Throughout his life, Bruce Kahn has been
motivated to keep improving himself, which might explain why he
was recently chosen for IFI’s 2003 Meritorious Service
Allied Trades Award at the Clean Show in Las Vegas.
His competitive nature has rarely allowed
for him to be satisfied. It all started on the day he was born.
“I was somewhat of an unruly
kid,” he confessed. “I’m a twin, you know. I
have a twin brother, Howie. He’s five minutes older due
to the fact that I kicked him out because we were fighting, as
we
have throughout our 45 years.”
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Though Bruce believes his parents provided
him with a “good Jewish upbringing,” growing up was
never easy. The Kahn brothers clashed constantly.
“You have to understand — when
a woman had twins in 1958 — well, my mom paraded us down
the hallway of the hospital,” Bruce said. “They
dressed us up alike. It’s no wonder we were very
competitive.”
The sibling rivalry didn’t exactly
subsist as the twins got older. In fact, it only seemed to get
worse. Eventually, the twins did find a way to stand apart from
each other.
“They had to separate us at high
school graduation,” Bruce laughed. “The school
actually separated us so we wouldn’t even be one after
the other when we went up to grab our diplomas. I think it was
just because we fought so much.”
When he and his brother weren’t
fighting, Bruce’s parents taught him more constructive
lessons, like how to put in a good honest day’s work.
Bruce’s mother, Lois, taught history and social studies
for 30 years while his father, Richard, operated a fine
women’s apparel business for a few decades. Not
surprisingly, Bruce has always been fascinated with history and
various cultures, and he pursued a business degree in college.
“There’s something to be said
for heredity,” he said.
After receiving his associates degree from
Quinsigamond Community College, Bruce moved on to Worcester
State College in 1978 for further studies. He earned money on
the side with a job at the University of Massachusetts’
Medical Center. Originally, he was an employee of the food
service department.
“I climbed up the totem pole. I had
four different jobs,” he recalled. “The second job
was called Unit Aid. Basically, I helped set up a trauma unit.
I supplied the IV solutions. I inventoried and supplied
different areas. I helped with patients.”
After that, he applied for a job
delivering supplies to the hospital from its state-of-the-art
warehouse that was equipped with a new computerized inventory
system. He became familiar with every square inch of the
hospital and every person who inhabited it. Bruce’s
natural ability to socialize with everyone made him quite
popular.
“Everybody was pushing me that I had
the right personality — because of my social skills
— to go and be in sales.”
After being with UMass for four years,
Bruce took his co-workers’ advice... well, sort of. He
worked his way up to a job in cells instead. He underwent
training and soon had his own research lab in the medical
center’s Molecular Genetics and Microbiology department.
Surrounded by petri dishes and powdered
chemicals, Bruce was right at home in his new job as a
technician who prepared sterile media on which research doctors
performed a variety of experiments. For his efforts, Bruce was
featured in over a half dozen scientific journals for his
exemplary technical assistance.
“I did a procedure in a sterile
environment where I chopped up chick embryos and I slated the
cells and grew them,” he explained. “It was very
interesting stuff.”
As strange as Bruce’s job might
sound, just one floor above him — in the Department of
Biochemistry — his future wife, Lynne, performed perhaps
an even stranger one.
“What she did was incredible,”
he said. “When a baby was born at a hospital down the
street, she would run to the hospital and pick up the placenta
-— which is pretty gross, really — and she’d
put it on ice. She’d have to rush it back to her lab and
she would run experiments on the placenta with radioactive
materials.”
While the couple enjoyed playing their
part in making scientific progress, both felt it was time for a
drastic life change in 1987.
Lynne shifted gears by quitting her job
and joining the accounting department of Paul Revere Insurance
Company. Meanwhile, Bruce left the confines of his lab to see
if he really could make it as a salesman. He was hired by
Dubois Chemicals.
Immediately, Bruce regretted his decision.
“That was my first sales job. I went from making $25,000
a year to $12,000 the first year I left. I almost killed
myself,” he laughed.
Bruce suddenly found himself in way over
his head. “Dubois Chemicals makes everything you can
imagine — all types of chemicals for manufacturers, oils
and cleaners. I didn’t know a thing about
anything,” he remembered.
In dire need of training, Bruce was
relieved that a manager was with him to guide him through his
first sale.
“So, I’m running through all
of the products that I knew we sold and this guy’s
sitting here saying: ‘We don’t use that. We
don’t use that. We don’t use that,’”
Bruce said. “I kept looking over to my manager to bail me
out. He never did. So, all of a sudden, my face turned red and
I said, ‘You know what, I don’t think we have
anything that you use.’ We proceeded to be escorted out.
When we got out the door, this guy laughed so hard I thought he
was going to keel over. That was my first lesson in sales. This
awful call made me realize that I could do it.”
After only six months, Bruce was ready to
try his pitches somewhere else. For the next year, he managed
the route sales for Town & Country Leather & Suede
Cleaners in Worcester.
In 1988, he joined the AristoCraft Supply team
and never looked back. He actually started work on the Monday
after his honeymoon with Lynne.
One major reason for his longevity with
the drycleaning distributing company is that Bruce really likes
the philosophy instilled by its president, Doug Ross, who long
ago ran a mock promotion telling clients that AristoCraft fired
all of its salesmen and replaced them with
“consultants.”
“It was a great concept because you
don’t just want to go to the cleaner and say: ‘What
do you need? How many hangars do you want?’” Bruce
explained.
Instead, the company prefers to encourage
its “sales consultants” to provide their customers
with the resources to help them grow their business and save
money. “There’s a lot of personal satisfaction you
get from showing a drycleaner a program that will get the word
out to his customer and increase his sales,” Bruce noted.
Besides, helping cleaners is a good way to
help himself, too.
“I’ve found that if I always
have the customer’s best interests at heart, I earn their
trust, and, therefore, their business,” he said.
Bruce must be doing something right. Not
only did he win the 2003 Allied Trades Award from IFI, he was
also honored by NEFA in 1996 with its Allied Trades Award.
He simply tries to do everything possible
to be a valuable resource to his customers. He has been a
knowledgeable C.E.D. for several years and he often makes time
to ride along with several manufacturers’ representatives
in order to learn from their expertise.
In particular, he credits Bob Edwards of
Wilson Chemical, Bill Forsman of Laidlaw Chemicals and Paul
Interland of R.R. Street as major influences on his
professional life. “Basically, with the help of these
guys, I am able to bring my customers the tools they
need,” he said.
One aspect that makes Bruce stand apart
from many of his peers is his tireless work ethic. On any given
week, he may drive as many as a thousand miles and visit over
60 customers in his territory, which covers New Hampshire,
southern Maine, North Shore, Boston and Worcester.
He is so dedicated that he doesn’t
even need an alarm clock to wake up every day at 4:30 a.m.
He’s long been accustomed to a grueling work schedule. In
fact, Bruce doesn’t get home to his family (which
includes daughters Alison and Danielle) many nights until after
7 p.m., and, if a cleaner has a problem, he will help come up
with a solution rather than go home for dinner.
“It’s unfortunate because I do
think a lot about my job when I’m on vacation. I take my
cell phone and take calls. On weekends, I take calls. If you
only knew how many emergencies drycleaners have,” he
said.
Yet, Bruce has no complaints. He
understands that his sacrifices are no greater than those of
his clients.
“Cleaners have no concept of time
off because they also have that work ethic,” he said.
“I go in at 7 a.m. and find customers sleeping in
makeshift beds back in their plants. I’m not
kidding.”
Such professional dedication is an
inspiring catalyst for Bruce. It reminds him to take his job
seriously and keep things in perspective.
“In your life, it doesn’t
matter who you are — you’re a salesman from the day
you’re born to when you die,” he said. “What
makes a better salesman is sincerity and the ability to put
people at ease and making them feel comfortable. That’s
really what a true salesman does, and if you can make people
feel comfortable, they open up.”
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