Remembering some of the crazy-ass things people have said
With the High Point market in the books and, therefore, now another industry memory, I determined to dredge the loamy seabed of my memory to recover some of the more delicious things I heard as a reporter covering the industry a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
I’m thinking about cross-stitching some of these gems onto throw pillows to sell on Etsy.com in time for the Christmas shopping season, so feel free to let me know which of these is, in fact, stitch-worthy.
One of the first truly memorable things a member of the home furnishings industry said to me came from a sales executive for an Italian upholstery company. In response to a story on one of this company’s competitors, the exec told me that I would “rue the day both personally and professionally” that I “ever crossed paths” with him.
Brand new on the job, I freaked out, connecting the “source” rather immediately to my editor, the unflappable Dave Perry, who talked this irate, irrational personification of machismo and testosterone back down off the proverbial ledge of libel threats. (If you ever want to instantly shut down an interview with a journalist, just say the word, “libel.” This works every time.)
The quote instantly went onto our office’s inside joke juke box, a single played quite frequently whenever anyone wanted a rise out of me, but usually the “play” button was hit by Tom Edmonds. “Hey Carroll! You will rue the day . . .”
The last laugh is mine, however, because I use this story in my Media Law class every semester when we get to the section on libel. The juke box is now mine!
Scrotal support
One of the more enduring nuggets of wisdom I received from Rick Powell, founder and CEO of the import giant, Powell Company. Before visiting his operations in Culver City, Calif., I injured myself in places I’d rather not reveal installing a backyard playset so sturdy that from it NASA could probably launch a space probe. Walking like a 90-year-old former rodeo rider, I struggled to ambulate or even think straight during the plant tour.
Rick noticed, and he told me with that menacing, intense scowl of his, “Look, Brian, no one is going to take care of you but you.” I went straight to Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim, Calif. The treatment, as my Pakistani doctor blurted in heavily accented English? “You need scrotal support!” Never have truer words ever been spoken.
Perhaps the most cinematic of quotable quotes came during an extensive tour of Natuzzi’s facilities in Italy, beginning with its tanneries in Udine and finishing with several days at the main factory in Santeramo in Colle. Upon finally getting an audience with Pasquale Natuzzi, I audaciously asked the chrome domed impresario, “What is Natuzzi’s biggest vulnerability or weakness, from a competitive standpoint?” As if he would tell a newbie reporter visiting Italy for the first time! After a lengthy pause during which time seemed to wait for Mr. Natuzzi’s next command, he clipped off seven choice words as if Zeus casting lightning: “To be honest, Brian, we have none.”
I believed him then, and I believe him now.
Gadgets and gimmicks
From the salty sublime to the plausibly ridiculous: Visiting the Catnapper showroom during the High Point market in the early stages of the home theater craze that swept the industry off its feet and led more than one retailer – Bob Davidow, anyone? – to invest heavily into its growth, Lee Buchanan and I got a demonstration of the Tennessee upholstery company’s new vibrating sofa and chair lineup. Our tour guide, the irrepressible Don Hunter, a warm-hearted ol’ country boy with an easy laugh, promised us as we sat down and way, way back, that, “You can feel it . . . in your butt!” And sure enough, we could. Why we would want to still is a mystery I have not solved. But (see what I just did there), what aphorism doesn’t improve with “in your butt” appended to it?
Reporters are on the hunt for memorable quotes. To be a great interview is to be “a great quote,” in the parlance of journalism. Think Ozzie Guillen, Charles Barkley, Joe Namath, Mike Leach and Muhammad Ali (sorry, I’m also a former sportswriter). Or, as a study in contrasts, think about those “sources” who have yet to say anything even remotely memorable, like Nick Saban, Derek Jeter or Bill Belichick.
So, when Paul Toms, then a sales executive for Hooker, said to me during High Point market that, “We don’t have any dogs in this showroom,” of course I ran with it, like a dog with a newly acquired bone. Paul, who recently retired, and who rarely said anything worth jotting down, didn’t like the quote, claiming never to have said it. He went straight to our publisher with his complaint rather than bringing it up with me, polluting what was a wonderful relationship at the time with Hank Long, senior vice president of sales at Hooker and another prince of the industry.
While I wish Paul well in retirement, this “dispute” still rankles, mainly because I’d never heard that expression and certainly couldn’t have made it up even if I had been in the habit of making things up and putting these made-up things in direct quotes in violation of everything we are taught in journalism school. And, by the way, what’s so terrible about it? Were I an executive at Hooker, I’d be far more concerned with having a company name connoting prostitution than the occasional innocuous home-spun euphemism!
To be candid . . .
This brings me to a tic among furniture executives that I always found amusing: The use of the word “candidly.” Its variations include, “To tell the truth,” and, back to Marlon Brando-like Italian furniture moguls, “To be honest.” My reaction to this preface each and every time was one of incredulity: “What have you been prior to this morsel of candid, truth-telling, mind-bending revelation? Lying? Obfuscating? Just making it up? I never verbalized this skepticism, primarily because invariably what came next was neither quotable nor revelatory.
Finally, another quote-related tic I heard canvassing the industry more times than I could count. For the next life-changing story on, say, flammability standards for upholstery made or sold in California, the source would say, “Make me sound good!”
A frequent signoff at the end of interviews, this supremely unhelpful advice seemed to assume that we journalistas routinely “adapt” quotes, which are meant to communicate with 100-percent fidelity what someone actually said, even if the person said, perhaps in an unguarded moment in the hubbub of market, “We have no dogs in this showroom.”
Whatever.
My canned response: “Don’t worry! I went to journalism school and everything!” But I did try to help my sources avoid undue embarrassment about diction or really anything else. To quote the comic actor Steve Martin faithfully and without adaptation, “Some people have a way with words, and other people . . . um . . . uh . . . NOT have way, I guess. It’s so hard to speak with . . . I don’t know . . . pizazz!”
I can think of more, but I need to get to those throw pillows. So, I hope you’ve profited from this round up of industry wisdom. Some of the quotes are, of course, more practical and memorable than others, but I hope you agree with me that, “We have no dogs in this column” when it comes to distilled insight. You can quote me on that!