Tom Shane's World

All over the globe families are preparing to gather together, and traditions are about to re-cement themselves in time for another year, but for those of us in the retail environment, a rigorous month is ahead.

As most people know, “Black Friday” as it’s called, is the day following Thanksgiving Day.  The name of this unofficial retail holiday comes from the fact that for many businesses, this day marks the time of year where a business stops losing money for the year (when they’re “in the red”) to the day where, for the next month until December 25^th, they make their entire years’ worth of income (when they’re “in the black”).

For me it is an unbelievably exciting time of year, marked by airplanes, hotel nights, and trying to keep my suits neatly pressed while shoving my luggage into overhead compartments.  It’s going from an 85 degree day in Phoenix, AZ to a minus 20 degree evening in Minneapolis, MN.

Between me, my father, and two other men, we ensure that all 20 stores are visited, most several times, between December 1^st-25^th each year.  This year, we’re bringing each team breakfast before the store opens, and spending the rest of the day in the store before heading to the next city later that evening.  But we certainly don’t visit the stores for show.  We’re selling, meeting with all of our team members, answering questions, asking questions, and making sure that the entire store team knows how grateful we are to have them working for us, and working as hard and long as we know they will until Christmas Day.

All of us came from Shane Co. stores originally, in a sales capacity, and we’ve all felt the six- and seven-day weeks that our wonderful team endures happily and with broad smiles during this holiday timeframe, to ensure that our loyal customers are met with the standards that we’ve built over 4 generations.

It’s really a blast watching people buy their holiday gifts, and converting the sometimes stressed-out looks on their faces when our customer walks in the door, to a smile and the look of relief on their way out.

My favorite story from last Christmas was when I was in Minnetonka, MN working with a gentleman who was looking to purchase a really pretty $100 freshwater strand of pearls from us.  Being helpful (and admittedly having my salesman hat on) I asked the gentleman if I could save him a trip to the mall and make his wife happy at the same time by matching a $35 dollar pearl bracelet to the strand.  He looked at me, jumped up and down, and clapped his hands together at least a dozen times…I took that as a yes, and concluded that this gentleman enjoyed shopping in the malls within 72 hours of Christmas about as much as I do!

It really is fun having a full month of the year where I rarely look down at a clock, and have full days feel like only a fraction of a moment.  The only thing that I will enjoy more is taking my final flight back to my hometown of Denver, CO and walking in the door of my apartment to spend the last day or two before Christmas with my new fiancée.

Regardless of one’s religious or spiritual views, I always like when the holiday season is approaching for several reasons.  Family is the first thing that comes to mind.  With all the chaos in life, there are always several days between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day where my family all gathers together.  It’s a special time that reminds me what the real most important things in life are.  Giving is the other really important thing that occurs each and every year around this time.  Yes, we should all probably be giving more, and year-round at that, but as the end of the calendar year approaches, the reminders and opportunities for giving seems to become omnipresent, and I am grateful for it.

This year, Shane Co. is doing something that I think is really special with giving in mind this year.

We have chosen four charities that are important to our family, as well as the entire team at Shane Co. We are going to be donating money to these four charities, but in a very unique and fun way, that we are hoping inspires others to get in the giving mood as well this year, to whatever institutions or people are near and dear to their own hearts.

What’s so unique about our donation this year is that we’ve decided to allow our online community vote on how the money gets distributed!  It’s really a bottom-up approach to giving, that I personally think embodies the whole spirit of giving in the first place!

Our contest will take place on Facebook, and we are placing our four charities’ pieces of our $10,000 donation up for vote via our Facebook community.

After someone “likes” our Facebook page, they go to our Sweepstakes tab on our Facebook page, and vote which charity to donate to.  Easy as that!  Additionally, one can invite friends to vote for their favorite charity directly from our page as well.

The giving doesn’t stop there, and simply for voting on a charity each person will be entered to win a grand prize Shane Co $1,000 gift card, or a $250 gift card which we will award weekly during the contest!

In brief, the contest runs from 11/22/2010-1/7/2011, and the charities that we’ve chosen to team-up with are: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Dumb Friends League, National Jewish Health, Volunteers of America, and.  As I mentioned before, each of these charities personally means something to us at Shane Co, so regardless of the voting outcome, we’re happy to see our money go to any of them.

Hopefully everyone gets as excited about this as we are, and we are able to achieve our end-goal, of getting everyone in the giving mood, and for those who are not in a position to be able to donate their money, time, clothing or anything else this year, this awards everyone to have a chance to still partake in the spirit of giving.

I was born and raised in Denver, CO, which as it turns out is quite a rare thing, as most have moved here from somewhere else.  I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively in my relatively young 28 years of life, but still find Denver my favorite choice of a place to live.  Nowhere, to me, has the weather (over 300 days of sun per year), the outdoorsy feel without the grunge, and the vast amount of activities within a quick drive as does Denver.  But still, there is nothing in the world like traveling.

Although many of the places I’ve traveled have been work related, I still enjoy each and every aspect of wherever I may find myself.  I relish things like local foods, which luckily my body needs (and receives) several times a day.  I enjoy going for walks in unknown places, having no idea what side-street will bring what, but more often than not, it’s an unexpected memory that will last a lifetime.  I really like photography, especially while traveling.  Although I’ve never advanced beyond a point-and-shoot camera, I find taking pictures of new places to be simply amazing.  It’s never the picture I get of me standing, for example, in front of the Gateway of India (a world landmark) that I will enjoy looking at for a lifetime to come, although it is quite stunning, with plenty of history behind it.  Rather it’s the haphazard photos that were taken moments later of a policeman casually holding the barrel of an automatic weapon, the man selling oversized balloons off of a moped, or the gas station sign prominently displaying its name, “Pure for Sure” preceded by the ever-reassuring “okay” hand gesture.

Gateway of India

I get enjoyment trying to figure out (and usually finding myself baffled) why a weapon of that type is needed (but I must admit, if I had a criminal mind, I’d sure think twice after seeing that thing), who the target consumer is for an oversized balloon (if the picture doesn’t do it justice, trust me they are HUGE, and some vendors had several of them at a time), and why the gas station chose “Pure for Sure” as their name.  I love not knowing what’s coming next, and being overwhelmed by photos that I feel I must take.  Things I know I’ve never seen before, am afraid I may never see again, and am positive that I either won’t be able to remember what made the scene so interesting, or will never be able to explain to others without a photograph to back me up.

After getting back home to Denver and reviewing the photos, I always find myself thinking more deeply about the “insignificant” photos than I do about the “important” photos.

I get to thinking about the terrorist attacks on November 26^th, 2008 that occurred, among other places, inside of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, next to the Gateway Of India, less than 100 feet from where this policeman now stands.  I find myself trying to imagine being in the shoes of someone who makes a living selling something such as one of these novelty balloons, with dozens of other vendors selling the exact same thing all around, just in this one part of town.  I wonder if I would have the entrepreneurial mind to sell something different, something unique, or grab a handful of balloons and still try to differentiate myself…I’ll never know.  As to the “Pure for Sure” station, the only reason that a petrol station, as it’s called, would need a name like that, must be the abundance of impure gasoline that circulates around the country.  The saying goes that it’s a small world, but in some ways, it’s huge.

Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel

All 4 photos were taken within 5 minutes of one another.  All were taken within the 60 minutes that I had between our last vendor meeting of the day, and a business dinner that evening.  That time could have been spent resting in the hotel room, but I’m so glad it wasn’t.  In a nutshell, in the broadest sense, those 60 minutes are why I love to travel.