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Learnings

You can learn business.  My journey building M5 was all about accumulating knowledge to be a better entrepreneur, manager, and leader.  This blog is to help me keep some of the notes from that trip, and sharpen my thinking for the next one.

The Container Store is Cool

1/13/2014

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“Most businesses take care of their shareholders first.  We strongly believed it was employees first ..." - Barbara Anderson

I recently spoke with Barbara Anderson, one of the first employees and a leader at the The Container Store for over thirty years. This company has been a favorite for a long time, partly because they invest 263 hours for each full-time employee's education. This was my first conversation with a founding exec, and I thought I’d write it up.

Check out the wikipedia overview if you don’t know them. The Container Store, which invented a retail category, opened in 1978 and has grown steadily at 22.4%+ annual compounded growth rate to 63 stores today.  Barbara told one story that underscored their success. After selling to retail-focused PE Leonard Green in 2007, The Container Store was the only portfolio company to stay in the black and not downsize during the Great Recession.  They are a great proof point in the power of investing in people as a competitive advantage.

The conversation underscored a few business design principles I believe in:


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