BUSINESS: Suppliers The McGee Group: From a Bathtub to 42,000 Square Feet in Four Decades By Deirdre Carroll Monday, August 31, 2015 12:00 AM (L to R) Weston, Wayne and Matt McGee. MARIETTA, Georgia—“What started the company was when I made the first call to a little town called Pascagoula, Mississippi,” shared Wayne McGee, founder and CEO of The McGee Group. “I didn’t know anything about eyewear. At the time, I was working for a packaging company that taught me all about color and design theory and what colors would attract a shopper when she walked down the aisles in a grocery store.” “So I’m presenting frames to this lady with my materials to display the products on. At the time there were no brands, it was just people up in New York importing frames and they didn’t know what they were doing and I didn’t know what I was doing but I had a bag of frames and I was laying them out on those materials,” he explained. “In her shop were all these cat eye frames on these old American Optical and Bausch & Lomb mahogany displays that made them look horrible. When I saw that I thought, I know how to merchandise products and how to stimulate the consumer to buy and I was explaining to her what she needed to do with the boards to let customers see how nice the frames were and she loved it so much she bought 20 frames.” “That idea took me to 1976 and a brand called Diane von Furstenberg. It had 16 frames and pictures of her face and fashion models. That really got the company going and was the stepping stone for our work with Optique Du Monde,” he said. “At the time, I was storing inventory in the bathtub of a spare bathroom in my house and every morning my wife would open the shower curtains and say ‘The McGee Group is open for business!’” Four decades later, today’s McGee Group is headquartered in two red brick buildings having recently acquired the second to serve as its new, larger warehouse. Combined, the buildings total 42,000 square feet and their current portfolio of brands includes Badgley Mischka, Vera Bradley, Ducks Unlimited, XOXO, Argyleculture and Totally Rimless. (Top to bottom) The company’s reception area. The natural light in McGee’s brand new design center helps designers evaluate product. A new larger warehouse stores the company’s inventory overflow. “How we started is important, as a family business, and how we structured the business over the years to be a group of people that like working together and are willing to do whatever is necessary to help accounts with their business,” added Matt McGee, vice president and, who along with operations manager, Weston McGee, is the second generation of McGee’s in the company. “I think how you deal with customer service or customer care also has to do with the product. I really believe that we translate our brands probably better than most of our competitors, even the big guys. The way we translate it results in sell-through and, of course, quality.” “In the early days, the purpose of the company was to show accounts how to sell, not in a dispensary setting but in a retail area, teaching them how to get the consumer more excited about what they were selling,” added Wayne. ““The McGee Group has experienced above average sales growth over the past 12 years but it is not the size of the business we are interested in, it is being the best. We still believe 100 percent in merchandising and spend millions of dollars on advertising and promoting the brands. We are totally committed to that and think the support that we give our brands is probably greater than other companies of our size. We will always be committed to that because it goes all the way back to the beginning of the company,” Wayne said. What is also always going to be a part of McGee is their commitment to providing a great value at a compelling price point. “We’re really known as midmarket, so we don’t go into luxury, but we also don’t service the ultra-low end,” acknowledged Matt. “One of the things we focus on is our value proposition, which is something we have grown our company on. Putting a lot into our product and charging a fair price for it. We don’t want to cannibalize anything that we already do so we try hard to make sure we have something for everyone in every price category. We did feel like we had an opportunity to catch some of the managed care market, so we are putting together a brand right now, something new to the market and a lot of fun.” “We think it’s going to be a breath of fresh air because it’s not so much a designer brand but it’s going to be priced to catch that managed care market which we feel is where a lot of American consumers are looking to right now. Everybody’s trying to stretch their dollars more, we’re sensitive to that and want to make sure that we have something in that range that that helps them out. “Many of our competitors are there with house brands they made up. A lot of them are executed very well but we wanted to stick to our DNA, bringing fashionable products under license to the market. So, for managed care, we will be out there with a licensed brand that people know that is priced accordingly. We feel that’s going to be a recipe for success,” Matt said. That recipe for success also includes a strong focus on the American ECP and channels outside of optical. “Regarding the continued growth potential for us, we sell our portfolio to a lot of channels and we’re trying to build outside of the optical business. We have the specialty retailers, we have so many opportunities in military, department stores and sport. There is a lot of activity here and we are successful in what I would characterize as different channels of growth,” said Wayne. “Walmart and Sam's have been big accounts for the last 18 years and we do quite well there. We do great at Costco. We sell at Pearle, Visionworks and National Vision's stores. We do a lot of business in those channels.” McGee added, “We see a lot of opportunity in the overall market. We want to grow with the ECPs, they are still the largest growth potential for us. So the plan is to add more direct sales people, moving towards having around 70 to 74 direct reps for the company.” “If you look at the ECP market, I think those folks think of us as a very high character, integrity driven company. We believe in that fully and hopefully that’s translated by our salespeople,” said Wayne. “Our image and our reputation is, first and foremost, important to us. We like to hear that people like to buy from us because we handle their business in a fair and honest way.” To help those ECPs make their choices easier, McGee is also focusing on marketing. “From a marketing perspective, the initiatives we want to implement in the next several years to target the next generation of ECPs are geared toward helping them understand that we have brands younger generations are interested in but also that we understand how they are buying and can help the account address that through marketing, through product,” said Paula Meason, McGee’s director of marketing. “We want to stay relevant,” she continued. “It’s so important for business growth. Staying relevant as our consumer has changed, means our practices, marketing and technology has changed. So you see us with a stronger digital presence than we have had before and next year that’s going to increase more. It represents our commitment to being modern and flexible.” “Our company’s history and heritage is important in telling our story and part of that history is changing with the times,” confirmed Matt. “Wayne has been great about seeing which direction the current is running and adapting our company to meet it. Can I tell you exactly where we’ll be in 10, 20 years? No. But I can tell you that we have our fingers in the air and we will move with wind and the way things are going.” “That’s what you can expect from us long-term. We will always be adapting to the way the industry is working, what the buyers want and the way the doctors see things. That’s in our core values and our culture and something we’re always going to be looking at. You can always expect to see innovation from The McGee Group,” he concluded. dcarroll@jobson.com