In 2013 Bew White was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Society of International Business Fellows and in 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Casual Furnishings Association. He is also the subject of the well-received biography A Summer Classic: The Bew White Story by Christopher Taunton.
Bew graduated from Auburn University in 1972 with a degree in textile engineering. The phrase “outdoor living” had hardly been coined, as outdoor furniture was simply known as a table and chairs you would find on a basic patio deck.
At just 28 years old, Mr. White left his job at his family-owned business, Avondale Mills, and started a sales representative company in 1978 called Vista Corporation, specializing in selling outdoor furniture. In 1987, Bew started multiple companies in an effort to expand from selling on the road to building a national brand. One of those companies was Summer Classics, which was created around Bew’s thought of designing and manufacturing products that he would want for his own backyard. With a business model based on creating products that were consumer driven, would stand the test of time, and would not go out of style, Summer Classics officially took off in 1987.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Bew White about building a national brand using a book.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How writing a book is hard work and takes time but is worth it in the end.
– How entrepreneurs have six traits and what those traits are.
– Why business owners should continue to push through when they make a mistake.
– How liking a company and its culture persuades people into becoming your clients.
– Why many business owners are stuck in a box that prohibits them from growing.
Connect with Bew:
Links Mentioned:
summerclassicshome.com
bewwhite.com
Guest Contact Info:
Facebook
facebook.com/SummerClassicsHome
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. It’s Rob Kosberg here, excited to bring another episode of the Published Remote Profit podcast to you. I have a great guest today, I think somebody that you’re really going to enjoy. A lot of our books that we discuss are of authors that are business owners, and of course Bew White is that. He’s written, in conjunction with someone else, a bestseller called Summer Classic: The Bew White Story, by Christopher Taunton. It’s going to be, I think, really enjoyable to talk about his motivations and what he’s using in that book. He was 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year, voted by the Society of International Business Fellows. In 2021, just last year, congratulations Bew, you received a lifetime achievement award from the International Casual Furniture Association, so congrats on that. I know you’re a very, very successful entrepreneur, so it’s great to have you on the podcast today.
Bew White:
Thanks. Great to be here.
Rob Kosberg:
Is this your first book, by the way? I know we spoke quite a bit, but this is, is it your first and only?
Bew White:
First and only, yeah. About killed me writing it. Killed me before I wrote it.
Rob Kosberg:
It can be painful, can’t it?
Bew White:
I was like, wow, this is hard.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it, love it. Appreciate the honesty. It is really hard to do that, isn’t it?
Bew White:
Yeah, it is. I don’t know how you do it.
Rob Kosberg:
Tell me, along those lines, while we’re going down that path, what was most difficult for you? What does that mean to you that it was really hard? Of course you had some help, as well, from a writer, but what was the pain in the process?
Bew White:
Well, during the great recession in 2008, some of my friends came to me and said, “You ought to write a book about this. Nobody goes through the kind of pain that you went through during that period, and you just had incredible experiences, and I think people would learn a lot from that.” So I started working on it and then. Then after I got in the hospital, when I almost died, I was like, I better-
Bew White:
Well, first, what happened is, you don’t really realize this, but when you’re about to die, you get a signal to your brain that you’re going to die. The clarity of that signal is like higher than screaming at you.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Bew White:
And it’s 100%, it’s we’re getting out of here, you got a few minutes to say whatever you’re going to say, say it.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Bew White:
So, when I came back, which I didn’t expect, I started crying uncontrollably. It’s very similar to the movie Captain Phillips, if you ever saw where they shot people around him, he was sure he was going to die, and he had the exact same thing happen.
When I came back, I just got this signal going, write the book; like God is telling me to write the book. I’m like, okay, you know I can’t write, right? I was like, I’ll try. So I tried, I wrote about 13 chapters and I went, this is terrible. Two of were pretty good. And I was like, I got to get someone to write this for me. So I interviewed authors, and finally found someone that could do it and had the time, and I literally spent a year with them. I’d already done these recordings and I did some more, because I would kind of walk him through my life. And he took it from there and I think he did a yeoman’s man’s job, a great job.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, fantastic. So it was this obviously incredible, near-death experience that motivated you to actually, finally take up the banner and get it done. Talk to me a little bit about that. When was that, and how soon after that did you just go, okay, this is something I’ve got to do?
Bew White:
October of 2013. I was 63, and it was a blood clot issue. I had blood clots in my legs. I had gone to China 29 times, and so I already had been on blood thinners, but you need blood, you need anticoagulants. That’s something I learned, which maybe your audience should know, because I was on the wrong medicines.
And people think Aspirin is a blood thinner, it is blood thinner, but it doesn’t anti-coagulate your blood, so it doesn’t prevent clots. You’ve got only about three medicines that you can take that will do that. So anyway, I got on that afterwards, but before that, I wasn’t. After it happened, I started trying to re-look at what I had written so far and fix it. Obviously the hospital scene was one of the things I thought I did really well on.
Because I run down everything quick that happened. And so, like I said, this is like something… I don’t know that anybody’s gone through this, where they can say, you’re going to get a signal you’re going to die. And the infinity of it all. I know you’re C.S. Lewis guy.
The infinity, the fact that you’ve lived for 60 plus years and infinity, the difference in your mind at that point resonates so much. You’re like, okay, well that was what life was like, and here comes forever and ever. Your mind just goes like, wow, that is really… Life was so short compared to the first bit.
Rob Kosberg:
It sounds like a lot went through your mind in a very short period.
Bew White:
Yes. You’re going like, okay, well let’s say whatever you want to say, because we’re out of here, buddy. My wife happened to be there, so I was just apologizing to her. I was like, I think I’ve left you with a mess here, you’re going to have to deal with that. I’m dying before I’m ready, you know?
Rob Kosberg:
You’ve said a couple of things that are interesting to me, and I don’t know what they mean to you. Like you used a word, like signal; you get this signal. What does that mean? Can you be more descriptive of that experience? And I know that this isn’t directly related to your book, although you’re you have this in the book.
Bew White:
It’s in there. Yes, it’s in there. What happened was I had five blood clots in my lungs, and so one went through and obviously got stuck somewhere and my heart started to stop. My heart rate went to 30. I thought I was having heartburn, I’m trying to get the nurse to come in and I’m going “come on, come on, come on,” and never answered me. I texted my wife and I said, I think this is it. She was down in the cafeteria getting a cup of coffee. She thought I’d unplugged my cell phone or something. I was like, no, this is it. Game over.
So, what happened was the nurses came in. But, I realized I’m dying. They called me; they called and said, what’s wrong. This where I said, “This is going to sound crazy, but I’m going to die and I have just a few minutes.” I can tell you, I know I’m going to die. It’s just, other than a signal, I don’t know what you’d call it. Some higher power. Saying you got a few minutes to get… This part, your career, is over.
Rob Kosberg:
But you were totally conscious, you were totally aware?
Bew White:
Yes, I never blacked out. Here’s the thing, your bed only goes up to watch TV. Well, it also goes down so your head is below your feet. So they pushed me down the bed and they filled me full of dopamine and salt water, and I came back. But having known, not 50% or 80%, but 100% that I was going to die, and coming back, I was kind of going, why am I alive? I’m not supposed to be, this doesn’t make any sense to me that I’m here. Why am I here? And I would say writing the book was one of the reasons, and yes, I wrote it for my kids and grandkids, but for businesspeople, for everything. For belief, what I believe in and how it can be hard to be an entrepreneur. There’s a lot of things in there that would be helpful to somebody that, one, wants to be an entrepreneur, or wants to have a better life.
Rob Kosberg:
Let’s dive in there. What would you say to a business owner that has yet to experience all the ups and downs? I went through the 2007-08 crisis. In fact, that’s what led me out of one career into the book business. Very, very painful time in my life. You’ve been through that. Even just in the few minutes that you and I were talking before the podcast, your experience is incredible. What would you say for a business owner that has yet to experience these things, that the book will help them with? Or why should they kind of embrace the book?
Bew White:
Well, there’s six traits to an entrepreneur. I really got this from the EOS group, Gino Wickman. I read his book about entrepreneurship, I was like, wow, this is right, and I didn’t know I had these, but everybody that wants to have their own business should know it.
The one that I think gets everybody is risk taker. I was listening, the guy that runs executive leadership program, Center for Executive Leadership program in Birmingham, he does mostly prayer groups or Bible study groups with people here. He was talking about these interviews they did with people that were over 85 and their regrets in life, and the number one regret was I didn’t take enough risk.
I said to him, “Wow, I think I maybe took too many risks. I don’t have that problem.” Another thing was about relationships, which I have a lot. I think having great relationships is important; my wife’s relationship is incredibly important. But the other one is driven. You’ll know if you have that because you can’t sleep. It’s like, I am so driven, I’m going, I’m glad I have this, but boy it is killing me. I can’t sleep at night. Then there’s a few, being responsible is obviously one on them. So there’s a lot of things in there. Passionate, visionary, those are the others that are really important.
Rob Kosberg:
Do you address those things within the book?
Bew White:
No. I have to say, I have an MBA in mistakes, so I’m keep making these mistakes. Here’s the key, is pushing through, make the mistake. I made a $30 million mistake one time and my staff was coming to me, particularly the customer service staff was going, “We’re going to go out of business.” No, we’re not, we’re going to make it through. I’m going to walk you through what we’re going to do to get through this. Instead of losing $30 million at one time, we’re going to lose it over five years so it doesn’t kill us, and it’s probably not going to be $30 million. Yeah, but we sold $30 million of this stuff. There was a paint problem we had with Sherwin Williams, and we had in China. We wanted to sue Sherwin Williams, but we couldn’t because we’d have to sue them in China.
Rob Kosberg:
What a nightmare!
Bew White:
Oh, nightmare. I don’t know that part is in the book, but just having all these issues by making mistakes, and then regrouping and pushing through; my son calls it grit. There’s a podcast that he listens to, that this girl is talking about grit, and he’s like, “Wow, that’s you. You’re the guy that’s pushing through when things look like you’ll never make it through.” Obviously, in 2008, I had owed Royal Bank of Scotland $20 million, and they lost $63 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. I didn’t realize this, but they had nowhere to get money. Fortunately, eventually the Bank of England saved them. Before that, the only place they could get money is by closing their loans out and getting other banks to lend the money against their loans and get money. At one point we were like, they’re not going to be able to hit our payroll, even though we have enough credit line. We may not be able to make payroll because we run out of money.
And they’re not government, they can’t just print it. They’ve got to have it in profit. So, situations like that, where you must get through, and you think I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. And then the support group around you. You’ve got to have a support group that’s saying, “I believe in you.” I certainly had that with my wife. I would have times I would be like, I can’t do this anymore, this is crazy. I made $41,000 a year, I paid myself $41,000 a year for 11 years. I was like, this is nuts.
Rob Kosberg:
I deserve a lot more than that.
Bew White:
Yeah. I had been making $200,000 a year before I started my business. This is, I can’t do this. She’s like, “You can do it, I believe in you.” I was like, okay, I’ll keep going. We may not be able to buy groceries.
Rob Kosberg:
Amazing. So how long have you been married?
Bew White:
50 years in July.
Rob Kosberg:
Congratulations. That’s a heck of a milestone. Let’s go back to the motivation to write the book. There was obviously a clear motivation, feeling like, I’ve been given a second chance, I need to write the book. But that wasn’t where it started, and that wasn’t the only motivation. You mentioned legacy stuff, writing a book for your children, grandchildren; you’ve mentioned business stuff, using the book in the marketing department, that kind of thing. So talk to me about those elements. I’m intrigued by the book as a legacy piece. Of course my whole business is built on using a book to grow your business, so I’m intrigued by how you’re doing that. But let’s first start about the legacy piece. What were you hoping to pass on to your kids and grandkids, and future generations?
Bew White:
Well, they have this strike three, you’re out with the third, generation. So, I kind of want to put a stop to that, Hopefully I can. Certainly, my son got to see how hard I worked and he’s not having to work nearly as hard. And if it gets to the next generation, they’re going to have it even much easier than that. So, if they could look back on what happened to get there, I think it might give them some guidance on how to not…
Rob Kosberg:
How to keep it?
Bew White:
How to keep it, yeah. There you go, that. I think that’s critical. Of course I have no control over that because I’ll be dead. So that’s one. Two is, actually my marketing department was more fired up. I was doing it for, like you say, for legacy. And my marketing department said, “We can really take advantage of that.” It is true that if people read it and they like you, they’ll want to buy your products.
I wasn’t writing it so people would like me, it’s kind of warts and all. It’s not, I’m great and you need to be like me, or whatever. There’s not much ego in there. But I think people will like me if they read it and they’ll want to buy the product. One of the things, when I started the company, was making the product last a long time. Because it’s outdoors. You live in Florida, so you know, you put something on the ocean.
We even developed ocean product that would have a five-year warranty on it, that not only would it be five years, but it would look exactly like you bought it in five years. And it could be right on the ocean. It could literally be in the sand on the ocean. So that, I felt like that was a critical part. Then we wanted people. I always said, this stuff’s so expensive it’s not going to work until 15 or 20 years after I start shipping.
So that was the philosophy, I couldn’t get the customer to talk about the product until they had it 15 or 20 years. People come over us like, “Boy, I sure do like your outdoor furniture.” I’ve had it 15, 20 years and it still looks great. So, they’re your salesmen.
That was a critical part of what I was doing. I think there’s a little bit about that in the book, but not that much. I think that first part about liking the people involved, and the company and the culture, make you want to buy the product. I think that’s how you grow the business. We’re going to grow $40 million this year. I don’t know, I don’t think the book is doing that. I think inflation has a lot to do with that. But that’s 25-30% growth.
Now this is intriguing. Since I started the company in 1987, it doubled every three and a half years up until 2008, but then it went back 30%. If you think about that, I know if you buy stocks, you know this; if your stock goes down 30%, it’s got to go up 60% to get back to the 30. So, every time that happens, you got to go, I kind of go, that’s going to be a lot harder than it looks.
And when it shot up 30%, I went, wow, I’ve got to grow a lot to get back to where we were in 2008. So that was pretty discouraging, but now I see the growth. We’re having 5-10% growth every year now, as of 2021. Really 2020 was a pretty good growth year, but we were shut down for a couple of months, so 2021 was huge. We’re selling way more than we could ever get. I don’t know if you realize the furniture business has just gone crazy. I think a couple people are stuck in their houses. But that’s really helped this business dramatically.
Rob Kosberg:
And what about supply chain issues that you hear about, and that sort of thing? What was that like?
Bew White:
Well, we’re the largest privately held importer in the state of Alabama They do over 2000 containers a year. Right now, number one, Thailand, which we only have one supplier in Thailand, you can’t get at things. So, I’m piloting up production, and I can’t even get the product, get a container to pick it up, to bring it in. But if I did, it would’ve cost $6,000 and now it’s $30,000 for freight. So, my price and my product doubled.
Rob Kosberg:
So, it’s 5X, 5X freight?
Bew White:
5X. Same thing in Asia, $6,000 to $30,000. China went back down. China went down to $6,000 from $25,000, but they were at five, so they’re up 20%, but that’s nothing compared to the other. We were in the process of moving all of our production out of China, trying to get out of China. My VP is doing a China speech Friday. Because we’re big now, china is a huge market for us. There’s a book called Destined for War, basing on this speech on this book by a Harvard professor. That’s a great book too, if you want to read something, if you want to be scared to death, you might want to read this about the company war.
Rob Kosberg:
Is it about conflict with US and China?
Bew White:
Yes. It’s a fascinating book. But we had to end up going back to China, and open two new plants in China, because nobody else has enough humans and equipment and product, even all our raw materials in Indonesia were coming from China. So, we just went, wow, we’re going back into the devil’s lair here. I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here.
Rob Kosberg:
No one else can do it.
Bew White:
I set up the business based on the Ralph. You know, I was in the textile business in the ’70s in New York, and I called on Ralph Lauren because I was fascinated with his model and what he was doing. Back then, all the cutting was done, cut and sew was all done here and he wasn’t making anything. He was just designing product and having people make it for him. In fact, we were sending it to some of our suppliers that made stuff for JC Penny. I was like, how does this work? He said, “Well, all we do is design and market, and then we have people make the product for us.” And because of that, we can be in any product we want to be in. It can be in women’s wear, men’s wear, ties, suits. We just get people to make it to our spec, and then sell it and then put our brand on it. Also ,obviously, the polo player was a big part of that.
I was like, man, if I get in business, that’s what I want to do. Because when I became a salesman, I first became a salesman before I got into manufacturing or branding. I was selling products where they had a factory that made the product, and then the market would change and they’d say, “Why are you not selling our product anymore?” I was like, well, the market’s gone. Here make that, I’ll sell that. They were like, “We can’t make that,” and I was like, “Well I’m going where the market’s going.” I said, “Man, somebody needs to make what the customer wants to buy instead of what their factory makes.”
Rob Kosberg:
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Bew White:
That’s what my model is, yeah. It’s really helped me because my competition, a lot of my competition is making product in the United States. So, I say they live in a box. The box is this manufacturing plant that makes X amount of product, and they can increase their production by adding people, more space, more equipment, more shifts. But they’re stuck with this box.
And most of them have said this is too risky. I’m not going to go build, add onto my box, or increase my production, or add a shift. Well, you can’t add a shift cause you can’t get the people. So, I’ve been able to add factory capacity and increased volume, dramatically, over a relatively short period of time where some of my competitors are sold out until 2023. They’re taking orders right now for 2023. I’m guessing they’re taking them saying, “I’m going to sell you the production time, but the price may change.”
Yeah, I just got that last week, so I said, “Hey, we’re placing orders now, but with X factory, for 2023.” I was like, well I’ve still got stuff I can get you in eight weeks. Why don’t you dump them?
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, exactly. No wonder you’ve grown 25-30% in one year.
Bew White:
Yeah. I think this year’s going to be even better, because people were what happened. This all happened in the March, April, May timeframe last year, where people got sold up and couldn’t ship, and got sold up through Christmas. We’re mostly in outdoor furniture and so mostly I don’t want to have my outdoor furniture in December that I ordered in May.
Now it’s gone out to a year. When I got into the textile business in 1972 in New York, we were sold out and on allotment for two years. I was all excited, I’m going to be a salesman. I just got out of Auburn. I was like, okay, I’m ready to go. Tell me what I need to do. They were going like, “Well, it’s really different right now, we’re on allotment.” I was like, what’s allotment? Oh, that’s where we tell the customers how much they can get and we’re sold out for two years. I was like, that doesn’t sound like selling to me. Well, it’s not. In fact, they’re taking us out to lunch now and they’re begging us for more production, and we can sell all that we can make. I was like, wow, cat birdseed.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Why don’t we make more?
Bew White:
Yeah, they couldn’t. I mean, they had same thing.
Rob Kosberg:
Same problem, the box.
Bew White:
They didn’t want to take the risks. Inflation was causing same thing that’s causing this. Inflation was causing this because people were covering and we wouldn’t raise the price. What’s happening to us now is, people are raising our price on our existing orders, so the orders that we’ve already placed for fabric, for example.
We got an increase from our big fabric supplier, Sunbrella, starting January 15th. I called the CEO, I was like, what are you doing, dude? I’m like, the one reason I placed the orders is so you could cover yourself and not increase my prices. I can’t, I’ve got to increase them by like 8%, it was 8.7, almost 9%. And I’m going, I can’t go back to my customers and ask them to pay more because you’re charging me more. You don’t have to, but I’m charging you. You’re sorry.
Rob Kosberg:
You don’t have to. You do whatever you want to do.
Bew White:
Yeah, exactly. I’m charging you more, if you want the stuff, fine. And there’s a lot of that going on.
Rob Kosberg:
I see it. I can actually talk to you about that all day, but we’re under time constraints. We think we need to have a B, I think here. We need to have a podcast B.
Bew White:
Okay. B for Bew.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s right. No, I mean, super enjoyable talking to you.
Bew White:
Thank you.
Rob Kosberg:
Let’s end A. Where can people learn a little bit more about you, about your company, maybe speaking opportunities, et cetera? Where can we send them for that?
Bew White:
By the way, I had to buy my BewWhite.com. I was like, somebody has that?
Rob Kosberg:
Someone had it.
Bew White:
I’m like, okay, I’ll buy it. So BewWhite.com. You can go to BewWhite.com, you can go to SummerClassics.com. You can buy the book on Amazon, which I think even if you go BewWhite.com, it’s probably going to send you to Amazon to buy the book. Or you can go in one of our stores. We have 20 stores in United States.
Rob Kosberg:
One here in Jacksonville.
Bew White:
One there in Jacksonville, yes. Then all the way up to Chicago and over to, we’re opening in Annapolis this year, this spring. Then the closest one to that’s Richmond, and then down, across to, we’re opening this spring in Arizona in Scottsdale. And then we’re all over Texas. We’re in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston. But we also have dealers, we have dealers that have the book too. We have over 600 dealers.
Rob Kosberg:
Very good. Very good. That’s a great distribution center right there.
Love it. Wonderful speaking to you. So BewWhite.com, which is B-E-W-white.com, that as well as the others, Summer Classics, et cetera. We’ll have all of those in the show notes. In all sincerity, love to have you back on, because I’d love to speak a little bit more about the business stuff that we were just getting into. And of course you’ve got to take me up on the coffee thing next time you’re here in beautiful St. Augustine.
Bew White:
Yeah. I love that place.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Yeah, me too. Bew, thank you. Thanks for being a part of the podcast and I look forward to B.
Bew White:
Yes, I’m ready. I’m ready to be, be at B. All right, bye-bye.
