Chapter 10-The Great Brinks Truck Caper and the Benevolent Buyer

JANUAR Y 2003 ST AR TED off more like a spiritual Fourth of July. Jude had spent the previous month researching all the trade shows that the retail buyers attended, all of which were very expensive.
She determined that the top two were The JA Show in New York’s Jacob Javitz Center, held in January and July of each year, and the JCK Show held in June in Las Vegas.
Just before the JCK Show there is another, smaller event, not as important, but certainly worth attending, called The Luxury Show at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. In fact, The Luxury and JCK Shows pretty much run concurrently from Tuesday through Sunday.
We decided to shoot for the moon, so we attended them all in 2003, including The JA Show Shows, which are not easy to get into. Jude called everyday and sent numerous baskets of cookies and candy.
The JA Show is one of the largest and most important of the year for the industry. It was our first time and we had no idea what to expect and we were extremely lucky to even get in. There is a 10-year waiting list, but Jude used her charm and persistence to finally talk them into giving us a booth that was a last-minute cancellation.
Unfortunately, that booth, though it cost $10,000, was right by the bathroom, and we were thinking this isn’t exactly in a high traffic area. And so we were worried—worried about whether our promotion would work, and concerned that we’d be too far away from where the real action was, which was the special designer sec¬tion located upstairs, where all the big names were located.
As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about. Being next to the bathroom turned out to be a huge plus, because, guess what? Everyone has to go to the bathroom. On top of that, Jude’s promo¬tion was a giant success. We sold $75,000 worth of merchandise, a mild success. We could have done much worse: Considering the cost of the shows, some of the smaller booths run as much as $25,000, and the booths the major players put up, which can be 30-feet long, run in the hundreds of thousands.
So the JA was certainly worth the effort and we learned a lot. However, the comical part of what is usually just another pratfall for us was, as usual, the getting there. We were flying out of L.A. this time and as usual, even though I claim to be the most organ¬ized person this side of a reference librarian, I lost my cell phone, the one with 10 years worth of contacts safely filed within. The one I can’t live without.
I have to admit, looking back it really wasn’t my lack of orga¬nizational skills as much as the amount of work we put in as we sit in airport lounges.

New York | Our First Trade Show
We would usually shove two of those tiny tables together. On one sat our customary baskets of Buffalo wings, a margarita, and a pile of napkins. On the other were two laptops, a small calcu¬lator, and several files. On the floor at our feet were two open briefcases, usually filled with marketing materials, notes, a map or two, our Palm Pilots, a handful of energy bars, and pictures of our kids. And, in many cases, the ubiquitous box filled with jewelry, usually the size of a shoebox, which I always secured by wrapping my feet around it. I figured if by some very long stretch of the imagination, someone tried to surreptitiously reach under there to grab it, I would most certainly see the perpetrator, if not feel him.
During these long waits, Jude and I would do a wrap up of the show or meeting we’d just been to as well as brainstorm new ideas based on those experiences. In short, we were usually lost in play, with papers falling onto the floor, talking as loudly as we did in our offices, calculating sales figures, all the while oblivious of the time.
On this particular occasion, we were also very excited about our first appearance at the JA Show, so we were celebrating a little. Since we are two pretty congenial types, the bartender took a shine to us and tried to ply us with liquor to get our phone numbers.
They called our flight and we paid the tab and headed off in the general direction of Concourse B. When we got there I reached for my phone to check on the children but I couldn’t find it.
The plane was going to board in about 15 minutes, and once again, I had all the contents of my purse out on the floor. When I still couldn’t find it, I panicked and told Jude, “Wait here. I’ll be right back. I’m pretty sure I left it on the table in the bar,” and with that, I was off, running through the airport, back the quarter of a mile or so to the bar.
I knew that Jude was worried I wouldn’t make it back in time. Ten minutes went by, then 15. I knew they would start calling for the back rows any minute. We were in row 10. When I couldn’t find it at the bar, I had no choice but to start the run back to the gate. When I got closer, Jude was waving at me with both arms, a cell phone in each hand. She’d picked up my phone thinking it was hers.
I wanted to strangle her, but as we fastened our seat belts she made a remark about how we might just have invented the next big diet or inventive exercise regimen. We would make a video and a bloody fortune showing people how they could tone up and trim down using the JudeFrances I-lost-my-cell-phone-but-that’s-okay-because-I-can’t-tell-my-seat-number-from-the-terminal-number aerobics workout, not exactly Jane Fonda, but sure to melt the pounds.
Fortunately, I still managed to make it to my son Rich’s after¬noon soccer game, which was more important than it sounds. At the time, he was a freshman in high school and already he was an accomplished soccer player, having played at the highest level since 3rd grade. His big wish was to go on to play in college and then with the pros.
It had been rumored there would be a college scout in the bleachers that day and I wanted to share that excitement with him.
IN ADDITION TO a decent showing in New York, and with the two successful trunk shows behind us, Doris had signed us up in five of the 29 Manheim stores. Actually, at first she offered us only two, but since we had already met with another high-end retailer in Dallas called Horshack’s, which had been expressing a strong interest in our line, I felt emboldened to have this conversation with Doris.
Doris:Well, Frances. You did well. We are proud to offer you two locations to begin selling your line on an exclusive basis.
Frances:Uh, well, thank you for your confidence, and we are absolutely thrilled about it all. However, in all honesty, we have also met with Horshack’s and they really want our line as well (which was a bald-face lie. They liked it, but hadn’t offered anything).
Doris:Oh. Hummm.
Frances:God, now I’ve gone and screwed it all up. Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?
Doris:Okay, Frances. We’ll give you five stores. But that’s an exclusive, understood?
Frances:Yes-s-s-s-s ma’am! Whew!
Manheim’s first order was for $30,000 worth of jewelry for each store for a grand total of $150,000. If we had been paranoid about our first small Fed Ex shipment to Tassels…well, let’s just say that anxiety paled in comparison, and we only had two weeks to put it all together.
There was only one tiny problem that Doris had overlooked and we didn’t know about. All orders must be shipped to Dallas no later than the 31st of January so that they are on sale by mid-February. Doris called us on the 14th of January to order for all five stores.
Jude and I were scrambling. The deadline was nearly impos¬sible because we didn’t have that much ready-made inventory. So, between me racing into Los Angeles to prod and beg our manufac¬turer, and Jude trying to photograph every single piece for insurance—not to mention taking care of all five of the kids, it was like hell week at the Navy Seal school.
One thing we had learned from a very kind woman who was head of shipping for Manheim’s who had befriended us (for rea¬sons still unknown), was that all the high-end retailers were very, very specific about how they received their merchandise and how it was documented.
My first phone conversation with her went like this:
“Now, honey. Which one are you, Jude or Frances? Ya’ll look identical. Hell, all you California girls look alike (laughs all around). Just kiddin’ honey.”
“Hi, Marley. I’m Frances, the tall one with the English accent.”
“Oh yes darlin’. How could I forget? Well, listen up good now, ya hear?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When I was the head of shippin’ at Macy’s they did the same thing.”
“What’s that, Marley?”
“Well, if your documents didn’t match your shipment, they’d ding ya.”
“What do you mean, ding ya?”
“I mean they would charge back.”
“Huh?”
“Any time there was a mistake, like the wrong bill of lading, or an invoice was missin’, or a P.O. number was wrong….ding, ding, ding would go the cash register. Each charge-back would be like a sort a financial demerit—$100 a piece to be exact.”
“The shame of it was, some folks actually ended up with higher charge-backs than the amount they were chargin’ for their goods. Just a shame.”
“Oh, thank you, Marley. I’ll be sure we dot all our ts and cross all our is.”
“Sweetie, I think you got that backwards. At any rate, make sure you ship it all by the thirty-first.”
“Yes, ma’am. And thank you for all your help.”
MARLEY WENT ON TO BE our patron saint. We must have called her 20 times a day during those two weeks. Jude and I, and even all the children pitched in to count each piece, which we must have done 10 times, each time with a different count.
Jude took four or five photos of each after we’d finally settled on the count, and then we all put the shipments neatly into special boxes with little compartments. We were at the height of paranoia because this shipment represented every piece we owned, not to mention our entire future with Manheim’s.
It gets worse.
Normally, most vendors ship with Fed Ex and insure their mer¬chandise for more than it’s worth and, of course, then have the piece of mind that the good old Fed Ex tracking number provides, should anything actually get lost.
THA T W ASN’T GOOD ENOUGH for us. We wanted an armored car to take our shipment. That’s right, a Brinks truck. One with all those guards inside with 3-inches of bulletproof glass and a machine-gun turret on top.
I was in charge of shipping so when we were completely satis¬fied we’d satisfied Manheim’s strictest requirements (and had put our jewelry boxes inside a U-Haul box that we put into yet another larger U-Haul box and then used five rolls of duct tape to secure it all), we put it in the trunk of my car, locked it, got inside, locked the doors, rolled up the windows and got on the freeway into L.A.
During the entire ride from Newport Beach into the bowels of downtown Los Angeles, Jude was staring in the rearview mirror and I was looking out all sides of the car for any felonious types who might be following us. Our paranoia had overtaken us, and with good cause—this wasn’t the nice modern, clean, urban envi¬ronment you used to see on L.A. Law. This was the jewelry district, not unlike the garment district a few blocks away—seedy, old, run-down, with plenty of homeless people sleeping under bus benches and off ramp overpasses, others next to piles of wine bot¬tles. And then there were the gang members who loitered on every other corner. There were no nice hotels or restaurants, or police substations in this neighborhood.
God knows why one of the world’s largest armored car com¬panies has an office in this area, I thought.
When we got to the Brinks gates, Jude stayed in the locked car close to their front door and I went inside to find out how to bring our precious cargo in. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see her head bobbing and weaving, her eyes barely visible above the door, looking in each direction over and over again.
I was told to go around to the back to see the intake personnel. I went back out to the car to retrieve Jude and the box and then we both carried it to the back, to the man behind the cage.
He started to hand us the receipt, but neither of us would let loose of the box and when the man reached out to grab it, we still clung on until he said, “Ladies, I can’t ship this for you if you won’t let go of it. Trust us. We’re Brinks. We’re not going to lose your cargo. We’ve never lost anything.”
Of course, in all the consternation, we forgot to insure it after all. But that didn’t occur to us until we got to New York a couple of days later. It was Jude’s birthday and we were going to party in the Big Apple to celebrate both her birthday and our successful first shipment.
Once we got there, we immediately called Marley in Shipping, just to make sure our U-Haul box had arrived as planned on January 30th. It hadn’t. I began to feel small beads of sweat in my palms. Neither of us could sleep all night. In fact—it was lost, not by Manheim’s but by Brinks, the people who never lose anything.
A wave of nausea overcame me when I finally spoke with the man in Brink’s Shipping. It seemed this response to stress was becoming more and more frequent.
Between the frantic calls to Marley, who didn’t help by telling us nothing like this had ever happened, and Brinks, who continued to tell us this was a first, we were both on the phone constantly for the next two days. Eventually, Brinks did find and deliver our ship¬ment, but not before both of us went through more anxiety than I ever want to experience again.
We had both agreed from the very beginning that Doris was a bit scattered, and we confirmed it when about 10 days after the store finally received the shipment we received a check for our invoice.
Our invoice had been for $150,000. With our credit cards maxed out, we breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the Manheim logo in the upper left hand corner of the envelope and the company name JFJ, LLC, in the window, which invariably means a check or a bill.
However, there were two problems. The first one came when I saw the JFJ name and address. As you’ll recall, we never did change that initial stationery that we had so much fun designing and printing, even after being told it would conflict with Jean Francois’ company name and even after we’d started our corpora¬tion and bank account in the name of JudeFrances Jewelry.
I felt a momentary flush of anxiety, but I dismissed it in my fervor to open the envelope and see our first really big check. And it was really big—too big. Jude and I both gasped when we read the amount: $250,000! Manheim’s had overpaid us by $100,000! It was like looking at a winning lotto ticket—that belonged to someone else.
My first thought was: What if Manheim’s thinks we cheated them, or somehow had stolen their money? Had Loraine made the invoice out for this amount? Knowing her I didn’t think that was possible, but after a quick look in the file, I saw that the invoice was indeed for the original $150,000 sale no more, no less.
Within minutes, I was on the phone with Doris telling her about her mistake. She hadn’t seen it that way. She’d intended, with a full heart, to help us. We couldn’t believe it and neither of us were satisfied with her generosity. It just wasn’t right and it made both of us uncomfortable.
I began calling the accounting office in Dallas every day, trying to get someone to listen to me and to get some instructions as to what to do—send back the check and chance waiting a month for the next payment cycle to get the correct amount, or deposit it and then send them a check for the difference.
Believe it or not, no one had an answer and so, ultimately, at Doris’ insistence, we went to the bank with the entire $250,000.
Now, if this were anyone else’s story that would have been the happy ending to a fairy tale—but not so with us.
When I finally went to the bank to deposit the check, the teller wouldn’t take it; neither would the manager. After all, it wasn’t made out to our company: JudeFrances Jewelry. It was made out to our stationery: JFJ, LLC.
I pleaded with the woman, pointing out the similarities.
“See. JFJ. That stands for JudeFrances Jewelry. Get it? JFJ,” I told the manager. “I guess the accountant person was just a little lazy and wrote out our company initials instead of the entire name,” I continued.
She wasn’t buying it and I suppose had it been a thousand dol¬lars or so, they would have let us deposit it with my explanation; but since it was a quarter of a million, she rightfully told us to get one made out to our company.
Here we were with a windfall that we couldn’t touch and the Visa bills were due in a day. Thankfully, we had—and still have— the most fantastic business attorney. Through some legal miracle, he was able to change our business name with the bank within days, and we made the deposit.
There we sat with our newfound fortune. We were safely out of the woods with Manheim’s accounting office, and we had paid all our bills. This was truly a gift from above; it was the one mon¬umental moment that changed our lives.
Even after we’d had our stellar first half-year, no bank would lend us any money. They all wanted a minimum of two years worth of operating statements and taxes. But we’d effectively just secured an unsecured $100,000 loan with no collateral, which also had no pay-back date. Can you imagine? Manheim’s was, effectively, our largest client, investment banker, and benefactor.
That money was our marketing and operating capital for the next 18 months. How did we pay it back? We simply deducted a set amount from each shipment until it was finally used up. If the shipment amounted to $150,000, then we billed them $150,000 minus a $5,000 credit against the overpayment.
Truly amazing.