Gary Friedman
Analyst · Barclays
Yes, we think we have tremendous opportunity to match the customer experience that we deliver on the front end of our business to the customer experience we deliver on the back end of our business. And I think we have kind of taken leapfrog steps and moves on the front end. If you look at the difference between one of our old galleries and one of our new design galleries, it’s not even close, right. It’s not evolutionary, it’s revolutionary. And if you look at the quality of our people and how they have evolved in our galleries over the past several years, I think under DeMonty Price’s leadership, massive change. I mean, the design organization we have put in place, the leadership team that’s in place, I put our store teams, gallery teams up against anybody in retail, quality of the people, culture, passion, belief in our vision and in our strategy and our brand. I don’t think we have had the same evolution on the supply chain side of the business. And if you look at the disconnect that I talk about today is we, in many markets, we have an HDL whether that HDL is in-sourced or outsourced meaning that we have our people kind of running the home delivery kind of hub. We basically are shipping goods to home delivery hub. In some cases, we control that hub, in some cases, we don’t. But we are handing off the goods to delivery teams and truckers that are not our people and they are not our trucks. And it’s – you may get a truck that has Restoration Hardware logo on it, you may get a truck that has a Penske logo on it, you may get a Ryder truck or truck driving with Pottery Barn goods or the other people’s goods. And they are not our people, quite frankly. And it doesn’t mean that they all have to be our people. But I think we have just because of the nature I think of most supply chain cultures come at things from a low cost point of view. And it’s – and I think we have got to look at our business from a high touch, high service point of view. We are going into people’s homes, right? If it was okay to go into people’s homes with people that had no connection to our culture, right, that we are being contracted out daily. So it sounds there is no continuity at all, what – you would argue why shouldn’t we do that in our galleries, why should in Melrose Avenue or in Chicago or any of our galleries, right, why wouldn’t we just put contract labor in there too, like it would be cheaper. I would argue that our results would be much lower. And I believe that our customers’ satisfaction levels are missed opportunities and building on sales. Our return rates, our failed deliveries, our exchanges are on and on and on, the back end of this business is so costly. And I have always said for years, I have said being in the furniture business, it’s an ugly baby, but it’s ours, right. And so you have got to love it. You have got to care for it. But it is a tough business. And I think we now elevated this brand. We have elevated the product. We have an average ticket that is significantly higher than our competitors, right. We should be getting massively more leverage, but we are not. And we are not because we are not executing well. We have multiple failed deliveries. We have multiple new – return issues. We have a strong view that if we invest and take the level of delivery to the level that matches the brand that we are going to see these metrics get massively better and we should get real leverage. But today if you really looked at the supply chain cost and the architecture of it, I think it’s architected for an old business. It’s architected for the old resto. It’s architected for like a Pottery Barn type business or a much lower end business. And that’s not – our galleries are different. Our people are different. The time services are different. Our home delivery needs to be different and it needs to be high quality and high touch. And I think if you look at reviews on our company online, talk to each other, you guys are customers. If I took what’s the number one complaint about RH, it’s that final mile, it’s that final delivery, it’s we screwed up. It wasn’t the same quality that you expected. And I think it’s the last piece of the puzzle to solve here. And I will tell you that DeMonty is – our Co-President and Chief Operating and Service and Values Officer is just setting a whole new level of standards for the organization, made multiple changes throughout the organization at many senior levels and bringing in a quality of leadership that we haven’t had before. And so I just never felt more passionate and enthusiastic about what can happen operationally in this company. So I could go on and on and on here, but I won’t. But I would say I think it’s in the next 1 year, 2 years and 3 years, I think it’s – we are just talking last night with DeMonty. And I think if you are taking about 3 years to make it perfect, right, like and his standards are perfect, so he know anything about that. But I will tell you 6 months to 12 months from now, you are going to see massive change. For example, last week, we had 3,000 home deliveries. Excuse me, 5,000 deliveries and how many do we have resto employees on the trucks.