Death, Dislocation and Disgust

While walking to the next tee, my golf partner and I were speculating. Would the economic retrenchment here in "Upper Hedgistan" lead to an increase in supply, and therefore lower margins, for folks in the "furnishings on consignments" line of business?

Lisa said, "Economy is irrelevant. There are only three things that matter to a dealer: Death, Dislocation and Disgust." We got a good laugh at the time, and I've been reflecting on the statement all week, because those are my business drivers as well.

Death
On Wednesday, a colleague of mine with a wealth management firm in Chicago told me about two surviving young adult sons of a youngish father who had died prematurely. The boys felt overwhelmed by the quantity of belongings and homes that were left to them. After a time, their wealth manager thought to hire a local lifestyle service, who went through the homes and created an initial sort into 3 categories- -personal memory, valuable asset, and tag sale. The service removed everything -- every single thing - -from three houses and consolidated it into a warehouse, by those 3 categories. The family then "shopped" the personal memory section, and signed off on the disposal of the remainder with maximized time savings and minimized emotional strain.

Dislocation
Emotions surface in any move where one person experiences the move in a negative frame of reference, usually due to a lien-holder, a medical condition, or a soon-to-be former spouse. Divorce and Senior Transitions are two very common client situations where we experience the frustration of unwillingly leaving one space for another. The most successful dislocation experiences - -by which I mean least negativity and quickest rebound - -that I see are those where the person rents a fully furnished alternative style for six months to a year. Even where one stays in the same town, the affirmative decision to forego furnishings of the prior life is, for reasons beyond my expertise but not beyond my observation, immediately stabilizing. Tangentially, my favorite divorce word comes from Sandra Manzke at Maxam Capital, who calls her ex "the wuzband."

Disgust
This is the punchline of Lisa's remark, and it is like most jokes funny in proportion to its truth. To skim only the surface of a long list of personal annoyances - -crowded closets, limited bathroom space or snoring -- leads to upsizing. Creaky joints and aging pets lead to one-sizing (moving from a home with stairs to one without). Empty nesters react to years of putting the kids first by me-sizing into properties that are more selfish in location, design and use of space. A strong aversion to living "the next part of my life" constricted by the rules of the past is what the Disgust move is really all about. When we are providing location research for our clients, we approach it exactly like a financial stock screen. The fundamental screen for us? Screen 1 is tangible aversion factors - -what you will no longer accept.

In my business, clients are fighting a two-front war. The first is the tactical demands of lifestyles and households ; the second is surviving the emotional vortex that fate has thrust upon them. Good soldiers on the ground separate the victorious from the fallen.