At Willmar Electric, we have four core values: treat others the way you want to be treated, Merit Shop, Thrifty, and Meet Customer Needs.
It isn’t always easy to define or explain what “thrifty” means. People tend to equate it with being cheap. It drives Justin and me up the wall. Thrifty does not equal cheap.
Thrifty is about making the most of the resources we have been entrusted with.
Cheap is not one of our core values, so we do not spend much time defining it. But if I had to, I would define cheap as trying to save money at all costs.
Examples are sometimes hard to come by. But recently, I came across a few.
With summer approaching, my wife needed shorts, so she went to the Mall of America to find a few pairs. For those of you not familiar with the Mall of America, I would say they have at least one of every store you could want to shop at.
When she came back from shopping, I asked her where she found her shorts. Her answer was Columbia. I was shocked. Before going, she knew she could buy them from any number of places, and she ended up settling on the most average store in the Mall of America. Why? Because she said they fit the best.
The following day, she wore her new shorts, and they appeared to be made exactly for her. How often in life do we see people in ill-fitting designer brands? Well, at the Mall of America, all the time.
A few weeks later, I found myself in the same position as my wife—needing shorts.
Nine years ago, when I needed shorts, I went out and bought six pairs. I did it in the fall when they were 50% off. All the same brand, but in six different colors. (When you buy all your shorts at one time, they wear out at the same time.) We were no longer in Minnesota, so I could not go to the Mall of America to shop. Instead, I went online to see if Eddie Bauer still sold the pair I bought nine years ago. Good news—they do. I could be why they closed all their stores and seem headed for bankruptcy. I didn’t care. I know they fit, and the price has gone down since my last purchase.
Another victory on the shorts front for the Chapins.
My main fall jacket is a North Face jacket with the Willmar Electric logo on it. I get asked by coworkers all the time where I got it. The answer is the clearance rack at the Albertville Mall, priced at $10. In retrospect, I wish I had bought 10 of them to hand out. (It cost an extra $10 to have the Willmar Electric logo put on it.)
Do I buy all my clothes from the clearance rack? No, far from it. But I always check it out.
I always start with: does it fit, and is it comfortable? If the answer is yes, then I can consider it.
It works for more than clothes. It works for life.
