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In the heart of Manhattan a quiet, peaceful, beautiful home decor store, Ben’s Garden, has been blooming. That is, until the past few years when the company began to lose some key wholesale clients. Owner Ben Busko started his company when he was 8 years old after discovering his passion and talent for creating art pieces that others would like to purchase. He eventually created a million dollar home brand around his creations, but the company has recently stopped growing. Ben has enlisted the help of investor Marcus Lemonis to help him with scaling the growth of the company, increasing sales and becoming a better leader for his team.
When Marcus visited Ben’s Garden for the first time he was blown away by the beauty of the store. The store was very tranquil and well merchandised. Ben and his team have designed and manufactured around 90% of the products that the store sells. By cutting out the distribution middle man, Ben is able to mark his products up significantly and enjoy profit margins that average around 87-90%. Ben’s Garden is a vertically integrated company which means that he makes the profit on everything that he sells. He gets to keep all of the margins.
The home decor market is approximately $600 billion and with margins like Ben’s, that makes this a very appealing partnership for Marcus. Marcus is also very impressed by Ben’s talent and aptitude for creating and selling beautiful products. Being a good designer is hard. Being a good manufacturer is hard. Being good at both of them makes Ben really special.
Although the company showed incredible promise, Ben’s Garden is going through a particularly difficult season for several reasons. They have lost some key wholesale accounts that have caused their sales to steadily decrease. The company is struggling greatly with staffing and retention which appears to be attributed to some challenges in Ben’s leadership and communication style. Ben was diagnosed as an adult with a form of autism that seems to impact his relationships with his employees. Ben does not pick up on queues from his employees and is very blunt which can be very difficult for his staff. Ben also struggles with giving up control to his employees which creates a bottleneck in the business and prevents him from designing and developing new products.
Please support #autismawareness and be kind #TheProfit
— Marcus Lemonis (@marcuslemonis) January 16, 2019
After fully evaluating the business, Marcus offered Ben $200,000 for a 25% share of his company. In order for them to work together, they need to spend a large portion of time changing how Ben thinks about people. How he views his employees. How he trusts his employees. Marcus wants to build an infrastructure around Ben’s disability to allow him to play to his strengths but not have to damage other parts of the business. They will also work on reviewing inventory, increasing sales and improving their wholesale business. Marcus is concerned about being able to fix the culture of how people communicate and get along in the company. It is broken. The employees feel like they aren’t appreciated. Ben liked Marcus’ plan but countered and they agree on $400,000 for 40% of the company.
One of the first business improvements that was made to Ben’s Garden, was to review their current inventory and liquidate the products that were not selling to free up warehouse space for increased inventory of new products as well as increasing stock of best selling items. The next change is to make Kristen, Ben’s “Chief of Staff,” in charge of inventory and managing the rest of their staff. This will allow the business to keep moving and to open communications between staff and management. Ben will now be responsible for the designing of new products and product lines. By taking his focus away from the staff and inventory, he will have more time to be creative and design products that will allow them to re-enter the wholesale market. Ben would like to extend his product offering into candles, wrapping paper and wallpaper.
Through many difficult conversations with his business consultant and potential raw material suppliers, Ben works hard to learn how to better communicate and collaborate in business. While Ben struggles with trusting his staff to complete their job functions, Marcus reminds him that if he doesn’t trust his team, his business can not survive. The only way the company can move forward is if there are people around him that can be trusted and allowed to do their jobs. Ben committed to doing a better job of being open-minded and trusting. That is true progress for Ben.
While Ben finished up his new product line, Marcus got them a meeting with the Harper Group which is a group that will represent Ben’s Garden and act as a sales agent to wholesale markets around the country. Although their initial meeting does not go well, they decide to give them another chance to pitch their business in their store instead of in the Harper Group’s showroom. They are very impressed by the store, merchandising and product designs when they arrive at Ben’s Garden. During this meeting, Ben relinquished the pitch to his primary manager, Kristen and he was very impressed with how she handled it. Ben’s Garden landed a deal with the Harper Group which will greatly help them expand their sales into wholesale markets again.
With Ben becoming more self-aware and trusting, Marcus is confident that he is making big strides into becoming a better leader. Because of the changes that Marcus helped to put into motion with new products, expanding markets and cleaning inventory, the company began seeing increased revenue in their stores. Marcus is very pleased with the progress that Ben’s Garden has seen and is excited to see where the future takes their partnership.
#BensGarden was the best episode of #TheProfit I’ve seen on #CNBC. Unscripted & inspiring and, as always, instructive. But this is special.
— Sydney Kravetz (@booksavor) January 16, 2019
I think #BensGarden is my favorite episode of all time @marcuslemonis #TheProfit i really want him to continue to succeed!
— amy j felando (@amyjfelando) January 19, 2019
I’m such a fan of #TheProfit and was so impressed with how @marcuslemonis adapted his approach in working with #BensGarden. Bravo, sir!
— Casey J. Cornelius (@CaseyJFCFL) January 17, 2019
What did you think where the biggest takeaways from this episode? Do you have any business tips that you would offer a manager that is struggling to give up control? Start the conversation in the comments below!
“The Profit” airs Tuesday at 10 p.m. on CNBC.