Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags — The Garment District, and the Loss of American Manufacturing Jobs

Last night, I watched the HBO Documentary Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags.  (Schmatta is a Yiddish word for rag).  It was about the garment district in New York City.  It told the story of the vibrant role played by the garment industry in New York City for so much of the last century, and included the good, the tough, the unbelievably ugly.  (Read a review here).

For example, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 killed 148 of the sweatshop workers, many of whom jumped to their death because the exit doors were locked to keep the workers in,and thus spurred the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. I think I might have joined a union for better working conditions after that.

Sadly, that tragedy was practically duplicated in Bangladesh in 2000, where young girls were working in sweatshop conditions, and were also looked in, and died in a fire.  (Death toll – 48).  And, yes, they were making clothing for consumers in the United States.

But the documentary was primarily about the loss of jobs in the garment district.  Here are the astonishing statistics:

In 1965, 95% of the clothing Americans wore was made in this country.
In 1975, it went down to 80%.
It was just 70%, in 1985,
50% in 1995,
and currently only 5% of our clothing is manufactured in this country.

And the documentary clearly argues that the loss of jobs in the garment industry is the “canary in the coal mine,” representing the loss of so many other manufacturing jobs in this country.

I, and many others, have wondered, just what jobs will be available in this country,  especially for the non-college-educated among us.  (Of which there are so very many).

The documentary reminded me of the premise in the 1991 movie Other People’s Money.  Andrew Jorgenson (Gregory Peck) gives a speech in a losing effort to save his company.  Here’s an excerpt:

God save us if we vote to take his paltry few dollars and run. God save this country if that is truly the wave of the future. We will then have become a nation that makes nothing but hamburgers, creates nothing but lawyers, and sells nothing but tax shelters. And if we are at that point in this country, where we kill something because at the moment it’s worth more dead than alive — well, take a look around. Look at your neighbor. Look at your neighbor. You won’t kill him, will you? No. It’s called murder and it’s illegal.
Well, this too is murder — on a mass scale. Only on Wall Street, they call it “maximizing share-holder value” and they call it “legal.” And they substitute dollar bills where a conscience should be. Dammit! A business is worth more than the price of its stock. It’s the place where we earn our living, where we meet our friends, dream our dreams. It is, in every sense, the very fabric that binds our society together.

You can hear and read his speech here at the wonderful American Rhetoric site, and you can watch the “winning” speech delivered by Lawrence Garfield (Danny Devito) here.

I’ve watched that movie, paid careful attention to those speeches, and have to admit – I would vote to close the company.  But in doing so, would I participate in the destruction of American industry, and would thus be a participant in a long, long painful reality of unintended consequences?  That is the question raised not just in the fictional company of Other People’s Money, but in the very real world of actual workers  in the garment district.

I think this is a really, really big question in and for this country.  I encourage you to find a way to watch the documentary Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags.  It will make you think.  Will it help us act – and, how do we so act?

Here’s a brief clip:

The Wisdom of Collins — Favorite Books and Courses selected by Jim Collins

Verne Harnish is the author of The Rockefeller Habits, and the “Growth Guy” columnist.  Recently, he hosted an event for a group of coaches, and Jim Collins was one of the speakers.  What does best selling author (Good to Great; How the Mighty Fall) read?  Here is his list of his top ten book recommendations, and his top ten great courses from the Teaching Company, I feel an attack of ignorance coming on — I haven’t read enough of these!  (I got these from a weekly e-mail, but you can find the lists on Verne’s web site here).

Jim Collins

 

 

Ten Books Jim Collins Recommends

1. Churchill, The Second World War
2. Caro, Master of the Senate
3. Goodwin, Team of Rivals
4. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
5. Lewis, Moneyball
6. Homer, The Iliad
7. Drucker, The Effective Executive
8. Gardner, Self-Renewal
9. Lewis, Assault on Lake Casitas
10. Manchester, Goodbye Darkness

Jim Collins Top 10 Great Courses from The Teaching Company
1. How to Listen to and Understand Great Music by Robert Greenberg.
2. Great American Presidents
3. Argumentation – The Study of Effective Reasoning
4. What are the Chances? Probability Made Clear
5. Economic History of the United States, 1900 - 2000
6. Art Across the Ages
7. Dante’s Divine Comedy
8. Emperors of Rome
9. The History of Ancient Egypt
10. History of Modern Russia + From Yao to Mao – 5000 years of Chinese History

 

Steve Martin, Great Banjo Player, and the “Malcolm Gladwell 10,000-hour rule”

When does an author “arrive?’  When an idea he or she writes about becomes part of the national vocabulary.  And, by the way, the author who made the word or phrased popular gets the credit, even if someone else originally came up with the idea…

Case in point:  This week, Steve Martin played a concert with his blue grass band, The Steep Canyon Rangers, at the Meyerson Symphony Center to benefit Central Dallas Ministires.  (Larry James is the CEO, and Central Dallas Ministries sponsors the Urban Engagement Book Club, at which I speak monthly).

Steve Martin is known as a comedian/writer/actor, and those of us old enough to remember know him as the “wild and crazy guy” on Saturday Night Live.  But he is a life-long banjo player, and apparently pretty good.  (I was not able to attend the concert).

Here’s an excerpt from the D Magazine Frontburner blog shout out:
Martin is a master entertainer, and he makes it look effortless. But anyone who’s read his memoir of his early days can attest to the fact that he’s a perfect example of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule.

By now, most of us know the Gladwell book Outliers, and its primary premise that it takes 10,000 hours to get really, really good at something/anything.  I’ve posted about this quite a few times before, and mentioned Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated and the need for “deliberate practice” as a good companion volume.  But now, the phrase 10,000-hour rule has entered popular culture as “Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule.” This is quite a feat – he popularized the phrase “The Tipping Point,” and now the “10,000-hour rule.”  (And he came close to adding the phrase  “a blink decision” into the vocabulary).

I think he deserves the credit, even though the idea was borrowed from others.  K. A. Ericsson may have been the first, though even that is in dispute.  Read this and especially this for background and discussion.

But – it is definitely Gladwell who spread the word, backed up with great illustrations in the book, that 10,000 hours is what it takes.  As I said in my handout of my synopsis of this book:
• centerpiece to this book is the 10,000 hour rule… — with much intentional practice!
• “Practicing:  that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better”
It really does take a lot of hard, hard work – the 10,000-hour rule really is close to an actual rule!

———–

You can purchase my synopses of Outliers and Talent is Overrated, with audio + handout, at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.

Interview: Robert (Bob) Morris — Conducted by Randy Mayeux

Robert (Bob) Morris is a key member of our blogging team, and knows and shares a true wealth of valuable information and insight.  I interviewed him for this blog over the last week.

Robert (Bob) Morris

Robert Morris

Morris was born and raised in Chicago, attended public schools there, earned a B.A. degree with a triple major from Beloit College and an M.A. in comparative literature from Yale University, taught English and coached varsity football and baseball at Kent School and then St. George’s School in New England, served as Director and CEO of the National Humanities Faculty, held a number of senior-level corporate executive positions, and since 1986, has sustained his practice as an independent management consultant who specializes in accelerated executive development and high-impact organizational performance. For the past ten years, he has reviewed more than 1,800 business books (more than 1900 book total) for the US, UK, and Canadian Web sites of Amazon and Borders and has interviewed more than 100 business thinkers who include Warren Bennis, Marcus Buckingham, Jim Collins, Bill George, Michael Hammer, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and Chris Zook.

(The following interview was conducted by Randy Mayeux).

Mayeux: Let’s start with titles.  What have you been when in your life? Recently, Judith Bardwick called you a “famous literary critic.”  (Seth Godin refers to you as a critic who matters).  I think that is an accurate current title – but you are so much more.  Title yourself, then and now.

Morris: Frankly, I have always been uncomfortable with labels and titles insofar as they are used to explain who someone is. Over the years, I have been a high school English teacher and varsity football and basketball coach, CEO of a non-profit organization (the pre-collegiate division of the National Endowment for the Humanities), an entrepreneur, corporate executive, independent management consultant, and book reviewer. With all due respect to Bardwick and Godin, I am neither a “famous literary critic” nor “a critic who matters.” Rather, I see myself as a “bridge” between the books I admire and those who read my reviews of them.

Mayeux: You are a great synthesizer.  You draw from so many arenas – literature, sports, film, books….Have you always had this ability to pull from so many places?  Where did you lean to do this?  And, why is it important to be so broad instead of “narrow?

Morris: That’s an especially interesting question because I am constantly struggling to find an appropriate balance between the scope and depth of what I characterize as the “sources of nutrition in my life”: family, friends, the creative arts, the performing arts, sports, etc. Almost everyone and everything in my life seems to be connected. Here’s one example: Since childhood, I have been an avid reader. For me, books were like magic carpets that could take me almost anywhere. To the plains of Troy, into the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, to the London in which Charles Dickens observed so much human misery, to…whenever and wherever. Meanwhile, as I recall when I first read about whatever, I immediately associate with that experience what my own situation was then. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol invested my own childhood Christmases with the spirit to which Tiny Tim refers. I cannot separate what I felt while playing football in high school and then college from the pride with which Achilles confronted Hector. You get the idea. Even today, each day, so much of what I have experienced is central to my life now. To what extent do I synthesize all this? I have no idea. I do acknowledge that the process of interconnection is irresistible and apparently irrevocable.

Mayeux: You have a gift for finding the most important pieces of a book’s/author’s message.  Are there techniques you have developed to do this?  Did it come from your academic training, and your teaching?

Morris: Formal education (especially graduate study at Yale in the field of comparative literature) certainly helped but, over time, I have learned how to recognize “clues” as to how to read most works of non-fiction, including business books. My first insight occurred quite by accident: I was struggling to pass a calculus course in college and, just for the hell of it, converted all of the chapter and sub-section titles into a series of study guide questions. Wow! Now I knew what to look for as I worked my way through the text. Now, when I read a business book, I follow this process:

• What does the title reveal about the book’s objective(s)?
• What does the subtitle reveal?
• What are the most important questions that are answered in each chapter?
• What are the answers and how convincingly are they supported by logic and/or evidence?
•  So what?

The most valuable business books answer an important question. Here are three examples. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton’s The Knowing-Knowing Gap:  “What is it and how to avoid or eliminate it?”; Jim Collins’ Good to Great:  “How can a company complete the ‘leap’ from good to great?”; and Jason Jennings’ Think Big Act Small: “What do all high-performing companies share in common?”

(click read more for the remainder of the interview).

Watch a Video Interview about business books with me, Randy Mayeux, conducted by Doug Caldwell

Doug Caldwell, who faithfully records portions of our presentations at the First Friday Book Synopsis and posts them on youtube (just type in First Friday Book Synopsis in the youtube search box) has just interviewed me in a video interview for his web site.  The good news is that it is up on his web site.  The bad news is that I can’t figure out how to imbed the video here.  But — you can watch the link on Doug’s blog, The 16th Minute, here.

Thanks, Doug.  I enjoyed the interview.

Is America Really in Decline?

Is America really in decline?

This question seems to be popping up with more frequency.  The latest comes from Rick Newman from U.S. News & World Report.  In an article entitled Nine Signs of America in Decline, he begins this way:
The sky isn’t falling, exactly. America isn’t on a fast track to irrelevance. Even in a state of total neglect, we could probably shamble along as a disheveled superpower for a few more decades.
But all empires end, and the warning signs of American decline seem to be blinking more consistently.

The article is filled with links (for those who want to really dive deeply into this discouraging scenario), including “4 problems that could sink America:  we don’t like to work, nobody wants to sacrifice, and we’re uninformed.”

Spiegel International trains its sights on our middle class in an article entitled: America’s Middle Class Has Become Globalization’s Loser by Gabor Steingart.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the United States is still a superpower. But it’s a superpower facing competition from beyond its borders as well as internal difficulties. Its lower and middle classes are turning out to be the losers of globalization.

This article is one of a series of excerpts from the new book “World War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity” by Spiegel editor Gabor Steingart.

There have been many warning signs through the years.
David Halberstam’s book, The Reckoning, warned about softness in America compared to a more energetic work ethic, born of hunger, in countries on the ascendancy.

Technology has taken so many, many jobs away from those with education that stops before a college degree.  And Fareed Zakaria wrote The Post-American World, in which he argued that it’s not so much America in decline as it is that the rest of the world is rising.  Here’s an excerpt:

This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.  It is about the great transformation taking place around the world, a transformation that, although often discussed, remains poorly understood…

Look around.  The tallest building in the world in now in Taipei, and it will soon be overtaken by one being built in Dubai.  The world’s richest man is Mexican, and its largest publicly traded corporation is Chinese.  The world’s biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine, its leading refinery is under construction in India, and its largest factories are all in China.  London is becoming the leading financial center, and the United Arab Emirates is home to the most richly endowed investment fund.  Once quintessentially American icons have been appropriated by foreigners.  The world’s largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore.  Its number one casino is not in Las Vegas but in Macao, which has also overtaken Vegas in annual gambling revenues.  The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold, is Bollywood, not Hollywood.  Even shopping, America’s greatest sporting activity, has gone global.  Of the top ten malls in the world, only one is in the United States:  the world’s biggest is in Beijing.  Such lists are arbitrary, but it is striking that only ten years ago, American was at the top in many, if not most, of these categories.

Let me be so bold as to offer a couple of my own observations.

1)  We’re developed, the others are developing.

Developing is more exciting, and more “profitable,” than “developed.”  Growth rates are higher, excitement is higher, and developing spurs ever more growth rates while developing.

The signs are all around us.  Mary Kay, McDonald’s…, company after company is finding more growth across the world than they can find in America.  America is “grown.”  The rest of the world is “growing.”  We built our Interstate Highway System long ago.  The growth that brought our country was massive.  Other countries are now building their highway systems (I use this literally and figuratively), and their growth will be massive.  Developing is exciting – developed is stable.  And, ironically, stable is not as exciting as developing.

2)  The jobless recovery could become a permanent high-percentage jobless economy.

This is truly worrisome.  There is plenty being written about this. The problem is simple:  what we used to call “blue collar jobs” have disappeared in huge numbers.  For example, it used to take hundreds of strong “men” to unload a ship at a port – not it takes a dozen people at a computer terminal with robotic technology loading and unloading containers.  These hundreds of men have nowhere else to go to find the work they were qualified/trained to do.  Education is critical, and America is not growing in our educational excellence.  Many warn that we are falling behind.

Here’s a line from the Spiegel book excerpt:
The new jobs were created elsewhere, which had to have an effect on family income in the United States.

If we do not re-train our work force, and innovate our ways into brand new jobs yet unseen, this will grow from being a big problem to a huge, huge problem.

Solutions?

Thomas Freidman wrote, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, that in many places in other parts of the world there are too many Americans – too many wanting to modernize, with modern appliances, modern technology, with cars and affluence.

In other words, they are developing – we are developed.

I think the solution will lie in the American ability to be bold, daring, innovative – to be American.  We have to out-America the rest of the world.  I think we will, but our work is cut out for us.

Women at the Top in Business… is Good Business – a Short Post

The post with the most views on our blog in the last couple of days has been Bob’s excerpt from the NY Times with Linda Hudson, part of the leadership team at BAE.

Here are a couple of observations from Womenomics by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay:

A study in France found that companies with more women in management positions did better during 2008 – had higher profits – that those with fewer women.  “Feminization of management seems to protect against financial crisis…  In conditions of high uncertainty, financial markets value companies that take fewer risks and are more stable.”  (Michel Ferrary, Professor of management at the CERAM Business School in France).
Women deliver profits, often in big numbers, and we are worth hanging on to…  By every measure of profitability – equity, revenue, and assets – Pepperdine’s study found that companies with the best records for promoting women outperform the competition.

In other words, women in business, at the top of the leadership team in business, may be… good business.  And now comes this announcment, from the Huffington Post this morning:  Naissance Capital: New Fund Invests In Companies With Female Managers, Anticipates High Returns.  (Note:  all of the links within these paragraphs are worth a look).  Here’s an excerpt:

More than a year after overleveraging and mismanaged risk provoked a financial crisis that sent the global economy on a perilous downward spiral, analysts are still wrangling over its causes and implications.
But one recurring point of debate is whether a higher proportion of women in senior management positions could have forestalled the crisis. In other words, if women had run the banks, would they have taken on as much risk? Or, if women were better represented in jobs associated with risk taking, would the economy be healthier?
One investment firm is betting on it.
Naissance Capital, a niche money management firm based in Switzerland, is set to launch its Women’s Leadership Fund early next year. The Fund will only invest in companies where women are represented on boards and in management, and will take an “activist stance” against companies in which women are underrepresented.
Their claim hinges on recent research, including reports issued by the consulting firm McKinsey and the research group Catalyst, demonstrating a correlation between female management and enhanced company performance. The McKinsey study held that “companies with a higher proportion of women in their top management have better financial performance” (although it didn’t arrive at a causal conclusion). Also, two researchers at UC Davis found that men tend to trade more “excessively.” In their study, men traded stocks 45 percent more than women, reducing “men’s net returns by 2.65 percentage points a year as opposed to 1.72 percentage points for women.”

I think having women at the top in business may turn out to be good business practice.

I love books!

Cheryl offers: I recently heard the rumor that eventually all books will be digital. Down with that idea I say! Call me old fashioned, but I am one of those people who LOVE to hold a book, turn the pages, feel the paper, write notes in the white space, highlight what catches my attention and I want to remember.  When I think about great civilizations, not one comes to mind that didn’t have story telling as a part of their culture. In our day, we tell our stories in books. I love the touch and feel of a good book in my hands and my eyes love the print. Reading a screen, be it a Kindle or a personal computer, is not my idea of a good time. It’s hard for me to feel connected to something that disappears at the drop of an electric current or battery. I don’t want it to “come alive” when I want to read and I don’t want to wait for it to “shut down” for the night when I’m sleepy and want to go to bed. I hope this idea of putting all print on electronic media goes away and stays away. Whatever will I do with all my bookshelves? How will I ever find all the ideas I loved at the moment I read them? This all became very clear to me as I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.  Although I know his words would have been the same, something changed as I held the book in my own hands knowing he wrote this with only a few months to live just last year and now he is already gone.

Sara adds:  Just for the record, I love paper and ink books, too.  Hey, with as much grey hair as I have – it’s to be expected (!)  I think it’s a generational thing.  However, I also love the idea of drawing new reading audiences into the world of “other people’s ideas,” into the place of relying on the mind’s eye to create a locale or a tone or spectacular view.  We hear so much about the need for innovation in business.  Well, I’m here to tell you that without an active imagination, innovation is tough.  Reading is way to stimulate the imagination and to practice those muscles that make innovation possible.  So let’s make room for technology that encourages  reading.   Let’s be OK with the fact that it’s designed for a younger generation and their styles.  So here’s to Kindles and nooks, Cybook Opus, BeBook and all the others.  Let’s encourage younger folk to expand their “electronic horizons” by introducing new ideas in their medium.  And then let’s invite them to a join us in a conversation.

Women Still Don’t Ask

“FINALLY! I hear we’re all living in a women’s world now.”  So begins the Joanne Lippman article “The Mismeasure of Woman.” On the most e-mailed list at the New York Times for three days, this article states simply that all of the progress made by women may not be as much as people had thought.  I encourage you to click on the link and read the article.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as governors. Thirty-eight have served as senators. Four out of eight Ivy League presidents are women.
Women do have a different culture from men. And that can give us some tremendous advantages. Women are built to withstand hardship and pain. (Anyone who has given birth knows what I’m talking about.) That’s a big benefit at a time like this, with the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent and rising.
Women define success differently; for some it may be a career, for others the ability to stay home with children. They also define themselves differently. I’m in the unfortunate position of witnessing many friends and colleagues laid off over the past year. But the women are less apt to fall apart — and this goes even for the primary breadwinners — because they are less likely to define themselves by their job in the first place.

But evidence is mounting that women have not found the flexibility and advancement that they had hoped for within the corporate world.   More and more have to carve out their own entrepreneurially driven companies to really get what they want.

But one specific that really struck me in the article was this:
We can begin by telling girls to have confidence in themselves, to not always feel the need to be the passive “good girl.” In my time as an editor, many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion?
I’ll tell you. Exactly … zero.

Women Still Don't Ask

It is proof of the contention in the terrific book by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask:  Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Here’s a quote from the book:

Women don’t ask.  They don’t ask for raises and promotions and better job opportunities.  They don’t ask for recognition for the good work they do.  They don’t ask for more help at home.  In other words, women are much less likely than men to use negotiation to get what they want.

I think the question is very much still an ongoing one – what do women need in the workplace? But this I think I know – as they figure it out, they need to learn to actually ask for what they want and need.

——————-

To purchase my synopsis of Women Don’t Ask, with audio + handout), and to purchase the synopsis of their follow up book, Ask For It:  How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, presented by my colleague Karl Krayer, go to our companion web site 15minutebusinessbooks.com.

Virgin Contradictions

Robyn Waters

Here is the latest e-mail alert from Robyn Waters, by far one of the sharpest, most innovative thinkers now helping us to understand an ever-more complicated global marketplace:

* * *

I wonder. Is it possible to love a brand without ever really experiencing it? And if you could, would that qualify as a paradox?

I’ve never flown Virgin Atlantic Airlines. I’ve seen their ads and I’m aware of Sir Richard Branson’s antics (as well as his business acumen.) I can say with all sincerity that I love the Virgin brand, and I hope to someday have the opportunity to fly them.

There’s a joke about the airline industry. Q: How do you make a million dollars in the airline business? A: Start with a billion dollars. Despite the recession and soaring fuel costs, Virgin Atlantic reported last May that their pretax profits almost doubled in fiscal 2009. (Now there’s a contradictory business trend.)

Since it was founded 25 years ago, Virgin Atlantic has become Britain’s 2nd largest airline serving the world’s major cities. It’s the quintessential Virgin story with several contradictory elements: the small newcomer taking on the giant and complacent establishment; the people’s champion delivering better service via lower costs; whimsical marketing spotlighting serious competitive advantages. Virgin survives by being different; it thrives on contradiction. When the market zigs, Virgin zags.

I had the opportunity to hear Joe Ferry, Head of Design for Virgin Atlantic Airways, speak at Design Management Institute’s Annual Conference in Boston last week. Joe shared wonderful examples of how the Virgin brand bucks the trends, reframes obstacles into opportunities, manages to give a down-and-dirty business an air of natural glamour, and has a good time doing it. Here are some takeaways from his DMI talk.

Virgin’s Upper Class “Suites” (not seats) have received great praise from passengers and won major design awards. Joe’s team spent 2 years designing the luxury flat beds to capture a feeling of “enclosed openness.” When upright, the suite has its own ottoman, which doubles as a seat for a guest. The seat flips over with the push of a button to become a fully flat bed that is longer and wider than the competition’s. All seats have direct access to the aisle, even the window seats. At Virgin, it’s not “either an aisle or window,” it’s BOTH. It’s not seats, but “suites,” offering “privacy in a social setting.”

When British Airlines opened a spacious state of the art lounge at Heathrow’s newest terminal, Virgin knew it couldn’t compete on size. Instead, the airline listened very carefully to determine what was really important to its customers and found a competitive advantage around the reframe “Speed versus Scale.” Recognizing what a hassle it was for passengers to make their way through security just to get to the lounge, Virgin designed a new check-in process called “Limo to lounge in 10 minutes.” Passengers’ chauffeur-driven limos are met curbside by special attendants, where they are checked in as they arrive and then whisked down a special hallway directly into the fabulously-designed lounge in record time. (Be still my heart.)

Joe also talked about Virgin’s “premium economy” flight experience, and the “strict yet flexible” brand guidelines that allow the brand to be “consistent yet unique.” He even told a story about how the well-designed butter knives had a way of disappearing as customers “accidentally on-purpose” made off with the silverware. Most airlines would have just stopped using the butter knives. Just for fun, Joe’s team decided to engrave the utensils “Finest Stainless STEAL.” (They’re still disappearing, and everyone is happy.)

Yes, it’s love at first flight for me, and I haven’t even left the ground. Even so, I can understand why a UK critic recently noted: “Two similarly priced products are normally the same, but the gap between Virgin and BA is planetary.”

Next stop, Virgin Galactic!

* * *

Robyn Waters is president and founder of RW Trend, LLC. She is the author of The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next and The Hummer and the Mini: Navigating the Contradictions of the New Trend Landscape. Sign up for her free e-mail alerts and learn more about Waters at www.rwtrend.com.