Where there’s craft, there’s loyalty

In the city in which I grew up, there was a two-block downtown strip with a bakery, shoe store, drug store, sport shop, bookstore, and clothes store.  Everyone who owned and worked at those stores knew your name and vice versa. 

Business was personal. You wouldn’t think of going to the next town over to buy what you needed. 

People cared about what they made and sold, and they cared about the people to whom they sold it.

I was reminded of that little strip of care and connection when I went to a meeting in the Monadnock building in Chicago.  It’s a grand old building, designed by Burnham and Root at the turn of the century.

In the lobby, between the local watering hole and other small businesses, there’s a row of three shops that might make you think you’re back in the late 1900’s.

One is a shoe repair shop that could double as a Hollywood movie set.  The machines look like they should be a couple miles up the street in the Field Museum of History.  There’s the unmistakable smell of leather and a whirlwind of activity as men with dirty hands and aprons practice their craft and customers kibbutz and wait in line.

A haberdashery next door couldn’t feel more different.  A white-glove-clean shop with windows on every side, filled with endless glass-shelved rows of knobby wooden hatholders on metal stands.  One woman sits with perfect posture at a table with a laptop open in front of her, talking on her cell phone. She could be part of a global haberdashery operation. It feels highly polished.

A bespoke clothes store that falls somewhere between the technologically-inclined hat store and dirty-work shoe store has the uber-orderly feel of a Saville Row tailor shop. The walls are covered in different cloths and samples.  Old-school measuring devices are paired with laptops used by a couple of perfectly dressed gentlemen to make sure they outfit their customers properly.   Their concern for their craft is unquestioned.

Among those ancient and futuristic machines, there’s a lesson to be learned for marketers.  Where there’s care and craft, there’s loyalty.  And where there’s loyalty, there’s life. 

I’ve never seen a corporate brand team take a field trip to the Monadnock building, but they should.  Pull out your calendar and block out an afternoon to head down there.  Marvel at the architectural wonders of the building itself. Breathe in the craft.  

It looks amazing.  And it smells like leather.