As a buyer for Belk, one went to market in Charlotte to buy merchandise for their stores. After all, Charlotte was the headquarters for Belk, and all of the vendors there were approved by the corporate office. At least twice a year, we would travel to Charlotte to buy goods for the stores. Most of those times, we would stay in motels rather than driving back to Columbia. And, most of those motels were nice, except for the one Howard Johnson's that we stayed at that was next to a biker bar. Toward the end of my tenure as a buyer, we commuted from Columbia to Charlotte for market to save money. That wasn't near as fun.
Belk did not like anyone to use unapproved vendors. As I wrote earlier, sometimes it paid off to use an unapproved vendor like Best Luggage. I understood the Belk plan to use vendors that they liked, because they wanted customers to see most of the same merchandise at each of their stores, but we found that there were other vendors out there who wanted to get noticed in the largest privately-owned department store in the world, so we went to other markets outside of Charlotte.
The first one I went to was Atlanta. We went there for their Home Show. I was in the car with our store manager, and the others went in the car with our merchandise manager. I would have much rather been with them, but I wanted to get to know our store manager. He was a man who never talked to people. In fact, you had a hard time even getting him to say hello. When he would walk by my Candy counter, I would say hello to him, and he would either grunt or never respond at all. The rumor was that he was thinking all of the time about business and had no personal skills. I just thought he was rude.
Our first stop on our trip to Atlanta was Macon, GA. Our manager wanted to visit that Belk store, because he had come to Columbia from Macon. He and I had said nothing on our entire trip to Macon, until I turned to him right outside that town and said, "So, I hear you are from Texas." I was going to talk to him about my time there, as I was trying to find common ground. He said "Yes", and that was the end of our conversation. We got to the Macon Belk, and he was treated like a rock star. He ate up all of the attention. He seemed like a different guy from the cold and boring person we knew. We left Macon and got on I-75 to Atlanta. He cut on the radio, as he was totally ignoring me, and started singing along with the R&B station. This guy was an older white man who was singing soul and hip-hop. It was as if I was in a time warp.
We got to our motel, which was near the Atlanta airport. We decided we wanted to go to an authentic Chinese restaurant. Our store manager got into a debate with the restaurant employees about the pros and cons of Communism. These employees had escaped the brutality of Communist China, and they didn't want to hear anyone praising China. We barely got out of that restaurant alive. We spent the rest of that night watching planes take off and land from the airport.
The next day, we went into the city. We had rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Atlanta. It was the fanciest hotel that I had ever stayed in. The rooms were paid for by a vendor that wanted us to buy his stuff. Everyone had a private room. I wanted to steal one of the bathrobes, but I never got the nerve. I had a friend who lived in Atlanta, so I left the hotel and took the MARTA to have supper with him at his house out near Lenox Mall. I just wore jeans and an old shirt to see my friend. When I got back to the hotel, it was 10:30pm. Even though I had a room in the hotel, I couldn't walk in the front door, because I wasn't dressed "appropriately". They made me come in through the service entrance to go to my room. The next morning, we went to the market. I bought a lot of cool stuff for the store. One of the buyers bought a bunch of Chinese lace, which turned out to be a great buy for our store. It was another vendor that corporate took notice of, like my Best Luggage. That night, the vendor that paid for our rooms, took us out to eat at a very swanky restaurant in downtown Atlanta. The meal for all of us cost him around $1000. He made a very good impression on us. We didn't buy anything from him, though. We used him and abused him. Oh well. We left on a Sunday. Breakfast of cereal and strawberries in the hotel's dining room cost $15. I sat at the next table to Verne Lundquist who was in town to call the Atlanta Falcons football game. He got a full breakfast. No telling how much that cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment