Puttin’ on the Ritz

Everybody remembers the first scene of the movie “Patton,” in which George C. Scott walks out on a stage to address an unseen and unidentified audience of soldiers at an unspecified moment during the Second World War. The speech is often quoted by motivational and organizational gurus who are trying to whip any given group of individuals into shape.

There is another scene near the beginning of the movie, however, that may be more instructive to those of us in the school supply business. It depicts Patton assuming command of the American Second Corps in North Africa following their humiliating defeat at the Kasserine Pass. In what would become a recurring theme in the film, the first thing he addresses is the manner in which his troops are dressed. The clear implication is that you can’t expect someone to fight like a soldier if he doesn’t look like one.

I sometimes wonder how Patton would feel about the way business people dress these days. When I started out in this industry 35 years ago, I was expected to wear a tie to the office every day, and working a trade show or calling on customers required a full business suit with all the trimmings. Most dealers followed the same code, and if some were more casual it wasn’t by much.

Times have changed. Our policy here in the office (no tank tops or bare feet) would have seemed like a joke back in the ’70s, and most exhibitors at conventions have adopted the khakis-and-polo-shirt uniforms. Some of the attendees are dressed down to the point where they are indistinguishable from the tourists at a nearby theme park.

If I had to choose an icon of business fashion for my parents’ generation it would be Madmen’s Don Draper, with his narrow Brooks Brothers lapels and Rat Pack cool. For my own it would be Apple founder Steve Jobs, with sneakers, blue jeans and laid-back California panache.

Business attire, of course, exists within the context of our culture as a whole, and dress has become steadily less formal for a very long time. If you ever see any footage of an old baseball game from the ’30s or ’40s, look for the shot where they scan the crowd. The male-dominated grandstands will be a sea of white shirts and ties.

Fast forward to the spring of 2011. My wife and I were having dinner in a large seaside restaurant in Florida when a wedding party arrived, a portion of the restaurant having been roped off for the reception. There was a table of people in their 20s at the reception, and they all wore tee shirts, cargo shorts and sandals. To a wedding.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I have seen plenty of people dressed the same way at funerals, job interviews, symphony concerts, church services, award ceremonies and Broadway shows. About the only events people dress up for these days are high school proms and Civil War re-enactments.

There is a natural tendency for people of a certain age to condemn modernity and wax nostalgic for days gone by. We always think that the social fabric is coming apart, and that young people are spoiled, undisciplined, lazy and disrespectful. It seems as though the world we grew up in was a much better place.

I get that, but it puts me in mind of an old joke: just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean that somebody isn’t out to get you. Our tendency toward nostalgia doesn’t change the fact that some things actually were better in the past, and maybe we should rethink the 21st-century dress code.

Personally, I think General Patton had a point about “looking the part,” and it applies just as readily to businesspeople as soldiers. That is why I continue to insist that our employees dress up for tradeshows, even though the customers and most of our competitors have long since gone casual. I tell them we do it to show respect to our customers, but I also believe that people who are dressed more professionally will behave that way as well.

Apparently I’m not alone. The high school here in town (where my wife teaches) has been designated a “school in need” due to its failure to meet standards set by NCLB and the New York State Education Department. After the state completed an audit of the school last spring, the principal was dismissed and a new sheriff was hired to come in and clean up Dodge.

This guy must have seen the movie, because the first thing he did was to enforce a strict dress code for students and another one for teachers. For the kids, no more chains, hats, coats, pajamas, hoodies, short skirts, skimpy tops or sagging pants. Teachers must sacrifice all of the above plus jeans, shorts and flip-flops. Men are expected to wear ties and pressed trousers.

The new principal reluctantly agreed to continue casual Fridays for teachers, but only if they made a contribution to the local Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program. He also asked that both teachers and students wear school colors every Friday.

His next step was to ban the possession of cell phones in the school (you gotta love this guy), which had an immediate and profound effect that merits a column of its own. Next fall he plans to make another major change to the culture, with the adoption of mandatory school uniforms.

As you know, the potential benefit of uniforms has been a hot topic in education for a number of years now. In private schools they have become the norm, and their use in public schools has been growing slowly but steadily for the past 20 years. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 12 percent of public school principals reported that their schools had gone uniform by the year 2000, and by 2008 that number had grown to 18 percent.

Proponents of the trend argue that it reduces violence and bullying; improves discipline; raises attendance; promotes school pride; cuts down on gangs, cliques and peer pressure; provides an overall savings to parents and puts the focus on learning. Frankly the opposition doesn’t seem to have much, except that uniforms could possibly inhibit self-expression and make some students less comfortable.

As school supply dealers seek to broaden the base of products that they can effectively sell and service, the growing popularity of uniforms is bound to put them on the radar screen. I had an opportunity recently to sit down with the owner of a chain of teacher stores, and I asked him whether he had given the matter any thought.

Indeed he had. After studying the process and numbers involved, he had decided that carrying uniforms in his stores would be more trouble than it was worth, but he also said that uniforms in his region were pretty much confined to private schools. If that should change, he was prepared to move quickly into that business.

Uniforms are just one of many product areas that educational dealers have traditionally avoided but may wish to reconsider. Old distribution channels have been changing rapidly in the past few years, and although that has certainly caused problems for you, it can also create opportunities.

One word of advice, though. If you are interested in new product categories, move quickly while things are still in flux. As General Patton once said, “A good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”