Can you imagine a time when you’ll no longer need to buy shoes? It’s probably not something you ever really thought about.
Paul Cahn, founder and co-chairman at Elan Polo International, doesn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about it either. But he says it would be a mistake to assume that any product, even one as common as a pair of shoes, is a lock to be needed forever and ever.
“The world we’re living in today, who knows what we’re going to need,” says Cahn, who founded the footwear company in 1976. “We might all be floating in another 25 years instead of walking.”
It’s this unwillingness to make assumptions that helps Cahn stay in touch with his customers’ wants and desires and push more than 45 million pairs of shoes out the door and into the hands of retailers around the world for sale each and every year.
Making a sale to every customer is not the priority for Cahn.
“We’re only interested in the prolonged relationships that we create with customers,” Cahn says. “We feel that customers are a lot smarter than we are. So we want to listen and see what they are really looking for and what they really want or what they really need. That’s where it starts. We try to service them. The idea is to have what they need or to be able to create what they need. As far as selling is concerned, listening is as important as selling.”
When you’re a good listener, you learn about what your customers are looking for and reduce the odds that you’ll be caught off-guard by a sudden change in customer demand. You just need to make sure that you’re listening to your customers and studying your industry to see how trends are changing.
“Today, I can pick up my iPod or cell phone and I can find out right there what the hell I’m looking for,” Cahn says. “It makes it a much more competitive market. It’s simpler today to keep up than it ever was because we have so much information available. But it’s a lot more competitive than it’s ever been because there is so much information available.”
Here are some of the ways Cahn helps his 500-employee company stay poised for change and positioned to endure it when the times turn tough.
