Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Any more wine, sir?
Since we are on the topic of sales meetings, I offer for your amusement a photo of Your Blogger, earlier this evening, as he prepared to serve dinner to his company's top sales reps. Yes, the CEO, COO, and CFO in our company put on a tuxedo every year and wait on our top performers. Not only do they deserve it, but it is (I'm told) very motivating for the troops. Well, that's a big part of the job of any business leader. Good thing that we did not receive any government "bail out," though, or we would be pilloried for serving a $20 bottle of wine. Or for knowing how to tie a bow tie. In the populist feeding frenzy that seems to be driving public discussion these days, it is not obvious which would be the greater atrocity.
18 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Feb 05, 01:24:00 AM:
If you tied that bow tie yourself, then congratulations! A dying art.
By 
SR, at
Thu Feb 05, 01:24:00 AM:
Sure, you are smiling now TH, but don't you think Obama has your salary targeted in the long run as well?
By Neil Sinhababu, at
Thu Feb 05, 05:33:00 AM:
Good to see you guys doing that.
I will say that I'm a fan of the proposed limits on executive compensation, though. I don't want the people running big financial firms to be looking at their work as a get-rich-quick opportunity. I want them to pursue the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if they keep their firms alive.
In general, I think this is a good reason to support very high top marginal tax rates, effectively amounting to a salary cap up in the seven figure range. If the only way to make truly immense wealth is to keep running your company and drawing salary for a long time, it'll discourage the bubble-chasing that gave Richard Fuld and Chuck Prince garguantuan bonuses but killed their companies when the bubble popped.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Feb 05, 08:17:00 AM:
Between the feds and New Jersey, I already pay about 44% of my income in taxes (because such a high proportion of my income is ordinary, rather than dividends or capital gains). I expect it to go significantly over 50% in the next couple of years.
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 09:15:00 AM:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By Georg Felis, at
Thu Feb 05, 09:46:00 AM:
So how much did you tip your boss?
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 10:34:00 AM:
Maybe you should check your lens, you are looking a little like WC Fields in that photo...
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 10:42:00 AM:
Also skin tone is uncharacteristically red. Did you hit the bombay a little before dinner was served?
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 11:52:00 AM:
Simply smashing, a great improvement over your usual sartorial selections. You should dress like that all the time, really. Nothing cooler than a middle-aged guy jogging in a tux. Or hauling the the firewood in the main camp up North.
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 12:21:00 PM:
I'm sure Daniel Craig is shivering in his calfskin boots.
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 01:13:00 PM:
There is yet another Baldwin brother?
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 02:38:00 PM:
How dare you name those bleeping liberal bleeping Baldwin sons ob on this blog?
By , at
Thu Feb 05, 03:35:00 PM:
I was led to believe Warren Buffett accumulated billions in net worth on a $100,000 salary. Am I missing something?
By Fred, at
Fri Feb 06, 08:57:00 AM:
OK, so you go all out to make the sales team feel appreciated. Splendid idea, good for your company. Now, what do you do for the people who actually *make* the products you sell, and without which your sales team would be useless? Just curious.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Feb 06, 09:15:00 AM:
Now, what do you do for the people who actually *make* the products you sell, and without which your sales team would be useless? Just curious.
We seem to do OK by them. The good thing about the surgical products industry is that labor costs are a small proportion of cost of goods sold. The result is that for products that are not total commodities (gloves, gowns, tongue depressors, drapes, etc.) it is more important to local your plants in places with good engineering and quality systems people. We do manufacture in Puerto Rico (where wages are not too far from U.S. levels), but also in New Jersey, San Diego, Salt Lake City, just outside Boston, York (PA), and Ohio. We also build products in France, Germany, the U.K., and Ireland, not exactly low wage markets. We do not seem to have problems retaining people even in a strong economy, in part because factory workers, like other people, gain some real satisfaction out of doing this work.
By , at
Fri Feb 06, 10:11:00 AM:
Only because your prices are relatively inelastic can you afford not to manufacture in China.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Feb 06, 11:46:00 AM:
Only because your prices are relatively inelastic can you afford not to manufacture in China.
Well, not really, except in the most basic sense. As I said in the previous post, labor is only around 15% of COGS in our industry. The rest is overhead, much of which is not yet reliably available in China, and materials. So even if we came under pricing pressure (which we do from time to time), the cost savings from lowering the cost of labor is not very significant. Furthermore, in some of our businesses attempts to manufacture in China (by companies other than us) have failed.
By Fred, at
Sat Feb 07, 11:15:00 AM:
We seem to do OK by them.
Interesting. The Sales people deserve to be waited upon by C-level execs, but the engineering and manufacturing people are relegated to the "do OK" end of the spectrum. I'm assuming this means no big yearly shindig for, say, the people responsible for engineering and purchasing decisions that reduce the cost of materials of your products.
