Thrive and give
It survived a tornado and now is donating to St. Jude
It survived a 2008 tornado. It then more than doubled annual sales to nearly $100 million.
Its workforce grew more than 65 percent.
Today it’s organizing a generous donation for St. Jude.
We’re talking about Whitmor Inc., a home goods supplier to national retail chains.
“This is a great opportunity for our brand. It’s also important for us to give back,” Whitmor executive vice president Scott Felsenthal said.
Never heard of Whitmor? Not surprising.
The 100-employee Southaven company is like a lot of small firms located in the sprawling industrial parks of Greater Memphis.
Looking at the modern industrial building as you drive down the road, the pale exterior walls seem anonymous. Inside is a company alive, resilient and now polishing its public image with a branding initiative that draws on the name recognition of St. Jude.
Whitmor will donate a portion of sales to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on certain household products designed by the Southaven firm.
“We think we could donate at least $50,000 a year,” Felsenthal said. “Potentially this could be $250,000 a year or more. This is our hope.’’
Memphis retailer Fred’s Inc., which operates 659 discount stores, has agreed to stock ironing boards, ironing board covers and laundry hampers beginning Sept. 19 that feature a St. Jude theme. For the campaign, Whitmor brand manager Kristy Smith designed a lively pattern of hearts inscribed with believe, hope, love and other encouraging words.
Retail chain ShopKo of Green Bay, Wisconsin, also has signed on, and Whitmor is presenting the same idea to other retailers. Ten percent of Whitmor’s wholesale cost on each St. Jude item sold would flow to the cancer treatment and research center in Memphis. St. Jude provides medical care, lodging, food and education free of charge for all of its young patients staying on the 5,000-employee Downtown campus.
It is not unusual for the internationally known leukemia researcher to land donations. In 2014, St. Jude surpassed the American Cancer Society as the country’s largest cancer charity. Gifts include the $30 million announced recently by Chili’s Grill & Bar. The donation raises the commitment from the Dallas-based restaurant chain to $88 million.
Most donations are much smaller. Few ever are mentioned in St. Jude’s hometown newspaper. Whitmor, though, seemed worth noting. Here’s a familyowned business, one of a thousand Memphis-area companies with 50 to 100 workers, taking $50,000 out of its own pocket and giving it away. Who are these guys?
“It’s a moral and ethical obligation we
feel we have,’’ said Felsenthal, whose father, Peter, is the chief executive officer.
Whitmor was founded as a garment bag maker in 1946 by the late Charles Whitman in Brooklyn, New York. His right-hand man, as the family tells it, was his grandson, the late Donald Felsenthal. Looking for a manufacturing site in the Delta, Whitmor located a plant in 1961 near Memphis in Earle, Arkansas.
For a generation, Earle served as the manufacturing center, shipping hub and home office. Then rising labor costs throughout the United States caused the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., to take charge. In 1996, the Arkansas chain requested suppliers source more products in Asia. Within a year, Whitmor had spread the bulk of its production among more than a dozen manufacturers in China.
Minneapolis-based Target now takes delivery of many Whitmor products at the factories, although a good share comes to the United States by ship. Goods are railed and trucked to Southaven. After a 2008 tornado raked the Arkansas Delta, the complex was moved to the DeSoto County city straddling Interstate 55 near the Interstate 240 junction. Longtime Earle employees commute to Southaven.
Since 2010, Whitmor has added 40 workers as sales neared $100 million, climbing from about $40 million, Felsenthal said.
The St. Jude initiative isn’t the only innovative practice at the company. Employees get flexible paid vacations. These enable workers to choose how many vacation days they want each year.
“Time off is down 20 percent since we implemented the plan,’’ Felsenthal said. “We make time off transparent. People can see time how much time off was taken by others.’’
That’s innovative. Yet it happens behind the pale walls, while the St. Jude campaign is on the outside, open to the public.
“As long as the demand is there, we’ll continue to push this on the national level,” Felsenthal said.