A Chat With Dennis Garvey, chief operating officer, U.S. Cavalry
CS: What kind of employee turnover did you see as a result of the bankruptcy?
DG: I’m not sure because it was before my time. I know there was a significant reorganization that took place just to regain fundamental profitability. At the time there was a very large call center operation that was cut back. Most of the big impact was the management team. Many of them left. That was one of the biggest challenges, trying to maintain the business when its leadership is departing. That was before my time, but when I came on board, that was what I had to rebuild. I don’t know the numbers on turnover though, other than to say there was significant attrition in the call center. But the biggest problem was not the people who were laid off, but the loss of leadership and institutional knowledge that left. I looked back at some of the numbers, and the company peaked in 1997, and started to see a fall off in sales after that.
CS: Within the management team, who on the catalog team was still left when you came on board?
DG: There were a few people left, and while they didn’t go back 20 years, we were able to regain some institutional knowledge through the overlap of a few employees. We were fortunate in that we had a good art department, and our e-commerce department had some continuity to it. The consumer side of the business probably had the highest level of continuity, and we supplemented that a little bit and were able to rebuild it. One of the things that’s been interesting is that we have a lot of folks who come in and haven’t had a lot of experience, and I think that’s been a benefit because they don’t know what can’t be done. We’ve tried and gotten creative with things that maybe in other companies, people wouldn’t have tried.
