Wharehouse One

Abstract

Warehouse One focuses on a female-owned and operated business with its offices in an inner city location in Kansas City, Missouri. Founder and CEO, Mary Lou Jacoby, is dissatisfied with the company's growth rate. She has a current opportunity to develop the forklift market in the US and in a partnership with a Mexican firm. Longer-term she confronts the challenge of molding her company to meet the challenges of the evolving market place. Among the issues are the firm's increasing need for employees with engineering and computer skills talents not frequently found among the inner-city employees she currently hires.

Founded in 1986 after Mary Lou's divorce, Warehouse One has four product lines: material handling equipment sales and services (56% of sales), fork lifts (???), office furniture (18% of sales), and architectural salvage/art items. The material handling equipment line forms the core of the business. The initial activities that led to the development of the Warehouse One concept involved Mary Lou's visiting various commercial auctions on behalf of specific business clients with specified needs. Ultimately she bought two warehouses of miscellaneous items. The second, a Macy's warehouse, contained a significant amount of racking, shelving, and other warehouse equipment. That purchase led to the current focus on materials handling equipment.

Although primarily a midwest firm, Warehouse One clearly has aspirations to spread more widely geographically. In particular Mary Lou recently developed a relationship with the CEO and owner of Recursors Materiales Ingerieria, a Guadelupian firm similar to Warehouse One. The Recurosors Materiales CEO and owner is a dealer for the now-defunct Clark line of forklifts. He is interested in Warehouse One's used forklift line. Mary Lou sees significant labor cost advantages in refurbishing the used