ENTERPRENEURSHIP AT THE CARUTH INSTITUTE

Caruth Graduate: Garrett Boone

Two years into an entrepreneurial journey that would eventually lead to the creation of The Container Store, Chairman Garrett Boone found himself still struggling to put his finger on the idea. A former regional manager at Storehouse who had left the company to explore the notion of creating a handmade furniture store, Boone heeded the advice of his mother to check out the “SMU entrepreneur class.” The Caruth Institute’s Starting A Business course offered Boone a welcome respite from the daily grind of working the concept, enabling him to focus instead on the business of starting a business and think in a more disciplined manner about what it would take to launch his dream.

What were you doing at the time you took the Caruth course?

I left a management job at Storehouse in 1975 to pursue my dream of starting a company with my business partner, Kip Tindell, whom I’d known at Storehouse and is today president and CEO of The Container Store. Our original impulse was to create a handmade wood furniture store. There was a book out at that time called The Handmade House, and it served as one of the inspirations for our idea.

I spent the next year and a half making furniture of my own and talking to various manufacturers about the products they offered and the business concept we had in mind. About two years into our entrepreneurial venture, our business idea had still not crystallized, and I was beginning to feel a bit discouraged. As fate would have it, my mother read about SMU’s class for entrepreneurs in the newspaper and encouraged me to attend. By the time I entered the course, our business concept had begun to morph from handmade wood furniture to a furniture and accessories store with nice, clean design.

What did Starting A Business do for you at that time in your career?

The Caruth Institute’s Starting A Business course was extremely valuable. It forced me to focus on the business of starting a business and think in a more disciplined manner about what it would take to launch our dream. It helped me separate my passion for woodworking from the reality of starting a business, and that was an important step on the path to The Container Store.

When did the idea for The Container Store really come together?

Not long after attending the Caruth course, I went to one of the very first home improvement shows in Dallas early in 1978. At the show, I saw a couple of interesting products that sparked something in me. As I was coming home from the show, I drove beneath the underpass on Turtle Creek Boulevard near the Mansion, and the lightbulb came on in my head.

Some ideas just take awhile to work themselves out, and my business partners and I had the luxury of time — about two and one half years — to puzzle over the idea that eventually became The Container Store. I’m grateful to my wife, who supported me — both emotionally and financially —  during that stretch of time when I was in my early 30s.

What advice would you give to an entrepreneur?

Be patient. Have faith and confidence in yourself and the people around you. Thoroughly explore the idea for your business, and never lose focus on that idea. You also have to be passionate about your business, willing to pour your heart and soul into it.

What have been the keys to The Container Store’s success?

We’ve always had a strong set of values to build our culture on, and we’ve always remained focused on the idea of The Container Store, even as we’ve continuously explored its many possibilities.

When did you realize the importance of culture in The Container Store’s success?

From 1978 to 1987, we were a small company. We had five stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, one store in Austin, and one store in San Antonio, but everybody knew everybody. And our culture was transmitted by osmosis.  Nobody really had to talk about it. We just did it.

Then in 1987, we opened our Houston store. It was an absolutely perfect retail location for a market that size. And overnight, we tripled our store volume. We were suddenly hiring 90 people instead of 20 to 25 people. Just because of our sheer size, many of our new employees were not as susceptible to osmosis. That was when Kip decided we needed to write down our core principles and values, which serve as the basis of our Foundation Principles™ today. We knew we had to communicate our principles to our people in a more disciplined and regular fashion.

The Container Store is always ranked as one of the best companies in America to work for in Fortune magazine’s annual survey. How have you been able to achieve that status as a great employer?

One of the keys has been our approach to training. We believe that one great person equals three good people. So we’re always focused on getting the next great person. Once we hire outstanding employees, we provide them with 241 hours of initial training, and then continue to develop them with more than 150 hours of training each year. In this way, we’ve been able to not only instill our Foundation Principles in new employees but also keep all our employees up to speed on our wide array of products. By training and developing our employees in this way, we’ve enjoyed very strong employee retention.