Gary Cooper Would Be Proud Of Harry Cooper!
Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 07:08PM Gary Cooper was a film star to "The Great Generation". His screen roles celebrated the American "traditional values" of hard work, reliable, fairness and above all honesty. He, for that generation, embodied what every young man aspired to be. Among those witness to Gary Cooper and the idealistic culture of that era was one Harry Cooper. Harry Cooper built a viable and important business providing electrical/plumbing supplies in the Ozarks region. I presume Harry Cooper did so by embodying Gary Cooper virtues. As it turns out, Harry Cooper's name and his business flourished and is still an important participant in Branson's economy.
We all know that the "bottom line" guides much of today's "Corporate Arrogance Economy". Last year my business interests purchased from Harry Cooper approaching $100,000 in electrical and plumbing products for a Senior Care Residence being developed in Branson. With confidence based on Harry Cooper's longstanding good reputation and assurances that we were a valued "preferred customer", we, with little scrutiny, ordered, received, returned, backordered, reordered, and paid for thousands of items. In December, as our purchase agenda was winding down, we ordered and paid for $10,000 in pipe and couplings for a fire suppression system. The material was timely delivered along with Christmas cookies. The contractor crew ate the cookies and proceeded to install the pipe. Soon, we realized that a particular coupling had been under ordered and was not immediately available from Harry Cooper. We purchased the coupling from a competing supplier, and discovered, in the process, that the competitors price was about 30% of the price we, a "preferred customer", had been charged by Harry Cooper. On investigation we discovered that $5000 in couplings purchased from Harry Cooper could be "equivalent product" purchased from several suppliers for approximately $1500. We returned the unused coupling to Harry Cooper for an anticipated $3500 credit only to learn that the coupling were a "special order item" and would not be accepted for return by the manufacturer. The good fortune of a specialty manufacturer whose pricing structure and return policy were not so special, put Harry Cooper between a rock and a hard place. In that our subcontractor was at least partially culpable, Harry Cooper could have compelled us to take the hit. Instead, with Gary Cooper style, they, Harry Cooper, hand delivered a full refund check and quietly went back to work. I am, today, a little less cynical than I was last week.
WHO IS JOHN GALT?
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"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."