business needs people. Salesmen at Lifestyle barely speak English, let alone understand what products are stocked there, but I am willing to bet they get paid more than the average tailor. Plus who wouldn’t like to work in a large air-conditioned mall rather than slog at a sewing machine? Large banks need “office boys” and chain supermarkets need cashiers and helpers at their stores, so all the large export factories who need tailors at reasonable salaries have moved far out of the city, where the job options are agriculture, manual labour at a factory, and now tailoring.

I met with the principal of the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) two weeks ago. AEPC was set up by the government to train and supply the garment industry with manpower at every level- tailors, cutters, pattern makers, and supervisors. The principal said they are finding it hard to recruit tailors because being tailor is no longer a very lucrative option compared to other jobs that are available in the market.

I took that as sign (one among many) and my solution has been to increase my average salary for tailors. Obviously moving out of the city to attract tailors who live in villages isn’t an option for me, but then again people are hopefully buying my clothes because of the style and the fit – my profit isn’t determined by price alone unlike for many export factories. I hired two new tailors from AEPC (we’ll train them up to our quality standards and I can only hope that they stay as we give them a raise for every stage of improvement) and I gave my existing tailors a finder’s fee for using their network to find new recruits and that resulted in another two tailors. Now I am back in production for my monsoon collection.

Here is a preview of what will be in the store on October 5th:

Truth of the trade

Everyday I keep telling myself that this weekend I am going to organize my life better and make more time for myself to do the creative work that I enjoy. On the outside it may appear that designing, looking through fabric swatches, and researching textile crafts is all I do, but in truth actual design work ends up occupying only a small percentage of my weekly schedule.

There are daily issues like paying bills, checking inventory, going through production schedules and goals, discussing patterns with my production team, and attending to customers at the store. And then there are minor crises every month or so. Last month a wall in the store needed to be re-painted because of a leakage in the building, and this week I fell ill with a viral infection only to recover and find out that two tailors have left.

I’m told very often by other people in the garment industry that tailors are a “breed” or a “clan” by themselves and that it is very normal at every factory for tailors to have low levels of attendance and for turnover rates to be high. My production unit is tiny. A couple of tailors’ departure reduces my production to just five or six garments a day. If another few tailors leave my production will come to a grinding halt.

Why do tailors leave? It could be because someone else offered them a higher pay, because they found another job closer to their home, because you hurt their ego by pointing out their mistakes, or simply because they have problems at home (like in the case of one tailor who left three months ago without a phone-call and came back last week to ask if he could join again).

Anyway, it’s a part of the business I’m going to have to accept unless I’m willing to pay everyone more than any other company could possibly offer. Most tailors come from poor families so they need to do what’s best for themselves. As for me it’s back to making phone calls, in search of a good tailor.