7 More Questions on Leadership with Vin Lee
Name: Vin Lee
Title: CEO
Organisation: Grand Metropolitan
Grand Metropolitan is an American multinational luxury goods holding company founded in Beverly Hills, CA in 2000. The group owns over 60 brand subsidiaries that have conducted over $250 billion in revenue collectively since their founding originating in 1787.
Many of our brands have been leading employers and institutions in their local communities raising millions of dollars over the years for a range of charities and causes.
Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!
We’ve gone through the interviews and asked the best of the best to come back and answer 7 MORE Questions on Leadership.
I hope Vin’s answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!
Cheers,
Jonno White
1. As a leader, how do you build trust with employees, customers and other stakeholders?
Grand Metropolitan has been around for over a century and many of our legacy brands are close to 200 years old. To have assembled such a portfolio, trust has been a vital component. We are a family office so the relationship I have with shareholders is with a tiny group of people. The organization has grown from one small retail location to 70 national and international brands with a cumulative foot print of 5,000 doors in 40 years.
History
Bailey Banks & Biddle is one of the most revered jewelers in the world on the level of Tiffany & Co. and Cartier. During the formation of the United States many of our great symbols were created by the artisans at Bailey Banks. Most of our iconic military awards were created during this time like the Purple Heart, Medal of Honor, and Flying Cross for our brave heroes that defended our country. Bailey Banks & Biddle was there as one of the greatest metal smiths and patriots of our existence. This heritage has value and influence that the Amazons, Walmarts, and Alibabas cannot provide or offset with fake diamonds and plated metals from far away lands.
Community
Trust within the communities we are an integral part of has been well established long before my tenor. One of the things that made Glick Furniture Company so successful, and grow quickly and move ahead and become the leading furniture company, was in 1913 there was a flood in Columbus, in the bottoms on the west side. Thousands of people were left homeless. Their houses were flooded, the furniture was ruined. Many of those people were customers of our company who had purchased on credit. We ran an ad in the newspaper to make an announcement to all the good customers, to consider their bill paid in full. As soon as they got back on their feet, come in and pick out some more furniture, and we’d refinance the new purchase.During the great fires of Chicago 1871 leaving 300 dead, most of the cities poor were left with nothing. Sterchi Brothers Furniture agreed to extend "free" terms to to help them replace and rebuild their lives.
Commitment
Loyalty is a two way street. You cannot expect your staff and vendors to be trustworthy and loyal to your organization if you make them feel expendable or inconvenient. During COVID 19, we shut down our face to face retail operations keeping everyone on full salary and benefits. Our competitors sent everyone home. In the wake of a $400 million sexual harassment settlement and another $1.5 billion in unnecessary shareholder driven acquisitions, they left most of their staff in uncertain circumstances for the future.
During the 1980s the term corporate raider became common nomenclature. The opposite side of that coin is a "White Knight". This is often someone that comes in from the outside to buy a position in a company to stave off attacks like bankruptcy or liquidation saving thousands of jobs and many times helping to bolster economies in small town America. By acquiring distressed debt assets in the luxury market, we try to do our part of undoing the corporate greed of that previous era that saddled these organizations with so much debt that they crumbled from the inside. Most of our competitors are publicly-held entities where management has little to no stake in their own companies. If your C-suite doesn't put their $15 million salaries on the table in the form of stock why do you trust them to control your finances.
I personally own 100% of Grand Metropolitan and it's subsidiary brands. No partnerships. I have also never taken a dime out of the company in the 30 years I have been at the helm. No debt. Everyone gets paid first, staff, suppliers, and vendors. If you are wondering how I pay my bills and put food on the table. I live much more modestly since I lost my legs and banked some money on deals outside of the company at a younger age.
2. What do 'VISION' and 'MISSION' mean to you? And what does it actually look like to use them in real-world business?
These words do come with a certain stigma for me. They have been used in corporate filings for decades to define the purpose or direction the company is attempting to steer its ship towards. In recent years it has become this bloated self-important definition of why one brand is better and more ethical than others. Perhaps the worst abuser of these terms is Elon Musk and his Tesla and Spacex nonsense. Since he arrived on the scene the mainstream media has touted him as a visionary (even though every idea he originates is from a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger film.) His "Mission" is to save humanity by shipping everyone that can afford it to Mars. Yet his "Vision" is saving humanity by converting all cars to (coal-charged) plastic electric vehicles in underground tunnels where there is no access to solar.
Meanwhile in the real world, most corporate organizations have been committed to creating safe environments for their employees both physical and mental/emotional. At the same time our society has encouraged these activities to also be aware of minimizing the waste impact on our communities. In the luxury markets we use technology to assist in deterring crime and inappropriate behaviors. We also make a concerted effort to source and create our wares in a far more responsible way than our predecessors.
My "mission" for Grand Metropolitan, while not as lofty as saving humanity from AI robots (while building AI robots) is to create beauty in the world while providing my family and associates with the stable means to live out their own dreams and missions.
3. How can a leader empower the people they're leading?
I often do get asked about how little ol' me can manage or lead such an exceptional and diverse group of individuals. First of all you have to consider this is 40 years in the making and a layering effect has been in place since Day 1. I admit I use to "humble brag" a lot about how much I worked day and night. It really was hardly the case, especially considering how complicated staff lives are. Owning a jewelry store is a full time job, owning 1,000 is not a thousand times more work. By allowing people to prove to themselves they can accomplish more and manager more successfully you empower them. Grand Metropolitan is a tiny office the size of your dentist. But our portfolio is made up of 7 individual groups with complete management and operational infrastructures some of which support up to 40 individual national and regional brands. If someone with little experience attempted to run one of these groups it could prove to be a crushing task. The people that create the art are rarely the ones that manage and sell it.
4. Who are some of the coaches or mentors in your life who have had a positive influence on your leadership? Can you please tell a meaningful story about one of them?
I have always been around people that were influential to me whether it was in a positive or negative way. I have had the great honor to learn from billionaires H. Wayne Huizanga (Blockbuster Video, Waste Management), Sumner Redstone (Viacom, National Amusements), A. Alfred Taubman (Sotheby's, Taubman Centers) and a dozen others on the Forbes 400.
One of my first mentors honestly was Lynn Olson, my art teacher from Middle School on through High School. While a classically trained painter from Chicago. For some reason she saw something in me worth encouraging. Throughout our tenor she exposed me to everything from old world painters to getting me a tutorship with Hanna-Barbera Corporation at the age of 15. Of course my parents were also working in tandem with her efforts supporting me in every effort even though neither shared that similar background.
I don't think I have ever told this story publicly. With so much energy going into my creative development as a youth, I was very interested in inventors/designers not just high art. I started working on dozens of product ideas in the late 1980s some that materialized many that didn't. I saw this new technology on Discovery 2000, an Australian based futurist program. It was a film that when a current is applied to it, the particles aligned making it translucent. It took a great deal of digging and hunting (pre-internet) to source the creator and have a small sheet of it shipped to my Michigan house. I fashion it in between two automotive grade glass panels and added the circuitry to allow the electric current to be applied. One of my fathers closest friends grew up with the Ford Family on Grosse Point Shores and was able to get me a meeting with Heinz Prechter, Founder of American Sunroof Corporation (ASC) and generally considered the father of the sunroof.
I met with Mr. Prechter with my little science project in his offices in Southgate, Michigan (my original hometown). I was 19. I presented to him that this was the future of the American automotive industry both in sunroof and side window panels for luxury cars like limousines. He asked me projected unit costs which I pegged at $1,200-$1,500 as an option or aftermarket add-on. He laughed and stated to me that no one is ever going to pay over $500 for a sunroof, and the average aftermarket products were around $200 installed.
Apparently even as a teen I had expensive tastes. He dismissed me from the meeting with friendly encouragement but I was devastated. Two decades later luxury companies like Mercedes and Boeing began implementing them in their Maybach and 787 models. Today you find them engineered in spas and smart homes all over the globe. I was right. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I learned a lot about myself from that day. Learned to trust myself.
5. Leadership is often more about what you DON'T do. How do you maintain focus in your role?
Management and leadership are certainly not synonymous. So many organizations have management that make myopic decisions about expansion, acquisition, and expenditures that may not be in the best interest of the entity but enrich relationships for a smaller group or position. As an example, in my world when management not shareholders) are at risk of losing their own positions as a result of a new owner or shift in the C-Suite they may push an agenda that would drain the capital resources and burden the group with heavy debt-service.
When we start acquiring a position in Finlay Enterprises from capital earned during a run up in natural gas prices. Shareholders began pushing management to acquire free standing chains to make the company less reliant on lease agreements with faltering department stores. A market the firm was generating over $1 billion from. They agreed to borrow $500 million from GE Capital to go on a buying spree. In my opinion it was setup to spurn my interest in the company. Institutional shareholders negotiated a transaction tapping $200 million on that fund and paying Zales (who they also had a substantial stake in) for Bailey Banks & Biddle at about $1 million a door when the industry was valuing enterprise at a fraction of that. This immediately sent Finlay Enterprises stock spiraling and only elevated Zales for a few quarters before their own impending bankruptcy proceedings. The bankers received their fees, commissions, and bonus' while eventually everyone else lost their jobs.
How I maintain focus is by never forgetting who I am and what I came from. It has never hurt me to be patient and wait out these matters. Most of the people we think of as intelligent leaders with our own interests at heart from private to public affairs do not. Very rarely do I meet someone that is genuinely altruistic.
6. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Everyone plans differently. How do you plan for the week, month and years ahead in your role?
Management and leadership are certainly not synonymous. So many organizations have management that make myopic decisions about expansion, acquisition, and expenditures that may not be in the best interest of the entity but enrich relationships for a smaller group or position. As an example, in my world when management not shareholders) are at risk of losing their own positions as a result of a new owner or shift in the C-Suite they may push an agenda that would drain the capital resources and burden the group with heavy debt-service.
When we start acquiring a position in Finlay Enterprises from capital earned during a run up in natural gas prices. Shareholders began pushing management to acquire free standing chains to make the company less reliant on lease agreements with faltering department stores. A market the firm was generating over $1 billion from. They agreed to borrow $500 million from GE Capital to go on a buying spree. In my opinion it was setup to spurn my interest in the company. Institutional shareholders negotiated a transaction tapping $200 million on that fund and paying Zales (who they also had a substantial stake in) for Bailey Banks & Biddle at about $1 million a door when the industry was valuing enterprise at a fraction of that. This immediately sent Finlay Enterprises stock spiraling and only elevated Zales for a few quarters before their own impending bankruptcy proceedings. The bankers received their fees, commissions, and bonus' while eventually everyone else lost their jobs.
How I maintain focus is by never forgetting who I am and what I came from. It has never hurt me to be patient and wait out these matters. Most of the people we think of as intelligent leaders with our own interests at heart from private to public affairs do not. Very rarely do I meet someone that is genuinely altruistic.
7. What advice would you give to a young leader who is struggling to delegate effectively?
Trust your extincts. Everything will work out.