YouSaid · the spoken record

John Gabbert

lines on the record: 66
first: 2026-05-11
most recent: 2026-05-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, it was mostly imported product. There was some made in the United States. We just opened a small department inside of Gabbretz. It was called Put Together originally. I think we then call it Holman Company.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, what happened though is I started changing things at Gabbert's and I found little openings, right? So I found a New England. And they were really interested in a true partnership in terms of product being designed together or being literally vertically integrated as a manufacturer and retailer. And I started down that road of finding those people that were different kinds of manufacturers.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was absolutely. I mean, I just remember being startled by how much sense it makes, knowing that the frustrations are with dealing with American manufacturers, the way the process was set up. And I couldn't do a lot about it at that time. But I tucked it away and knew that that's what the future needed to be”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not at all. But in 1972, I took a tour with a company to visit other retailers around Europe, primarily. And I went to IKEA. And at that point, I think they had a couple stores in Sweden and one in Germany maybe. But as I learned more about what they do, the design, I really was fascinated by the design and the whole process of lower cost product that's well designed. But what really fascinated me was their process in that they designed everything and then they went to at that time Eastern Europe to have it made. So they kind of turned the process upside down and they said we are the creators of the product. You are going to be the manufacturer and manufacture what we determine for the value that we want for the period of time that we'd like you to continue to make it.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly Know we were one retailer basically in Minnesota. I mean, not a lot of impact to them at all. They were doing their own thing.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very frustrated with that process because the truth is if somebody's working for you on 100 commission, they're working for themselves. They're not working for you.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably initially exciting, but over a relatively short period of time, I became frustrated with the process. So it was a process where the manufacturers really controlled the product. You went to a market, you went to different manufacturers that were well known then, and you'd select, oh, I'd like to carry this or that or whatever. Or they'd say you can't carry this because Dayton's now has it or somebody else. And it was especially complicated because They didn't ever make the product for a very long period of time. So there was tremendous turn of product based upon the manufacturer's decisions to carry something or not carry it. If it sold well for us in Minneapolis, it may not sell for the rest of the country and they would drop it. So you'd be starting over. So I became quickly frustrated with that process. And then the salespeople were all on commission. And I've became”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, great books about what it is to be a manager and all of that. I don't remember the exact year I started reading that, but that literally became my Bible Margaret Wheatley. She's written several books about management in a kind of different point of view. So she was the second influence on me. I think I just feel comfortable. I just feel comfortable making the design, merchandise decisions. I basically feel comfortable managing people who are older than me, which almost everyone was.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was yes, yes. I went to the University of Minnesota and I actually don't have a degree. I rejected taking a lot of the required courses. I took business courses, design, art related courses. I knew I was heading into the business and it was a combination of I was being groomed and I think my dad had worked really hard his entire life he had purchased a home in Florida he'd fallen in love with golf and basically for six months of the year he was gone and so as I started working first as a salesperson, then picking up different management roles in a fairly short period of time I was running the business”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's an interesting question because I think about that today and I just never, I never asked the question. I just assumed that I would go into the business.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would work in the store summers, probably starting when I was 16 or 17. You know, I would just do basic movement of product and unpacking and that sort of thing”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was unusual for retailers at the time, but it was a fairly common practice in North Carolina as manufacturers displayed their product to sell to retailers. And my dad hired one of the designers that worked in North Carolina to do the store and present the furniture that way.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Vermont Exactly, exactly. But North Carolina was by far the focus of it. Family businesses in North Carolina that made the bulk of the furniture in the United States.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“North Carolina was really the headquarters where furniture was made, but there was some made in New England, Michigan, Grand Rapids a little bit.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, think of mid century as being popular then, but that was not the popular design at all. The popular was more of this American colonial, turned legs fabrics that had prints and flowers and birds on them. It was a very Americana sort of feeling.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the big decisions we made was there was a location in Los Angeles that I fell in love with. And we sat down as a group and said, okay, can we do this? The farthest we go on to Chicago, we didn't know what to do. And we just said, no, we're not ready. And to me, it's an interesting point of view because people remember the decisions that they made where they did something. Sometimes the decisions you made were you did nothing is the most important decision in the business.”
2026-05-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Room & Board: John Gabbert. A Broken Deal, a Family Rift, and the Birth of a Furniture Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT