John Corcoran 10:21
Yeah, it’s a really interesting time, you know, for you for the time that you bought this business and a testament to what you’ve done the fact that you’ve been able to grow the business, in spite of all those changes, could you buy the business in, I believe, beginning of 2019, a year later, the pandemic hit? First of all, before we get to that, you go back to your wife, you say, I think I’m gonna go and buy another business. What was that conversation like? And oh, and by the way, I’m gonna buy a used office furniture business, no lumber, no software.
Dave Dumoulin 10:48
Yeah, Jan, my wife, she’s always been really supportive of what I’ve ever done. She knows that, in the back of my mind, if I’m going to do something, I’ve got a long term vision for it. You know, when I left the software company, I was 55 years old. You know, there’s not a whole lot of positions out there where you’re 55 years old, you’re gonna step in and, and make the income that you were making when you’re 55 at a large company. So for me, it was time to reinvent myself and try to find a company that I liked and had some high margins that had the ability to step on the gas and grow.
John Corcoran 11:22
Looking back on it now, what are a couple of individual things you can point to that were the reason you had two locations at the time, you have a third now. What are some things that you can point to that you think made the difference that allowed you to throw gas on the fire?
Dave Dumoulin 11:39
Well, you know, we’ve always had a very, very straight strategy. We’ve also always in our strategy is, you know, we sell privately owned businesses under 50 employees, new and used office furniture. And when I bought the company, we were probably 90% used and 10% new. And today, we’re 50-50 we’re 50% new, 50% used.
John Corcoran 12:02
And what drove that, why did you make that change?
Dave Dumoulin 12:06
You know, when a customer comes in, and they want to buy four desks in the used world, you may not have four desks that match. So we import a line out of Lithuania, that is out of Europe, and we stock it. We stock three different colors, it’s deep, We stock a lot of inventory, we’ve got very quick ship time. And so then instead of them buying three desks on the floor that don’t match, they can step in and buy three of our running lines and then come back in and add more to it and keep the same product line.
So it’s really helped us grow our business for that kind of customer that is really looking for a full change, but at the same time looking to save 60-80% of what the big guys out there are doing whether it’s a steel case or Herman Miller or those types of products like that.
John Corcoran 12:54
Another change that you made was you actually changed the name. It was Liquidators World I believe, and you changed the name. That’s a significant change for a 30 year old company.
Dave Dumoulin 13:06
Yeah, it’s really funny because when I bought the company, the one thing I hated about the company was the name Liquidators World. You know, it sounds great for what we did, we liquidated office furniture, but it said nothing to what it does as far as what realm you’re in. Since I’ve changed that name from liquidators world, my email junk file of all these guys trying to sell me pallets of returned goods has dropped off drastically.
We changed the name. We basically kept the same logo, but we changed the name to let LW Office Furniture Warehouse, because that’s what that’s what we are. You know, like I’m in our local location today and our warehouse of office furniture and displays 22,000 feet. Cincinnati’s 50,000, Lexington is 15,000. So we have big spaces that show a lot of furniture, both new and used.
John Corcoran 13:55
Yeah. How do you manage these different locations? You have three different locations now.
Dave Dumoulin 14:00
You know, it’s good staff. I mean, I’ve really set my company up, so that I don’t need to be here. You know, the things that I do in the company, I can literally do remotely. I’ve got a great manager in Louisville, great manager and in Lexington. I’ve got a great couple managers in Cincinnati. So it really allows me to be able to step back and focus on the business, not in the business. So in the summer, we live on a lake in northern Michigan, and I’m, you know, I’m probably gone in the summer, 100 days of the summer, I pop in for three or four days and stuff like that. And I think it’s a testament of the type of team and type of people that you’ve got to put around yourself to be able to grow a company that way.
John Corcoran 14:44
Yeah. I wanted to ask you about March of 2020. So March 2020, is when the pandemic hits. You’ve owned the business at this point for about a year. What’s going through your brain as you start to see this thing unfold? You know, you own this business. I’m imagining people coming in at that time primarily not buying off Isn’t it you’re on Zoom. What was that like?
Dave Dumoulin 15:10
Well, it was really funny. So like all of us, we all had the oh my goodness, what just happened here and they shut us down. And we’re all going to die and all that kind of stuff. And, literally, we closed for one week. And it was literally one week for me to get my head wrapped around things, making sure that we could bring everybody back safely. And literally, we deemed ourselves as a necessity company. And the reason we deemed ourselves is you know, we sell hospitals and we sell, you know, the electrical line, guys, we sell construction guys, all these guys were working, that’s primarily our customer base. So we were super careful about it. Spreading everybody out, well, you’ve got big facilities and a big warehouse, right? Plenty of people. And then all of a sudden that drove started coming in. We will never sell the number of chairs that we sold in 2020, and I don’t think we’ll ever tap those chair sales.
John Corcoran 16:05
Who were those customers? Were the businesses, were the consumers?
Dave Dumoulin 16:09
Everybody that got pushed home, right, we’re told to work from home now. And now all of a sudden they’re sitting at their dining room table. They came in and they bought a chair from us for, you know, $89 or whatever used chair. And then once the corporate guys kind of figured out that they’re not going to be home for a while, they then gave a lot of those guys stipend to go out and buy a good chair, ao that they came back in and they bought another chair for a better chair. They bought even better chairs. So we grew in the pandemic. I mean, we were fortunate that we actually grew, not only profit, but we also grew top line sales in the pandemic, where we all had that first couple of weeks going, oh my goodness, what’s going to happen? My attitude was if we’re going down, I’m going down swinging.
John Corcoran 16:57
did you have to know did you have supply chain constraints as well?
Dave Dumoulin 17:00
We did, on our new stuff, right, for sure, big time. But at the same time, our used business picked up when companies could get out of their leases. And if they, if they were three to six months out on their lease, they’d shut their office down, and then we would go in and clean everything out and then would give us product to be able to sell. Back in the pandemic too I mean, you know, huge companies that we all heard of went out of business. We worked close to so many places, right?
We were buying used chairs, by the semi load out of purchases in a we were chairs, right. And then we come back, we clean them, clean them, sanitize them, we warranty all of our used products for three years. And literally it worked out great for us. Now then that customer then got back to work. And they’re back buying new desks and buying things like that, you know, over 50% of our customers are repeat customers. So once they find us, they come back again and again and again.
John Corcoran 18:00
And you know, it’s interesting because buying habits changed during the pandemic, a lot of people were dealing with, you know, four or five family members at home under the same roof. They’re trying to make the space work. So they wanted maybe a small desk in this corner. Did you find that you had the products that people were shopping for at that time?
Dave Dumoulin 18:24
Yeah, we really did, you know, with the size of facilities that we have, you know, we carry a lot of inventory, and a lot of inventories, all different sizes. And it was easy for us to fill the orders. Most of the people took them with us. We did some deliveries. Usually we were super careful with deliveries, making sure people weren’t in offices and things like that. And you know what, as a private business owner, you just figure it out, right? I mean, and that’s the beauty of the private private business owner, the entrepreneurs out there, we just all stepped up and had to figure it out. And for some of us, we were lucky enough to grow through the pandemic and then continue to grow right from there.
John Corcoran 19:04
I want to talk about that because there are a lot of companies that had these weird trajectories where pandemic hits, they’re worried they’re gonna lose everything. And for a month or two, there’s like no business and then all of a sudden everything picks up. And then there are a lot of companies that come 2022 or 2023 that have this hangover effect, where all of a sudden, maybe it was supply chain or some kind of ripple effect that really led to a big downturn. Why do you think that you didn’t experience that?
Dave Dumoulin 19:35
Well, for the main reason, who our customer base is. Privately owned companies under 50 employees and you know what, those guys just figure it out each day. They’re doing the same thing you and I are doing: they’re trying to grow their business. And if they grow a person or two a year that means they need a desk or two a year. And that’s our actual bread and butter. The guys that just keep coming in over and over again. Hey, we got to go hire somebody, go see LW and let’s pick up some new products for those.
And then from there we ended up with the guys that were downsizing so maybe they had an office of 300 people and now they’re downsizing to 150. Well, we could go in and supply that smaller office, take out their used stuff, recycle it. We’re one of the true recycling green companies that’s out there. Interesting statistic John, that we heard last week kind of going around the industry is 2023 was the first year more office furniture was thrown away than manufactured. And so we’re one of the few companies out there that are technically recyclers. We recycle thousands of chairs a year.
John Corcoran 20:39
It’s rare that you see a business that is hedged against both kinds of economies, because right now we’re recording this in early 2023. 2022 was a really strange year, economically, a lot of industries were down, a lot of companies were making layoffs. At the same time, at the end of the year, there were a lot of companies hiring. And it seems to me that, you know, especially now that you have this 50-50 mix between used and new office furniture, that intentionally or not, you’ve hedged yourself against down economies, and up economies, so that you don’t lose in either type of scenario. Is that an accurate assessment?
Dave Dumoulin 21:24
Well, you know, I wouldn’t say right now, we’re in a down economy yet. I mean, from what we’re seeing, you know, with the way the stock market is doing things right now, I mean, granted, is there a lot of inflation out there? There’s a tremendous amount of inflation. But right now, the American businesses out there, still growing, they’re still spending money, and we’re riding that wave. The good part about it, too, is there’s been a lot of furniture out there for us to acquire and recycle and really helped grow our business that way. I, you know, I like to think that if we are in a down economy, yeah, we’re gonna do okay. Right now, I don’t think we’ve seen that yet. We’ve had a great year, I mean, January of 2024, that we’re in right now. We’re having an unbelievable start of the year.
It’s a really funny thing. So, John, at the end of December, we started running some marketing and stuff about 179, right, the tax rule that allows you to depreciate as long as it was put into place in December. Used, new unused office furniture falls into that. So we ran a bunch of marketing around it, we had one of the best December’s we’ve ever had. And people were all coming in saying, hey, I got your post, or I got your marketing on taking the 179 tax rule. Thanks for sending that out. I want to buy 10,000 bucks for the furniture, have it delivered because I don’t have to pay tax on it. So with all those businesses out there coming in, like that, gave us a glimmer of hope that there’s a lot of guys out there making some good money this year. And we’re trying to spend some money so they don’t have to pay tax on it.
John Corcoran 22:58
How do you decide geographically what direction you want to go into? Because you have a couple of different physical locations now. Do you look at the population? Do you look at where your current customers are coming from? Do you look at where businesses are growing? How do you decide, you know, this third location that you opened recently and where you go next?
Dave Dumoulin 23:20
You know, our thought process is, first of all, we’re looking for other companies to purchase, right? On an acquisition basis. And the second type is greenfields. So our green fields would be roughly 100 miles to 125 miles away. So other areas that we’re looking at rapidly now are Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Nashville. So we’re trying to take our central nucleolus of Cincinnati, and kind of pop out there 100-150 miles that way.
John Corcoran 23:58
Okay. And what does that mean greenfields?
Dave Dumoulin 24:02
Greenfield brand new, where, you know, you put a lease in, you know, you throw some phone lines in and some internet and you fill up all the furniture and start doing marketing.
John Corcoran 24:11
Yeah,it’s a bit risky, right?
Dave Dumoulin 24:14
Oh, you know, I don’t know, you know, like in our Lexington location, we’ve got two people right now. So we’ve been operating for 15 months, which is two people, a salesperson and a warehouse person. This year, our goal is to add a salesperson, another salesperson, and the next would be two people in a truck. So we’ve got a philosophy on how we grow a branch. That’s what we’ve done here when we bought the company, our Louisville location only had one and a half employees. And we’re at six right now. And so it’s sustainable growth. And it’s easy to do when you can grow things sustainably.
John Corcoran 24:53
And one of the challenges of course, with the warehouse is you don’t want to buy too much space and have to pay for all that rent. You don’t want to buy too little either and not have expansion possibilities. So how do you hedge against that? Or do you just, you know, resign yourself to we’ll start with whatever it is 10,000 15,000 square feet and we might have to move at some point.
Dave Dumoulin 25:13
Well, it’s interesting you say that so when we changed our name from liquidators world to LW Office Furniture Warehouse, we also did that with a move. And that’s why at our Cincinnati location, we moved from 30,000 to 50,000 feet. When the place was empty and right before the movers showed up to move everything I’m walking through and going, oh, my God, what did I do? And then after it was filled, I’m like, I should have gone bigger. Yeah, we have a little bit of the mentality of having a hunch by a bunch, right? So you know, our Lexington location is our smallest right now at 15,000. And I wouldn’t want to go any smaller than that. Since our local location is 22, which is a good size, we can still show a lot. So I’m guessing going forward, we’re going to be from 18 to 25,000. On our satellite locations.
John Corcoran 26:06
Yeah. What about having to invest in things like the website and, you know, software tools. And you mentioned earlier that a lot of the selling has shifted from face to face in person to Zoom and online, stuff like that? What does that look like in terms of the amount of resources, time and attention you’ve had to invest in your online presence?
Dave Dumoulin 26:30
Well, so we don’t actually box anything up and sell it online. Basically, all of our customers come to the site. Part of that is there’s a tremendous amount of fraud around guys calling up and saying, hey, ship me 150 chairs, by the way, here’s a fake credit card. So you know, part of our issue is, we want people to come in and see it anyway. Because each store will only deliver within a 100 mile radius. So if you came in and said, hey, Dave, ship me some furniture, I’m out, we can’t do that. That’s just not our, not our idea.
But when it comes to a platform, so obviously, you know, the good thing is, I think how we reinvent ourselves is we learn from the previous business that we’re in. So my 10 years at a software company made me really learn what we have in a software. So I could open up a new location, software, phone wise, website wise, in about probably six hours, because we’ve built a software platform that we run on. And that platform is just easy to add new users, add a new warehouse and start moving inventory in.
And so technology is really the way and I’m 60 years old. And most people out there are not utilizing technology the way they should. I mean, I’m 60 years old, I use ChatGPT every day, right? And I think that to the guys that are listening to this that are not embracing technology that are around our age, you’ve got to step in and start testing your foot in the water, because that’s gonna make a huge difference in your business. Yeah,
John Corcoran 27:57
Yeah the market’s moving on. The market is constantly changing and adapting. And you have to as well, as a business owner,
Dave Dumoulin 28:05
We would have never doubled our business if it would have been for a couple of strategies. One is our software platform. Right? Two is our marketing platform. And there is our platform that you can be in the used business but when people walk in, it’s got to be clean, it’s got to be bright, iIt’s gotta be tagged, it’s got to be organized. And literally anytime anybody comes into our showrooms for the first time, they always have the same statement: wow, I never knew you guys existed before. And when they get the wow, that means they’re going to come back and be our next customer for life.
John Corcoran 28:38
Yeah. Dave, this isn’t me. Great. I want to wrap up with the last question I always ask, which is a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to those who helped you along the way in your journey. You know, a lot of times people will mention their family and friends, which is fine or team which is fine. But I especially love to hear stories around your peers, contemporaries, other entrepreneurs, other founders, other owners that have kind of helped you in your journey and navigating at all. Who would you want to recognize?
Dave Dumoulin 29:08
You know, I would probably say it rolls back to my EO forum. For those of you that are not familiar with the Entrepreneurs Organization. Once you’re in you break up in a little forum of six to seven people. And that forum, you meet on a monthly basis. You talk about business, you talk about personal, you talk about family, it’s 100% confidential. And, you know, when I bought the company, I was in another group that I’m not going to name and when a pandemic hit, they offered zero resources. So I stepped out, kind of working through the pandemic a little bit. And then I joined EO and I could say that my EO forum, they have really helped me sharpen what I want to do, where I want to go, the man I want to be, you know how to get out of your business and stay and work on your business instead of work in your business. And that’s really I would say, my six forum mates, I owe a lot of my business success too with LW Office Furniture Warehouse.
John Corcoran 30:09
Well, you just said it. I was gonna say it but you said it. LW Office Furniture Warehouse is the name of it. You can Google the name and end up on the website. Where can people go to know more about you, Dave and connect with you?
Dave Dumoulin 30:20
Yeah, LinkedIn, it’s Dave Dumoulin on LinkedIn or LW Office Furniture Warehouse on LinkedIn, and the website.
John Corcoran 30:28
And email him before summer hits, or else you might get an out-of-office until September, but that’s totally fine.
Dave Dumoulin 30:39
Hey, I work in the summer, I just work from a better view.
John Corcoran 30:31
Living the dream, impressive. All right, Dave, thanks so much.
Dave Dumoulin 30:42
All right, John, thanks so much for your time.
Outro 30:47
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.