Twenty-eight years after Larry O'Toole founded Gentle Giant Moving Company with a borrowed truck and a $17 newspaper ad, his Massachusetts-based business can lay claim to nothing short of redefining the moving and storage industry through unparalleled customer service, robust employee development and community interaction.
Turns out the value of hard work, and particularly rewarding employees who take that company value and make it their personal mantra by promoting them from within, is what has fueled Gentle Giant's multi-state growth and path to achieving $30 million in revenue this year.
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"I grew up in the west of Ireland, where hard work was just expected," O'Toole says. "If you got a harvest in before the storm hit you just felt like a million bucks."
That sense of accomplishment was challenged when he moved to the U.S. and scored a coveted position maintaining the buildings and grounds of his college campus. On his first day on the job, his crew went out for breakfast in company vehicles, and then piled into girls' dorm rooms and watched "The Three Stooges" behind management's back once they returned to campus. When someone asked O'Toole to punch the clock for them while they played hooky, he refused. "That was a crossroads for me," he says.
O'Toole left to work for Eaton Corporation, a maker of components for commercial aircraft, but soon departed with thoughts of starting his own light manufacturing company. To generate start-up cash, he engaged in a number of odd jobs that included moving. It quickly occurred to O'Toole that there was an opportunity to fill a service niche in Boston and Massachusetts as a whole with quality-infused moving services. Although he started Gentle Giant in 1980, it was four years later that his mission evolved to what it still is today: "We treat our employees with respect and compassion, and expect that they will extend the same courtesy to our customers."
"Gentle Giant is the polar opposite of many moving companies out there," says Regional Manager Jake Engwerda, who has been with the company for three years (the average tenure of their 240 employees is five years). When the Giants show up on a job, each of the crew members properly introduces himself to the customer. In fact, all on-site employees are encouraged to interact with customers. This is a key difference compared with competing moving firms, which often restrict customer communication to a single supervisor.
Cultivating employees with the skills they need to perform above and beyond for the customer means having in place a robust training and development program, and Gentle Giant's is comprehensive. Although there are regular classes on "Window Removal 101," "Concert Grand Piano Prep" and "Driving," employees point to the "Leadership Development" courses, which include role playing, as most powerful. Anyone can participate in these regardless of stature in the company, and they appear to significantly help folks both deal with difficult customers and relate to fellow employees.
Independent and creative problem solving is a hallmark of the team, and with a strong emphasis on mentorship, movers make decisions confident they are upholding the values of the company. "I think a big part of it is allowing people to make mistakes," O'Toole says. "You want people to be able to learn from that without feeling they'll be castigated."
The biggest challenge is, of course, maintaining this culture as the company grows. "A lot of companies make the mistake when they're small that they'll tolerate a little bit of mediocrity here and there," O'Toole says. "Let's say you have 10 or 20 employees, and there two bad eggs. You may put up with them, because they can't really drag the culture down. People let it happen. But when that company becomes bigger, and grows to 100 or 200 people, that number becomes 10 or 20 people, and that can permeate everything."
The potential for the spread of mediocrity is precisely why the leadership stays so focused on promoting from within. "We have a structured hierarchy that provides a clear path for advancement, which provides incentive and motivation for employees to stay with us," Engwerda says.
The manager also lauds Gentle Giant's policies that promote work/life balance. "Unlike most moving companies, we offer year-round employment to a larger percentage of our staff," he says. "We also offer flexible employment, which allows our hard-working movers to take leaves of absence to travel or pursue other interests."
The company's approach to all these issues of concern to the employees doing the work day in and day out pays dividends when it comes to one of the all-important metrics for the firm, and for its industry: the number of "customers for life." But it also helps the company weather trends in their market and in the economy, such as the current housing crisis.
Actually, that hasn't made a dent in their business – primarily because, as their analysts have found, sub-prime mortgage holders are not their typical customers. So far this year Gentle Giant's revenues are greater than they were in 2007. Yet, tight times across the board mean their sales professionals spend more time explaining the value of their service, and employees in the field are keeping an eye on gas usage.
Still, the Giants' trademark efficiency and amiable attitude continue to be in high demand. "And at the end of the day," reflects Sales Director Tom O'Gorman, a 14-year employee, "that's what it's all about – tough work and having fun."
Company: Gentle Giant Moving Company
Web site: www.gentlegiant.com
Industry: Moving and storage
Location: Somerville, MA
Number of Employees: 240
Sales: $28 million
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