@SahmIam wrote:
@JeanLouiseFinch YES!! The smell, especially in the Fall...*sigh*
@Mominohio Well written. I have a few questions that you may or may not know the answer to:
* Why did they take the pottery overseas? I remember at a consultant meeting this was announced and the entire room gasped and then the angry voices started. Upline tried to put a positive spin on it but you could tell she didn't believe anything she was saying to us. The question was never really answered. Was it the pottery company that chose to shut down? Was it a profit thing for Longaberger? Both? There were other lines that were made in PA and they were also known for their excellent quality (something about the clay in PA that is perfect for pottery is why).
I have a set of mugs that were made in China (may have been the first wave). The color green is slightly off, the stamp on the bottom is completely differently. They've stained, chipped AND the green is almost gone from all 4 mugs. I'm glad I bought those as a trial set; could you imagine if you had purchase ALL your dining and baking ware and it did that?! Same thing with the textiles; what happened?
* the stories of Tami and Rachel spending money like water were a constant sort of....gossip. I could never understand why they needed housed THAT large when Dave and his wife lived just as well in something much MUCH smaller but more to the point, the money from the company that was spent on....stuff. You're getting rid of employees, sales are going down and you're buying what/spending how much on you/traveling where?! Kind of slap in the face to many and the number of consultants that walked due to it were in the hundreds just in my little area. Didn't it occur to them? Or where, as many told us, both were actually very detached from the worker bees of the company?
* Did people get fired for telling Tami her ideas stunk? I ask because we had heard rumors a jewelry and wallet/purse line was coming to Longaberger (which it did) and that it was suggested that she not as it wasn't part of the Longaberger "thing". That person was gone soon after. The line came out, failed and that was that. We often heard Tami was difficult to work with and had a huge ego; if so, it made sense as the company kept failing and nothing seemed to be able to pull it back up.
* Last, was there really NO ONE in the company or in the FAMILY that couldn't see what was happening?Was there a rift between the sisters and Daves' siblings? So much was at stake...it's just bizarre how far this company fell.
It's been many years and I've never found out about these things; they were often discussed among consultants and customers but boy, the lid was shut down tight after the pottery moved to China. No one knew was was going to happen until it happened.
Kinda reminds me of the nightmare that has become LuLaRoe.
@SahmIam
I'm not sure I'll be much help with answering most of these questions for you, but here goes! LOL
I've heard they pottery went overseas for both reasons. The cost was cheaper in China, and over the decades, the potteries here in this part of the country were folding pretty quickly.
Longaberger's pottery got to be big business, and sold very well. I think many of the potteries they used or wanted to use couldn't handle the volume, had business issues of their own and were struggling. I heard that moving it overseas was a cost thing, but a supplier problem locally as well.
I will say there was strong reports of moving it back to the states, and there was supposedly a big deal struck with a company in the US, but that company folded before production could be moved back. I have mostly USA mugs, but lots of other pottery from China, and I've had good luck with the China pottery. I do 'feel' a difference in the glaze though, between the two. Both have functioned well for me.
On a side note, I think it is so sad that all the glassware companies and potteries we had here are gone or diminished. They were such flourishing industries and made such beautiful and quality products. Hate to see what has become of them.
As to the girls and the money spent, I guess one would need to be an insider in the higer up accounting of the company to know the truth, but Tami's house and estate were over the top. The hand craftsmanship of much of the work done there was amazing and unequaled in today's building, even for rich people. Some people earn enough money to live that way. I'm not sure, but my guess is that since it was a family business, and she was known as being very controlling, money was bled from the company coffers more so than if it wasn't family controlled. I think they had the ability to move and remove funds and did it. This is just a gut feeling from all the people I've talked to over the years who worked there, and they never used those words, but just the feeling I get from what I have seen/heard.
I think you may have hit on something else that caused their demise. Especially once Homestead went up, there was Longabarger branded everything. Food, clothing, bags, linens, note paper, pens, and on and on. Initially this stuff was so well made, seemed popular (at least on site in the area) and sold well. But as business started to decline, the high prices on these things caused a great deal of it to end up on clearance before selling. They used to have a huge clearance area, and I think many people waited, and didn't pay full price anymore. And when they drew tens of thousands of people a year to the area, they sold a lot, but as their overall business declined, so did the interest in this stuff. I think they tried to take the brand way too far. It was popular for a bit, but they didn't see it fading, and kept it longer than was profitable.
I don't at all claim to know or have access to the inner workings of the company when the family still owned it, but my hunch is that Tami's strong personality (coupled with the fact that the family owned the company) drove away or converted to 'yes men', any governing body or corporate officers that they might have had in place, like a board of directors or something to act in a similar capacity, if they even had them.
Dave was beloved, and Tami was not. So much of what a company is is made of of the rank and file employees. If they love their leaders, they go above and beyond. If they have faith in their leadership they follow and create wealth for the comany and themselves. People in that area had/have a love/ hate relationship with the company. Many hated to see Longaberger buy up nearly the whole town and turn it into their world, others realized in a very rural depressed area, it was life saving for jobs, taxes, and improvements in the area. Others have been devastated by the town collapsing. Some people bought store fronts in Dresden in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars at the peak of things, and have had to sell for hundreds of thousands less as the whole thing collapsed.
If Dave had still been alive today, and young enough to be vibrant in the industry, I think there would be a different outcome than we see today, partly because of his vision (and he was seen as a bit of an odd guy), and partly because many people loved to work for him and with him. He died at a real turning point in the economy, business practices, and technological advancement/change. My view is that without his vision and passion, and with a family that rode in on the coat tails of his success, they didn't have the ability or desire to make it work. They simply ran it into the ground the way many second and third generation businesses fail today. Those that take over never really knew the 'hard' times, the lean times the beginning. They didn't know the work and vision that the founders had. Sad, but it happens a lot.
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