Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Somebody needs to do the "Eras Tour" of Trader Joe's. That'd be amazing. Bring out the products from the different eras. Awesome. And that leads into the next era that Joe also sort of in goofy fashion calls "Whole Earth Harry," the health food era of Trader Joe's. So I think you could say about Joe that he was a genius at many, many things, just about every critical aspect of retailing. But I think maybe his greatest genius was identifying major demographic and cultural trends that were just starting in America, and then creating the products and the merchandising to capitalize on them. It is astonishing how he had his finger on the pulse, and how he was willing to either change what Trader Joe's was or adapt it and add a new layer on top to turn Trader Joe's into the next version of what it needed to be. You mentioned some attributes on Joe himself. This is a beautiful excerpt from Benjamin Lohr's book that I think is just the best description of him. Joe is a man frequently described as a genius by other very smart men. And I should say Benjamin Lohr, the guy writing this, very critical, very journalistic in his approach. The whole rest of the book is applying a lot of scrutiny to the grocery industry. The fact that he talks about Joe this way actually has a lot of credibility. When asking his employees and competitors and industry observers about him, I hear the word "visionary" so many times, it becomes worrisome. I hear "he is brilliant," "incredible." Wise grown men tell me they are awestruck, chilled, giddy in his presence. Executives who worked for him — stuffed C-suite dullards of the grotesquely self-confident variety — will drop all pretense and describe wanting to wake up early in the morning to race to work because they can't wait to hear what Joe has to say. They tell me he has a photographic memory, that he can read up to 1,200 words per minute, that he adds, multiplies, or divides lists of figures in his brain quicker than they could ever scan them, that he knows the names of all his employees, their spouses' names, their dates of hire, their birthdays, and their wedding anniversaries. But beyond all this awe — the steel cage memory, the gymnastic cognitive quickness — the genius of Joe that impresses me most is his ability to project this integrity and decency when he wants to. He keeps you guessing exactly where the line lies between calculating businessman and wholesome self-taught founder in a way that allows almost everyone who meets him to underestimate his abilities, yet simultaneously afford him huge amounts of respect. It is an awesome talent, especially in a business built on negotiation, trust, and quick, decisive deals. That is so awesome.…

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