[Sound effect and Music] [Narrator] "Scope Mounting ...
Take One!"
[ Larry Potterfield] Mounting a new scope
on your rifle is an easy job - if you've got the right tools.
[Narrator] Larry Potterfield is the founder and CEO
of MidwayUSA, a family-owned, catalog
and internet-based retail merchant that offers shooting,
reloading, gunsmithing and hunting products.
Here, he's taping a "how to" instructional video -
one of many on his company's website - serving not only
as MidwayUSA's "public voice" but as a trusted friend
and adviser to his customers.
MidwayUSA offers its customers over 95,000 different products
from more than 700 different suppliers.
The company's all-important merchandizing tools, its printed
and electronic product catalogs, are designed
and produced right here, at the Midway's headquarters
in Columbia, Missouri.
[Male voice] "Hello!
This is Brent.
How can I help you?"
[Narrator] Back in 1977, Larry Potterfield turned his love
of hunting and shooting into a business - that today has grown
to 343 employees and annual revenues of $185 million.
He had a dream to guide him - and equally important:
A passionate commitment to the Baldrige Criteria
as his comprehensive business plan.
[Larry Potterfield] MidwayUSA has always been a
great business.
But if you want sustainability in an organization, and you want
to go from "great" to "really, really great" you've got
to have some kind of a model.
And Baldrige is that model!
So we've gone from a pretty good business,
maybe a great business, to a really great business
because we're able to focus better on the customer,
better on our processes, and the result is
performance improvement.
[Narrator] Continuous performance improvement,
that is - enabled by documented processes for everything
at MidwayUSA - from receiving to merchandizing to order taking
to packing and shipping - and everything in between.
Processes that are continuously reviewed, critiqued, refined ...
and taught to everyone in the organization.
[Matt Fleming] At MidwayUSA we have over 1,500 processes.
They're all designed to serve and satisfy our customers.
But in order to manage your processes you first have
to identify your processes.
Once you identify them then you can manage them to make sure
that they meet the key requirements of your customers.
[Narrator] MidwayUSA closely tracks these processes
to make sure that they fully support
and meet customer requirements -
and indeed all stakeholder values.
This "Scorecard" system focuses on processes
such as Shipping Accuracy, Package Quality,
and Same Day Shipping - where 97 percent of orders received
by 6:00 PM are shipped the same day,
an industry benchmark for this metric.
[Midway Employee] "When each process is implemented properly
they all go just like fine wheels,
and they all tie together very tightly."
[Narrator] From the friendly voices
that take customer calls and orders ...
to the high-tech inventory systems used
at the MidwayUSA warehouse ...
to the never-ending stream of packages going out the door ...
all the company's efforts are intensely focused
on its customers.
And everyone at Midway agrees that this is not a chore,
it is a labor of love.
From Larry Potterfield on down they all think
of their customers as a big family ...
their family ...
who share their own abiding enthusiasm for hunting,
shooting, and the outdoors.
And their customers love them right back,
rewarding their engagement with their loyalty.
The numbers speak for themselves:
Overall "customer retention" is at an all-time high
of 98 percent for the year-to-date.
And it doesn't stop there.
[Larry Potterfield] Baldrige is all
about performance improvement - and what I can tell you is
that MidwayUSA has benefited tremendously
from the Baldrige Criteria.
Our sales are up over twenty percent per year
over the last five years, our profits are
up over forty percent per year for that same time.
Customer satisfaction at 93% is at an all-time high.
Employee satisfaction at 82% is at an all-time high also.
All the winds are blowing in the right direction at MidwayUSA,
and it's all because of our efforts
in engaging the Baldrige Criteria.