Ever wondered how one transitions from a corporate job to being a purpose-driven entrepreneur? Or how iconic brands like Saks Fifth Avenue create unforgettable shopping experiences? I sat down with Harry Cunningham, the brain behind Saks' stunning Christmas windows and co-founder of GoodMRKT. Harry unveils the mysteries of visual merchandising and its role in shaping consumer emotions. He also shares the story of GoodMRKT, a retail brand that’s using its platform to champion good causes and positively impact society.
We both traded corporate comfort for the thrilling world of entrepreneurship, and we have an open conversation about our experiences and the unique challenges and rewards that come with being your own boss. From exploring the creative landscape within a corporation, to the freedom and accountability of creating your own purpose-driven brand, these insights are priceless. We also take a closer look at GoodMRKT as a case study for blending multiple purpose-driven brands into one cohesive experience. So, if you've been eyeing the entrepreneurial world, listen in.
Ever wondered how one transitions from a corporate job to being a purpose-driven entrepreneur? Or how iconic brands like Saks Fifth Avenue create unforgettable shopping experiences? I sat down with Harry Cunningham, the brain behind Saks' stunning Christmas windows and co-founder of GoodMRKT. Harry unveils the mysteries of visual merchandising and its role in shaping consumer emotions. He also shares the story of GoodMRKT, a retail brand that’s using its platform to champion good causes and positively impact society.
We both traded corporate comfort for the thrilling world of entrepreneurship, and we have an open conversation about our experiences and the unique challenges and rewards that come with being your own boss. From exploring the creative landscape within a corporation, to the freedom and accountability of creating your own purpose-driven brand, these insights are priceless. We also take a closer look at GoodMRKT as a case study for blending multiple purpose-driven brands into one cohesive experience. So, if you've been eyeing the entrepreneurial world, listen in.
Welcome to the third growth option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Dunke-Schpuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Bernal, your host, talking today with Harry Cunningham, a 30-year award-winning corporate executive, store design visual merchandising rock star, former senior vice president and since 2021, I think co-founder of a retail for good purpose driven brand in the Midwest called Good Market. Harry, welcome to the third growth option podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much and thank you for that very, very kind introduction. You make me sound much cooler than I am. I appreciate it. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think you're pretty cool, but the conversations I've had with you and what I have read about you and others have told me I don't think I made anything up. But before Good Market you were senior vice president of store design visual merchandising at Saks Fifth Avenue and several other retailers. Just to kind of explain to our listeners what that entails, right, I mean people outside of your field or our field of merchandising may not know what that is I thought it would be helpful to just transport the listener to a cold December day in New York City, in Manhattan, admiring the legendary Christmas windows at Saks Fifth Avenue, right, which I have many wonderful memories of, freezing my butt off in front of the Christmas windows at Saks Fifth.
Speaker 1:Avenue.
Speaker 2:Is that a pretty good visual of your world in corporate retail.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's certainly a big part of it and I'll tell you, cold December New York days are some of my favorite New York days, and particularly when I was there and working on the windows one of the most beautiful parts of working on the windows, in addition to and it's important to understand that those windows took us about 11 months. We would literally start in January. It took us about 11 months to create those, but those cold December days that you were there watching the windows or looking at the windows, many times people that were doing just exactly what I was doing when I was there and even today were probably standing among the crowd and you never knew it, and that was always part of my favorite thing was to stand there and watch how people reacted and when they point, when they smile and when they take pictures. You know you did a good job, but that was only a part of what I did. I mean with store design, visual merchandising, store planning, much, much broader than just the windows. The windows were certainly the hood ornament, the most kind of newsworthy, famous part, but really it was about the entire store and the entire store experience.
Speaker 3:We were developing spaces, creating spaces and recreating spaces where product would be sold, whether that was product that you know, from a vendor that might create their own shop inside our store. We were creating our own shops and you know, the fun we had in creating those spaces was also because we had to remember that the people that were shopping with us many of them had access to some of the finest things available to them in the world, and so we always needed to be sort of one step ahead of what those trends were. So we got to create, you know kind of these beautiful spaces using the newest wall coverings, with the newest floor coverings and the newest lighting, but then, beyond that, we were creating spaces. Then we had to maintain those spaces with our visual merchandising team, and that was really the presentation of product every day and the styling of mannequins and creating, you know, impactful displays, not just in the windows but also inside the store.
Speaker 3:And I remember back before, well before I was working, I was in my mid teens and I visited New York for the first time. I saw some people that were probably the window people standing outside the store chain, smoking and eating powdered sugar doughnuts, and I'm like that's what I want to do, Skip the smoking part, but they're doing cool stuff. It was funny when I actually was lucky enough to get the job at Saks. There were people that had been working in the windows for 20 or 30 years and that was their entire career. And I kind of looked back on it, you know later, many years later, and thought I bet some of the people that were working with me then were probably the ones that I ran into on the street. They were doing that.
Speaker 2:Was your first job in in manhattan no, it wasn't actually in.
Speaker 3:Funny enough, I started working while I was in college, part time, and then post college I was. I worked for dillards for ten years In florida and then in atlanta, and sax actually recruited me from there. They had a corporate office when they had a number of department stores not just the sax banner but a number of banners. I was creative director for a number of departments first and then ultimately relocated to manhattan to work there and absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2:Because that's where I started my retail career. After college I was visiting friends in manhattan and kind of fell in love with it. So I first job there was a conran's habitat back in the Late eighties, early nineties. You know the tools of the trade you were talking about. You know creating spaces, creating windows, create. You know floor coverings and walls and all the materials. But all of that is to help evoke emotions In the consumer walking the store. And that to me, is that magic right of retail when you evoking emotions. But so now you are the co founder of good market. Walk us through a little bit what you know. That concept is this retail for good. You have, you know, sixty or so brands. I'm gonna read the punchline that I saw in one of your articles good people, great product, exceptional causes and this wonderful example of the buddy bench, just to kind of get you going there sure.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think it helps if I really start at the beginning, because what was the original plan for good market Shifted a little bit and got us to where we are today the original concept. I was working at the time and your brother, if you, if you are not aware also owns the brand pure vita, and we were talking about ways to bring the two brands together in an interesting retail space that would bring new eyes to both brands, because they have different demographics, different target consumer. All together, we knew if we could have access to the two of these and then perhaps bring other third party brands and we could create a new retail space that might just be more interesting. Rob wallstrom, who's our co Time, was smart enough to say why don't we not mess up our flagship, your bradley store in the center where we're creating this? I really research and development project initially, what if we just do something totally different but still try and figure out how to create any retail space that could be compelling? And so we started thinking a bit about it and knowing that both of those two brands have very philanthropic foundations and I mean foundation, like foundation of a house, is a it's core to who they are very badly has a very badly foundation for breast cancer that's very much focused on doing that. They raised over forty million dollars for breast cancer research. Today, pure vita has about thirty charities worldwide that they support through a charity bracelet program. So this idea about brands that we're doing good what if we could bring them together? Sort of presented itself and that's really how it started in.
Speaker 3:The first conversation I had with somebody outside of the company was with a guy who is based here in fort Wayne that had a purpose driven coffee and he's roasting coffee in fort Wayne and he works with coffee farmers to help them convert their coffee farms that have been taken over for cocaine farming back to coffee. So it's a much more reputable Farming. And he also shifted the model of it. If you aren't aware, coffee farmers historically get about one percent of the profit when they sell their beans. So he had this idea to kind of shift that model. So I started talking to him and realize that we're on something much bigger than just two brands that were dropping down. We have a third brand and then he said oh, there's somebody else you should meet this locally who has this brand called mud love and they provide a week of clean water through water for good for every piece of product they sell, so that you know it, like we're on to something you're not up to four brands, like the world just got much bigger, without me even realizing that all of a sudden this purpose driven community, this idea of Conscious capitalism, community over competition, is a real thing, which was very much new to me, having come from the luxury world, where you know the luxury brands are really trying to gain as much market shares they can.
Speaker 3:This community of purpose driven brands really can value each other, realizing that a rising tide lifts all boats and if they can get you to shop one purpose driven brand, arguably you might want to shop another and another and another. And so this came together very organically through a number of conversations and finding out that you know one purpose driven founder knows three more, that no, five more, and kind of the spider web of connections started happening very quickly. I thought we would open the store with I thought we'd get ten to twelve brands, not knowing how big the this world is out there. And we actually opened in april twenty one, with thirty four purpose driven brands, and now we're actually closer to eighty and continuing to see more all the time and it's interesting, even in the short time that we've been in business, I've watched how things like organic production or sustainable production are becoming much, much more prevalent and, arguably, price of entry for brands. Probably in our career lifetime.
Speaker 2:And the whole idea of purpose-driven brands, and there are some great examples I think Tom Schuess maybe certainly was in that vein and there are a number of wonderful purpose-driven brands out there. But then in today's world of marketing cynicism some brands are also just using it, as, like there's the term greenwashing. There's maybe purpose-driven washing right where they're just kind of pretending. So it's not easy to articulate and sort of pass on that feeling and evoke those emotions of purpose-driven brands. In one brand You're doing it for 80 brands in a store, so doing the storytelling around one brand is not easy. Doing it for the sum of 80 must be more difficult. I mean, how do you see sort of one versus 80?
Speaker 3:I don't think you're wrong by any means. I think part of the approach that we've had, though, since the beginning, is all of our team that works in the store. We call them storytellers, we don't call them associates, we don't call them cashiers. We don't call them anything but storytellers because they are really. First, they're educated on what the stories are, they're introduced to many of the founders as they start and they're introduced to all of the stories, and our complete mission here is to share the stories of the good that's happening with every single purchase. So we are very focused on that. But it's not just about that, because sometimes customers come in and either A they don't want to interact with one of our storytellers or we're busy with one customer who may miss another that might be walking around.
Speaker 3:We're very focused on creating. We created these story cards for each one of the brands. It's about six by six and it has their story in an abbreviated form so that you can walk up and read it very, very quickly. We bold the most important parts of the story, so if you just want to kind of quick glance, you can learn their stories, but we have QR codes on them. We also have video monitors, ipads placed around the store that we move around every day, that have videos playing, most of them from the founders of the brands, talking about who they are and what their purpose is and how they came to create the brand. So, yeah, it's not an easy thing, but it's something that we certainly feel very, very strongly about and will continue to do with every single brand we bring on board.
Speaker 2:So you had this conversation with the CEO of Vera Bradley about the good market concept, which was just Vera Bradley and one other brand at the time. The question that he asked you are you willing to bet your career on it? Are you willing to burn the boats for this idea? What made you burn the boats and bet your career? How has that changed how you behave in business?
Speaker 3:Just and foremost, my answer was a very quick yes, with no hesitation, and I think the reason that I did that was because I had had the chance by then to really meet a number of these founders and understand what they were doing and how much of an impact they were making, and with 30 years of career behind me at the time, I realized that this was very much a shift in the way that people were going to start shopping, and I was convinced that absolutely this is the way people were going to start shopping, but much like think about a 30-year career if you think about a seed that was planted 30 years ago and now it's a tree, and now it's dropping its own seeds.
Speaker 3:That's how I approach it. I've grown this tree. Now it's time to grow the next tree in the forest, and so it was an opportunity to let's just go. So there's a tremendous amount of growth. That happened as a result of it, too, because I was then also able to fast forward to where we are today. I've been now able to live in the same world as the entrepreneurs that have created these purpose-driven brands, but with 30 years of experience behind me, and I've tapped into probably every single one of those years, at some point in time in the last 24 months, 28 months, and just things that I had learned I'm using almost every day.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. You and I both spent maybe you one decade more in corporate America, right? I spent about 20 years in corporate America, you 30 years and I feel most of the time that I have learned very, extremely valuable lessons in those 20 years in corporate America. But there are times when I talk with fellow entrepreneurs or clients who are entrepreneurs and they look at me like when I bring up one of those what I think is a valuable lesson, they're like what are you talking about? And sometimes not helpful, right? Because maybe I'm kind of thinking in a billion dollar way, in a million dollar company. Does that happen to you?
Speaker 3:All the time. I think one of the biggest kind of eye-opener for me was once I was in this like million dollar company, if you will, and realized that the wireless went out. Like there's no IT team to call and fix it. You've got to figure out how to fix it. The ice maker stops working for our cafe. You've got to fix those things. So that's been probably the biggest aha for me.
Speaker 3:But I was never scared of rolling up my sleeves and doing the dirty work and I think that's something I share. You know, anytime I'm talking to either new people in the industry or I love spending time with college students that want to get into this crazy world of retail. Like, don't be scared of any of that. So it's just a matter of kind of not having an ego about. You know, if you need to sweep the floors, you sweep the floors. If you need to fix the iPad, you fix the iPad. And if you get to be interviewed by the news, you get to be interviewed by the news. But it's sort of all of those parts that come together and that's really how I would say I use the 30 years of experience that I have is like what are the key wins and what are the key opportunities that I'm able to tap into and kind of figure out what the better solution is this time.
Speaker 2:We are spoiled as employees, as W2 employees, climbing the corporate ladder, knowing that you know we have a paycheck direct deposit every other Friday. That went away for you 24, 28 months ago, for me, 14 years ago. It does change us, doesn't it? It does change the way we look at ourselves and at our place in the world, like for me. It's exciting. You know it's both scary and exciting. You know, not every month is a great month financially. Some months are great and some are not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and you know there's much less margin of error. You got to keep that much more in check every day versus maybe you didn't. You were a little bit more willing. For me personally, I don't know that I'm any less willing to take risks now, though, than I was before, and it's you know, it's an odd time, because I've got twins that are going to be 15, that are, you know, college is coming soon, and all those things that I have to think about, but it's something that you can't. You're either going to take the risk or you're not, and I think I've always been a risk taker and I've always had this comfort that one way or another, things will work out, and you know, hopefully it continues.
Speaker 3:But I think I've also part of that willingness to take risks is also this, this willingness to do things that you know everybody's not willing to move anywhere in the country to do a job, and that was early, certainly early in my career. I'm like I'll go anywhere just to get the next job, and that doesn't mean another employer. That was more about okay, if I can do this, and the next step that I want to take in my career means that I have to live in a different city. Okay, let's live in a different city, but let's get that step. And it ultimately got me to be able to live in New York and work for one of the most famous brands in the world and do things that I had dreamed of a long time, and I think there are lots of people that dream of getting that opportunity. But it was just. You know, I was fortunate enough to get it and I think it brought me here and I'll continue to have that same sort of willingness to take those risks.
Speaker 2:This idea of creativity in business right. Creativity inside a corporation, inside, you know, a publicly traded company, like some of the bigger retailers are, is very different from entrepreneurial creativity where, as owners or founders or co founders of a business, you know we are responsible for drawing the box, the sandbox within which to be creative, whereas at Saxford Avenue the sandbox was drawn for you by you know the by the corporation, and then you got to sort of play within that. How do you see funneling your creativity within, you know, multi billion dollar businesses versus? As co founder of Good Market in Fort Wind, indiana, I'll say just for good market.
Speaker 3:First and foremost, the creativity here is really. I'm creating my own filter and I'm creating my own box, just like you said, but I'm also holding myself accountable to all of that.
Speaker 3:If I screw something up, I have the opportunity to blame that Harry nobody right nobody to blame me, but but if I can screw something up here, it's also me that can say you know what I like how it ended up. Different certainly from a corporate world where you said there are people that are kind of putting guard rails in place. But I've also been really fortunate in my career to have been in places that I've had Bosses or leaders, or whatever that might be, that have given me a lot of freedom To try things and do things. I remember well speaking of creativity in a corporate world when we were starting to design the first new sax with avenue store that had been opened in about eight or nine years. It was an opportunity really to stay in.
Speaker 3:My boss the time on fresh is that certainly a well known person in the retail industry. It's on the board of burberry's, it's on the board of crocs today was like okay, what do you think we should be? And it wasn't about what do you think we should be within this box. It was like what do you think we should be? And I took a very, very kind of radical approach to it, thinking that sax first, when they have been designed before me, always cut these federalist bank looking buildings. Is that really where retail is going and I have these personal tastes that I you know for aesthetic and architecture that are very, very different.
Speaker 3:But I always thought it was important to nod back to the parent brand and when I think about creativity and corporation, recognizing what that heritage is is really important.
Speaker 3:But putting your own spin on it is probably where you can have that opportunity.
Speaker 3:That's what I did and I came up with this concept in partnership with some people from my team it's outside partners as well that not it to the heritage of the company but also allowed me to put my own spin on things, so that I think when you're living in this corporate world of creativity, it's it's, you know, sort of the onus is on you to be respectful of the brand that you're working for, you're working inside, but also, you know, when you're in a creative field, it's also your responsibility to push the limits a little bit and not just let, if you've been given these opportunities, not just Right on the laurels of the brand is created, but how do you continue to push that brand forward? And for me here, now that I'm in my own space, it's for the same rules apply. I think we opened as acts, but we can't stay extra ever. You know, part of what people come to us for is what's the new, what's the next? Those sort of important pillars carry over, but in a different way, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's what I've always liked about you having Creative responsibility within the confines of a business that I think the most successful brands out there Push the envelope not fifty percent forward every month, right, so it's so it becomes completely unrecognizable six months, six years later. But they push it a few percentage points all the time and so gradually it's. You know, you look at that spent the first five years of my career ikea. You can Put thirty years worth of ikea catalogs next to each other and without, if they were, if there were no year on the front page of the catalog, you and I would be able to tell what year there were, certainly what decade that was photographed. And because it's it, you know, it really is sort of this timeline of From the nineties it went to this in the early two thousand and the late two thousand.
Speaker 2:That change a little bit to that. It became a little bit cleaner, little bit more minimalistic in the last five years. But I love what you guys are doing at good market and I love that you have been able to. You know, amalgamate is maybe the right word eighty different brands that are all purpose driven, that are all trying to do good for the world. Not just be cut foot competitors, but be community oriented and purpose driven. And you built sort of a red thread around that helps tell all eighty stories just by the fact that your employees on the floor are not cashiers or this. You know this title or that title, but you're calling them all storytellers.
Speaker 3:It's really key to who we are is that when you come in and I was I was very, very focused early on about this not being A flea market or a bizarre. It's really about an experience in an environment. So brands meld and they blend, but they're still kind of the key, their own space, but it might be Organically position next to another one, not so rigid, and I think that allows for this sense of experience and discovery as you walk through the store. That's really important. That's key to kind of what you get when you walk in and we greet you with the cat. The cafe sit right in the middle of the store and so this is wonderful coffee smell that permeates. But that was also kind of Part of the whole idea of bringing this space all together is that when you read a story, many times you're sitting at home with a cup of tea or coffee and you're sitting back reading a book.
Speaker 3:And I wanted to kind of bring that experience to life so that when you're here you can carry a cup of coffee with your cup of tea or whatever. It might be hot chocolate we're known for hot chocolate in the winter you can carry that around with you, experience the story. So it's kind of three dimensional book that you get to live in. Of this you know group of stories altogether and you might spend more time on one than you do spend on another. But you get to learn as you go and experience as you go.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have to think about the image that you put in my head a few minutes ago about the 30-year career as having started with a seed and grown into a tree that now has new seeds that you're trying to nurture in terms of people that you're working with. I think it's amazing what you guys are doing and I appreciate you taking us behind the curtain a little bit right. What good market is, how you came to burn the boats or bet your career on it, and how you are growing 80 brands into a new experience. Are you guys intentionally going to take this concept to different locations, or are you kind of thinking about Fort Wayne, I think?
Speaker 3:we would love to. There's a number of cities. We had a pop-up shop in New York City for about five months in Holiday 21, winter of 21, but actually it was only plenty. We opened two and ended up staying open five. We'd love to do that. I think.
Speaker 3:Most importantly, though, for us it's going to be, finding the right location is very, very key where we can build community. That was the intent from the beginning was that this would be a place for the community. When you spend time in our store, you'll see that a community has come together and has kind of embraced us and built up with us. We get book clubs that come in and we get students that come in after school. We have Wi-Fi. That's going to be really, really important.
Speaker 3:We will be very, very careful about where we go next, but we absolutely believe that this could be in more places than just here. Fort Wayne is a wonderful city and has embraced us and given us these incredible reasons to trust that what we have is important and is good. We were thrilled to be and not trying to pat ourselves on the back, but we were thrilled to be recognized by women's wear recently as one of their ultimate concept shops in the world, alongside people that I've admired for a long time, people like Ten Core, socoma and Mercy. I think if we can get that kind of recognition because of the community that we built here, hopefully we can continue to do that and bring this community of these brands that are doing good to more places and more people and share the stories more broadly and help more people grow.
Speaker 2:Here you were giving me a hard time about introducing you as a rock star. Now you're talking about worldwide acclaim. Good for you, Congratulations. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you. It's not, you know it's, it's. We got it, I think, because we've got incredible partners and incredible people that have helped us, you know, create this story, and we just want to keep telling it in the right way.
Speaker 2:Terrific. Thank you so much for jumping on this call and creating a podcast around storytelling and entrepreneurial growth. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Harry.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Ben. I appreciate you spending the time with me.
Speaker 2:Hey, if folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website, realignforresultscom, or just email me. Email Beno B-E-N-N-O at realignforresultscom, and let's keep growing.
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