Forth decade… 1985 – 1987 (part II)

 Forth decade… 1985 – 1987 (part II)

The real estate transaction could have brought cash into the business and allow the updating of the rental inventory, however this would not be the case.  My Father would take the revenues from the real estate transactions and re-invest it in real estate.  My Father would go on a real estate buying spree, as he bought vacant farms and other land in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Mexico, Maine, and New York.  Most of the properties would be bought sight unseen with questionable value.

My Father was out mostly of the loop when it came to the day to day operations of the business.  With my Father away from the action my siblings would installed themselves as managers.  This would immediately create problems within the business.  My Brothers focus was building the RV business and my Sisters field of vision was limited to the front counter.  With the business managers ether unwilling or unable to look at the whole picture the allocation of human resources would start to become a problem.

My Brother would install practices learned from apprenticeship in the large rental stores of California.  He would divide the employees into groups with drawn lines that couldn't be crossed.  What worked in a company with 50 plus employees in a large construction yard in California was going to be unworkable with our dozen employees.  Sister one would surround herself with assistants, while my brother would move the tallest and the most experienced tent erectors to the RV department.  This strict allocation of human resources affected our ability to schedule multiple or large party events.  The shop would be left to inexperienced service trainees as I would be needed on the tent crew.  This misallocation and lack of employee cross training is a practice that continues to hurt the business today.

For years my Father had his eye on a farm a few miles east of the old Palmer store in a community known as Forks Township.  The Forks Township property was 3 miles from downtown Easton and less than 4 miles from Phillipsburg New Jersey.   The original idea for the purchase of the Forks Township farm was unknown.  The owner was in a desperate financial situation and this was during the time my Father was buying investment properties.  My Father would use the down payment from the Macungie sale to settle an agreement of sale that he made with the owner a few years back.  While we still did not hold title to the farm an agreement with the owner would allow us to use the farm buildings as storage of the excess inventory as we were cleaning out the Macungie store.    

I need to stop here and explain my Fathers thought process.  My Father explained himself very clearly to everyone in his many letters.  The letter that best describes his thinking was a newsletter my Father had written in the lead up to the business’s 50^th anniversary.  In the letter we call the “I” letter he describes the history of the business in one paragraph.  Our parents and our grandparents describe the good old days; my Father would take the “good old day’s” one step further and try to recreate the past. 

The “Don Leiser Experience” might include bringing back old equipment lines that we had previously dropped.  Starting construction projects without permits or cheating on building inspections that he got away with in the good old days.  Having his children do exactly has he did would be part of the “Don Leiser Experience” This would include my Brother’s first house being an exact copy of my Father’s first house.  Contracts were written using the same terms as he was subjected to decades earlier.      

In February of 1985 I would be given the task of recreating a rental store the way my Father did in 1960.  He would explain the reason for the Forks Township store in one of his letters where he promised to make a decision on naming his successor in 5 years.  My Father would use the success or failure of the Forks Township store as a test of my ability.  How he intended to test my siblings is an unanswered question.

 

The project didn’t have a defined budget or plan; the project would be limited to using the existing farm buildings.  My only instruction was to have a store ready to open in 8 weeks.  The store’s inventory would be limited to the surplus inventory from the 2 closed stores.  Surprisingly enough the Forks Township stores opening inventory would include a trencher, an air compressor, and a few other tools that were purchased 25 years earlier for the opening of the1960 rental store.  The newest items in the rental inventory were purchased 10 years earlier for the opening of the Macungie store

The Forks Township property contained a large barn, 3 sheds, and a farmhouse. The farmhouse was the only building with doors, a mostly intact roof and utilities.  The farmhouse would become the showroom and office.  When my Father would return from Florida the store was ready to open. The Forks Township store would quietly open with little advertising and without a grand opening event.  The store was open for 3 days until the first customer was recorded.  This was a very strange project from the start.  It was like my Father was looking for the entertainment value and had no real interest in building a successful business.   

The decision to use the existing buildings and not to erect a modern building would turn out to be a huge mistake.  It would affect the start-up, efficiency, and the growth of the store.  For the first 3 years to enter the Forks Township store customers would climb 8 steps to a blank wooden door.  The rental inventory would be divided between the barn and a 3 other sheds.  Without clean rodent proof storage the Forks Township store would not be able to handle a party inventory.  Finding a way to grow the Forks store would be severely limited by the rules my Father set, however He should have been proud because I built an exact copy of the 1960 rental store. 

Service department was and still is the heart of this business.  The ability to service what we rented and sold was the foundation the business was built on. Our service background became even more valuable once the rental business was started.  If a rental store can’t keep the equipment maintained in-house it will fail. If my Father hadn’t had a mechanical background his business would have never succeeded. The first employee my Father hired was a mechanic to assist him in the shop. My background was mechanical; when I came into the business I would cut my teeth in the shop.  As the business expanded so did the service department. As the rental fleet aged I aged with it.  As the decades passed the equipment became more complex.   Between my mechanical ability and the Easton manager’s electrical, electronic background we could handle any repair that arose in house.

To my Sister the Forks Township experiment was a way for her to gain power in the main store.  In convincing my Father to go ahead with the Forks Township experiment my siblings would convince my Father that they were capable of handling my service department responsibilities and I would no longer needed in the Bethlehem store.

 

What my Sister would never understand is that a rental store just can’t a hire an automobile technician and expect them to succeed.  A rental store needs a well-rounded mechanic with gasoline, and diesel, engine experience.  They need to understand both AC and DC motors and mechanical repairs.  A rental store mechanic needs welding, fabricating, and machining experience.  I was moved away from a very old rental fleet some of which I had been maintaining for a decade or more.  My Sister would ignore my education and training as she would replace me with a guy who owned a racecar.

Within weeks after the opening of the Forks Township store the service department in the Bethlehem store was in trouble.  The replacement my siblings chose would be so overwhelmed that the ability to serve our rental and lawn equipment customers would be affected.  When the lawn mowing season rush started the Bethlehem store would quickly become so backlogged with repairs that the wait time for a lawn mower tune-up would approach 4 weeks.  My siblings would secretly move some of the larger repair jobs to my store like they had in Macungie.  When my Father learned of this practice he would end it, from that point forward the more complex brake-downs would be stowed away in an out of the way sheds.

In the Forks Township store’s ability to service equipment was limited by the facilities.  The first year the shop and office was located in the farmhouse’s gutted kitchen, the kitchen counter and the stainless food pep table from the closed restaurant would be used as a work benches.  After the first year a lean-to was attached to the house this would be large enough to handle the servicing of riding mowers inside.

One of the items that my siblings dumped outside my back door was an 8 foot satellite dish.  My Father had purchased a complete satellite TV system with the idea of mounting it on a trailer and renting it.  My replacements excitement would quickly turn into confusion when the box was open and the complexity of project would come into focus.  I would assemble the system mount it on an old camping trailer frame, and learn how to align the system to receive TV signals.

The display satellite system would receive a lot of attention from the residents in Forks Township. In 1985 only the main road through the Township had cable.  There was an increase of traffic into the store to see what satellite TV was all about.  Our first renter would ask about purchasing a system and Leiser's was now in the satellite TV business.  Eventually we had 3 rental systems and sometimes a waiting line.  They were mostly rented by customers wanting a long term demo before they would invest the $4000.00 for those early systems. 

We may have been the only rental company in the country renting satellite systems, our satellite business would be the feature of an article in a rental trade publication.  We found other commercial uses for the rental systems. Our rental system would be used to receive blacked out sporting events, business and church meetings, and for scientific programing.  This would be another new product we brought to the market with limited competition.  Even some of our competitors would rent our units for long term demos.  Our territory was as large as we wanted it and I would limit our rentals to locations less than 2 hours away.  The systems had good profit margin and installation and service work was very profitable.  This would be a one man one store business as my siblings were not interested in learning and marketing satellite systems in Bethlehem. 

By the end of the 4^th decade the business would significantly shrink.  Gone would be two mature stores.    Our ability to operate without significant competition had ended with the opening of the 2 new Allentown rental stores.  Before the decade would end Taylor Rental of Allentown would set up a branch store within a few miles of our Bethlehem store.  The RV business continued to expand in size. The profitability of RV business and the money poured into growing the RV business would begin to be a question.  It would be hard to assess the profitability of the RV business as the accounting lines between the almost separate businesses were purposely blurred.  

Gone would be all of the Lawn and Garden tools and supplies except the powered Lawn Equipment.  The last of the rental medical equipment, the office furniture, and Hover portable washers and dryers would be lost in a fire at the offsite storage barn on the family farm.