In business you must develop a strong team and to do this properly you must be careful whom you pick to be on the team. Vendors are part of that team. It is not as easy as you might think picking vendors. Let me tell you a story. I take issue with some of our vendors who do not walk the talk. I visited several vendors in TX this month and found that their lack of image and un-kept shops and attitude about image was quite inferior to ours. I found that they did not have the same value set when it came to quality of uniforms, signage and building. I am concerned that as the Optimist Club says, we should be work only for the best, associate with only the best and be only the best.

Well, I must say we are the best and we have the best customers and therefore we must demand the best from our vendors. We want ethical and fair vendors and we need proper image. I believe it is totally disrespectful for our vendors to assume that we should be doing business with them when they lack the character and take zero pride in their shops image. I find it appalling for them to constantly toot their own horns and then go on like we do not matter. It is almost like saying; why take a shower we are only going to get dirty again? Well that maybe okay for; John Walker Lynn the Tally man fighter bathing in dirt, but not for our vendors. How can a company say they respect the services we offer yet never clean their tools, shop, building or offices. I toured one vendor and their shop was a disgusting pigsty where there was debris all over the shop, junky equipment everywhere, brand new machines uncovered and 1/4 inch of dirt on them. I saw paper work everywhere, clothes hanging form the door ways, the occasional motivational picture from Successories, Inc. with dirty glass and filled trash cans in the break rooms, with posters of women hung up viable from the open door. I am going to say, you want to work with our company? You want to sell to the best. You want to buy a new house and put a down payment on it with the money you make from our franchisees and then let your shop look like that? What Planet are you on?

We are a first class operation in the cleaning business, if you want our volume and money flow in the middle of this recession you had better start acting like it. I tell you what it looked like something out of the Grapes of Wrath. That was only one of the shops I toured this month. We will be switching vendors. Michael Jackson