ART - retail chain

[XLR]

Hello everyone. I found the forum due to this thread as I used to work for ART some years ago. I was not surprised to hear that it failed, but more surprised to hear that it lasted this long! It ranks as probably the worst run company I ever worked for.

I worked at the Salisbury branch (quite possibly the one good branch thanks to an excellent manager) for about two years. The whole company seemed to have a ethos of "couldn't care less" with regards to customers, staff, websales, stock systems and so on. Problems such as...

*One phone line in the shop that doubled as the credit card terminal line. If someone rang the shop (a feat in itself as we were ordered by head office to be x-directory so that customers couldn't ring and bother the staff) or head office was sending a fax, it meant no credit cards could be processed - a joy when the shop was packed!

*Area managers that clearly did not work on performance related pay due to their attitude of total indifference, except when complaining about how we ran the shop or how we hadn't met the sales target (no compliments ever received if we exceeded them).

*A policy that stated we were not allowed to phone customers, ever. This resulted in forgotten customer orders piling up in the back office (deposits paid but not full balance, so we couldn't sell them, nor could we return the items to the factory or the deposits to the customers).

*We constantly had to measure customer mount orders "wrong" in order to compensate for the poor measuring skills of the factory in Scotland that cut them for us.

*No input on what stock we received. For example, ready made frames in gold and silver sold brilliantly, so of course we would get one of each with the weekly delivery and twelve ugly tobacco colour "woodworm finish" frames (of which we had 50 already stacked up in the office).

*Not long after 9/11 we received a big delivery of framed prints depicting a New York sunrise, complete with twin towers still intact and the city covered in fog/mist which frankly looked just like the debris after the towers collapse. We couldn't give them away.

*The credit note policy that dictated we were never to give a refund until it was clear the customer wasn't going to give in during an argument, despite the customer being entitled to a refund by law.

*Being told to refer customers to the website despite us knowing it didn't work properly.

*Feedback forms to be sent weekly from shops to HQ that were never acted upon.

*Minimum wage, with no bonus system, no training schemes, no promotion prospects.


I'm sure there are more examples of how badly the company was run but I forget now. I think I only stuck with the job because it suited my studies at the time and the Manager and other staff in the shop at the time were excellent. As other people have mentioned in the thread, I doub't the directors have suffered too much. From what I knew at the time I think it was a family owned operation and they were quite wealthy.

[foxyframer]

As Sir Alan would say: 'they haven't got a bloody clue'.

So many firms like this have come and gone over the years since I started in the early seventies. Fortunes are not made overnight, in six months or whatever. That seems to be the outsiders concept.

To be in this business you have to be totally dedicated, focused and provide service.

No room for 'I can't be arsed'; you will not last five minutes.

Foxy

[kev@frames]

i wonder if this is the fate of all the "framing chains"? there have been a few whilst we have been in business which have come and gone, whilst the single-shop framer seems to continue and often flourish.

On the other hand, i remember when ve ventured into a second "branch", it seemed like ten times the work and things could very quickly get out of hand, people lose the plot etc.

By coincidence I saw the Salisbury ART shop, years ago, when Mrs Kev and I were mooching about playing at having a weekend off, and it gave me the idea of stacking dump bins full of "ready mades" and bargains outside. It was one of the best moves we ever made at the time, although these days they would simply all get nicked.

I would imagine (hope) a few people who worked for ART might start their own framing businesses, and take the good ideas with them.