Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams: The Evolution of Management Thinking
M.Samson and R.Daft, (2012) Management: Fourth Asia Pacific Edition, Cengage, pp.79-80

Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, founders of MG+BW, have had the mantra “Break the rules wherever possible!” from the beginning. Following the outdated rules governing the upholstery manufacturing industry when they started their company in 1989 would have put them on a path to destruction. Few, if any, management philosophies taking hold in the larger business world were on the minds of the manufacturing executives. Industry-wide, supply chain management and customer service was a joke. Total Quality Management (TQM), let alone Customer Resource Management (CRM), was nowhere to be found. When a customer placed an order for a custom upholstery couch, a customer service representative (CSR) told the customer that the couch would arrive in ten weeks. Ten weeks later, however, the couch wasn’t ready and no one knew when it would be.
RULES BROKEN BY MG+BW
Produce mission-style furniture, not mission statements.
Until recently, furniture manufacturers’ idea of mission was limited to a style of heavy oak furniture. Gold and Williams had a clear sense of how they wanted to run their business, so they wrote it down. Following is a summarized version of MG+BW mission:
• Guarantee comfort;
• Minimize costs to ensure price points represents understandable value for customers;
• Enforce rigorous standards for quality materials and quality control to achieve no returns and real customer satisfaction;
• Sincerely treat all customers as we want to be treated;
• Create styling that we want in our homes – inviting, warm, an oasis of quiet and calm;
• Manufacture products in a way that preserves our rich environment for future generations.

Make profit from cutting corners.
Furniture manufacturers are