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"The whole secret to this business is to be in and out, in when the season starts and out when the season ends.
- T.R. "Ted" Gastman, chairman, Dillard's Florida and Louisville divisions, 1998
SEEMS like over the years, Dillard's leaders were always out. "Numerous calls to Dillard's about the site were not returned," read one article. "Dillard's officials at the company's Little Rock, Ark., headquarters and at its regional office in Rocky River either didn't return calls or were traveling last week and were unavailable for comment," said another.
"You know, most days when we try to get the press interested in something we're doing, we can't get a call returned," claims Louisville division president Robin Sanderford in a forthcoming moment. "We've had special events like sponsoring mobile mammography units at our malls or the personal appearance by designer Tommy Hilfiger in Louisville, and we don't get a drop of ink in the major newspapers or a mention in broadcast. But when a reporter wants to make an issue of something, we're flooded with calls. This has made it difficult to trust the press."
You can't blame Dillard's managers and marketers for being a little edgy. For one thing, Dillard's, like a lot of companies, likes to run things lean, which can spread its staff pretty thin. Over the past decade, those staff members could be forgiven for feeling a bit like targets to customers and media. First, it was open season for charges of institutional racism, alleged to be carried out in the company's security and hiring policies and to emanate from the Dillard family itself. That series of ugly experiences began in the early 1980s. It culminated in a successful $1.1 million lawsuit by a African-American Kansas City woman and her niece and a subsequent and equally successful series of negotiations between Kansas City minority leaders and Dillard's senior officials on improving minority customer and employee relations.
Today, as it still nurses the scars from that battle, the company often finds itself cast in another villainous role - the big bullies from Little Rock, erasing cherished names from the retail landscape. No wonder they circle the wagons on reflex.
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