The Bailey Blog

There are thousands of wooden Nutcracker Soldiers lowering their flags to half staff today while cotton, porcelain and plastic Christmas angels are turning a tearful eye toward heaven.

Bronners’ CHRISTmas Wonderland is a truly amazing place. Bronner’s is either the place to go for your Christmas trimmings and unbelievable lighted yard displays or a true testament to the over-commercialization of a holy day. Regardless of how you view it, you have to admit that “the world’s largest Christmas store” is one of the reasons Frankenmuth, Michigan is known around the world. And it wouldn’t have happened without the work ethic, ingenuity and old-fashioned networking Wally used when starting his business.

The entire history is interesting, but a couple of things caught my eye when reviewing it. In 1951, while designing window displays for the Jennison Hardware Company in Bay City, Michigan, Wally met several merchants from Clare, Michigan, who were searching for Christmas decorations for their city lampposts. To meet their needs, Wally and a partner designed and produced Christmas panels.

The most important line in there is “to meet their needs.” What have you done lately to meet the needs of your clients, customers or colleagues?

As for networking – well, he landed that contract job for Jennison Hardware because his girlfriend and future wife, Irene Pretzer, was boarding with the Jennisons.

In this day and age when a lot of us our LinkedIn, Twittered, and Facebooked, there’s really no excuse for not finding a way to network, build your business and expand things beyond your wildest Christmas wishes.

Thomas Jefferson reportedly once said, “I find that the harder I work the more luck I seem to have.”

Sounds to me like Jefferson got lucky today. He’s got Wally Bronner to help spruce the place up a bit now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 3:45 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.