Buffett and Munger on Nebraska Furniture Mart

1983 Letter:
Nebraska Furniture Mart

Last year, in discussing how managers with bright, but

adrenalin-soaked minds scramble after foolish acquisitions, I
quoted Pascal: “It has struck me that all the misfortunes of men
spring from the single cause that they are unable to stay quietly
in one room.”

Even Pascal would have left the room for Mrs. Blumkin.

About 67 years ago Mrs. Blumkin, then 23, talked her way
past a border guard to leave Russia for America. She had no
formal education, not even at the grammar school level, and knew
no English. After some years in this country, she learned the
language when her older daughter taught her, every evening, the
words she had learned in school during the day.

In 1937, after many years of selling used clothing, Mrs.

Blumkin had saved $500 with which to realize her dream of opening
a furniture store. Upon seeing the American Furniture Mart in
Chicago - then the center of the nation’s wholesale furniture
activity - she decided to christen her dream Nebraska Furniture
Mart.

She met every obstacle you would expect (and a few you
wouldn’t) when a business endowed with only $500 and no
locational or product advantage goes up against rich, long-
entrenched competition. At one early point, when her tiny
resources ran out, “Mrs. B” (a personal trademark now as well
recognized in Greater Omaha as Coca-Cola or Sanka) coped in a way
not taught at business schools: she simply sold the furniture and
appliances from her home in order to pay creditors precisely as
promised.

Omaha retailers began to recognize that Mrs. B would offer

customers far better deals than they had been giving, and they
pressured furniture and carpet manufacturers not to sell to her.
But by various strategies she obtained merchandise and cut prices
sharply. Mrs. B was then hauled into court for violation of Fair
Trade laws. She not only won all the cases, but received
invaluable publicity. At the end of one case, after
demonstrating to the court that she could profitably sell carpet
at a huge discount from the prevailing price, she sold the judge
$1400 worth of carpet.

Today Nebraska Furniture Mart generates over $100 million of

sales annually out of one 200,000 square-foot store. No other
home furnishings store in the country comes close to that volume.
That single store also sells more furniture, carpets, and
appliances than do all Omaha competitors combined.

One question I always ask myself in appraising a business is

how I would like, assuming I had ample capital and skilled
personnel, to compete with it. I’d rather wrestle grizzlies than
compete with Mrs. B and her progeny. They buy brilliantly, they
operate at expense ratios competitors don’t even dream about, and
they then pass on to their customers much of the savings. It’s
the ideal business - one built upon exceptional value to the
customer that in turn translates into exceptional economics for
its owners.

Mrs. B is wise as well as smart and, for far-sighted family

reasons, was willing to sell the business last year. I had
admired both the family and the business for decades, and a deal
was quickly made. But Mrs. B, now 90, is not one to go home and
risk, as she puts it, “losing her marbles”. She remains Chairman
and is on the sales floor seven days a week. Carpet sales are
her specialty. She personally sells quantities that would be a
good departmental total for other carpet retailers.

We purchased 90% of the business - leaving 10% with members

of the family who are involved in management - and have optioned
10% to certain key young family managers.

And what managers they are. Geneticists should do

handsprings over the Blumkin family. Louie Blumkin, Mrs. B’s
son, has been President of Nebraska Furniture Mart for many years
and is widely regarded as the shrewdest buyer of furniture and
appliances in the country. Louie says he had the best teacher,
and Mrs. B says she had the best student. They’re both right.
Louie and his three sons all have the Blumkin business ability,
work ethic, and, most important, character. On top of that, they
are really nice people. We are delighted to be in partnership
with them.
1984 Letter
Nebraska Furniture Mart

Last year I introduced you to Mrs. B (Rose Blumkin) and her

family. I told you they were terrific, and I understated the
case. After another year of observing their remarkable talents
and character, I can honestly say that I never have seen a
managerial group that either functions or behaves better than the
Blumkin family.

Mrs. B, Chairman of the Board, is now 91, and recently was

quoted in the local newspaper as saying, “I come home to eat and
sleep, and that’s about it. I can’t wait until it gets daylight
so I can get back to the business”. Mrs. B is at the store seven
days a week, from opening to close, and probably makes more
decisions in a day than most CEOs do in a year (better ones,
too).

In May Mrs. B was granted an Honorary Doctorate in

Commercial Science by New York University. (She’s a “fast track”
student: not one day in her life was spent in a school room prior
to her receipt of the doctorate.) Previous recipients of honorary
degrees in business from NYU include Clifton Garvin, Jr., CEO of
Exxon Corp.; Walter Wriston, then CEO of Citicorp; Frank Cary,
then CEO of IBM; Tom Murphy, then CEO of General Motors; and,
most recently, Paul Volcker. (They are in good company.)

The Blumkin blood did not run thin. Louie, Mrs. B’s son,
and his three boys, Ron, Irv, and Steve, all contribute in full
measure to NFM’s amazing success. The younger generation has
attended the best business school of them all - that conducted by
Mrs. B and Louie - and their training is evident in their
performance.

Last year NFM’s net sales increased by $14.3 million,

bringing the total to $115 million, all from the one store in
Omaha. That is by far the largest volume produced by a single
home furnishings store in the United States. In fact, the gain
in sales last year was itself greater than the annual volume of
many good-sized successful stores. The business achieves this
success because it deserves this success. A few figures will
tell you why.

In its fiscal 1984 10-K, the largest independent specialty

retailer of home furnishings in the country, Levitz Furniture,
described its prices as “generally lower than the prices charged
by conventional furniture stores in its trading area”. Levitz,
in that year, operated at a gross margin of 44.4% (that is, on
average, customers paid it $100 for merchandise that had cost it
$55.60 to buy). The gross margin at NFM is not much more than
half of that. NFM’s low mark-ups are possible because of its
exceptional efficiency: operating expenses (payroll, occupancy,
advertising, etc.) are about 16.5% of sales versus 35.6% at
Levitz.

None of this is in criticism of Levitz, which has a well-

managed operation. But the NFM operation is simply extraordinary
(and, remember, it all comes from a $500 investment by Mrs. B in
1937). By unparalleled efficiency and astute volume purchasing,
NFM is able to earn excellent returns on capital while saving its
customers at least $30 million annually from what, on average, it
would cost them to buy the same merchandise at stores maintaining
typical mark-ups. Such savings enable NFM to constantly widen
its geographical reach and thus to enjoy growth well beyond the
natural growth of the Omaha market.

I have been asked by a number of people just what secrets

the Blumkins bring to their business. These are not very
esoteric. All members of the family: (1) apply themselves with
an enthusiasm and energy that would make Ben Franklin and Horatio
Alger look like dropouts; (2) define with extraordinary realism
their area of special competence and act decisively on all
matters within it; (3) ignore even the most enticing propositions
failing outside of that area of special competence; and, (4)
unfailingly behave in a high-grade manner with everyone they deal
with. (Mrs. B boils it down to “sell cheap and tell the truth”.)

Our evaluation of the integrity of Mrs. B and her family was

demonstrated when we purchased 90% of the business: NFM had never
had an audit and we did not request one; we did not take an
inventory nor verify the receivables; we did not check property
titles. We gave Mrs. B a check for $55 million and she gave us
her word. That made for an even exchange.

You and I are fortunate to be in partnership with the

Blumkin family.
1985 Letter
At Nebraska Furniture Mart our basic strength is an
exceptionally low-cost operation that allows the business to
regularly offer customers the best values available in home
furnishings. NFM is the largest store of its kind in the
country. Although the already-depressed farm economy worsened
considerably in 1985, the store easily set a new sales record. I
also am happy to report that NFM’s Chairman, Rose Blumkin (the
legendary “Mrs. B”), continues at age 92 to set a pace at the
store that none of us can keep up with. She’s there wheeling and
dealing seven days a week, and I hope that any of you who visit
Omaha will go out to the Mart and see her in action. It will
inspire you, as it does me.
1986 Letter
The amazing Blumkins continue to perform business miracles
at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Competitors come and go (mostly go),
but Mrs. B. and her progeny roll on. In 1986 net sales increased
10.2% to $132 million. Ten years ago sales were $44 million and,
even then, NFM appeared to be doing just about all of the
business available in the Greater Omaha Area. Given NFM’s
remarkable dominance, Omaha’s slow growth in population and the
modest inflation rates that have applied to the goods NFM sells,
how can this operation continue to rack up such large sales
gains? The only logical explanation is that the marketing
territory of NFM’s one-and-only store continues to widen because
of its ever-growing reputation for rock-bottom everyday prices
and the broadest of selections. In preparation for further
gains, NFM is expanding the capacity of its warehouse, located a
few hundred yards from the store, by about one-third.

Mrs. B, Chairman of Nebraska Furniture Mart, continues at

age 93 to outsell and out-hustle any manager I’ve ever seen.
She’s at the store seven days a week, from opening to close.
Competing with her represents a triumph of courage over judgment.

It’s easy to overlook what I consider to be the critical

lesson of the Mrs. B saga: at 93, Omaha based Board Chairmen have
yet to reach their peak. Please file this fact away to consult
before you mark your ballot at the 2024 annual meeting of
Berkshire.
1988 Letter
o At Nebraska Furniture Mart, Mrs. B (Rose Blumkin) and her
cart roll on and on. She’s been the boss for 51 years, having
started the business at 44 with $500. (Think what she would have
done with $1,000!) With Mrs. B, old age will always be ten years
away.

The Mart, long the largest home furnishings store in the

country, continues to grow. In the fall, the store opened a
detached 20,000 square foot Clearance Center, which expands our
ability to offer bargains in all price ranges.

Recently Dillard’s, one of the most successful department

store operations in the country, entered the Omaha market. In
many of its stores, Dillard’s runs a full furniture department,
undoubtedly doing well in this line. Shortly before opening in
Omaha, however, William Dillard, chairman of the company,
announced that his new store would not sell furniture. Said he,
referring to NFM: “We don’t want to compete with them. We think
they are about the best there is.”

At the Buffalo News we extol the value of advertising, and

our policies at NFM prove that we practice what we preach. Over
the past three years NFM has been the largest ROP advertiser in
the Omaha World-Herald. (ROP advertising is the kind printed in
the paper, as contrasted to the preprinted-insert kind.) In no
other major market, to my knowledge, is a home furnishings
operation the leading customer of the newspaper. At times, we
also run large ads in papers as far away as Des Moines, Sioux
City and Kansas City - always with good results. It truly does
pay to advertise, as long as you have something worthwhile to
offer.

Mrs. B’s son, Louie, and his boys, Ron and Irv, complete the
winning Blumkin team. It’s a joy to work with this family. All
its members have character that matches their extraordinary
abilities.
1989 Letter
The Nebraska Furniture Mart had record sales and excellent
earnings in 1989, but there was one sad note. Mrs. B - Rose
Blumkin, who started the company 52 years ago with $500 - quit in
May, after disagreeing with other members of the Blumkin
family/management about the remodeling and operation of the
carpet department.

Mrs. B probably has made more smart business decisions than

any living American, but in this particular case I believe the
other members of the family were entirely correct: Over the past
three years, while the store's other departments increased sales
by 24%, carpet sales declined by 17% (but not because of any lack
of sales ability by Mrs. B, who has always personally sold far
more merchandise than any other salesperson in the store).

You will be pleased to know that Mrs. B continues to make

Horatio Alger's heroes look like victims of tired blood. At age
96 she has started a new business selling - what else? - carpet
and furniture. And as always, she works seven days a week.

At the Mart Louie, Ron, and Irv Blumkin continue to propel

what is by far the largest and most successful home furnishings
store in the country. They are outstanding merchants, outstanding
managers, and a joy to be associated with. One reading on their
acumen: In the fourth quarter of 1989, the carpet department
registered a 75.3% consumer share in the Omaha market, up from
67.7% a year earlier and over six times that of its nearest
competitor.

NFM and Borsheim's follow precisely the same formula for

success: (1) unparalleled depth and breadth of merchandise at one
location; (2) the lowest operating costs in the business; (3) the
shrewdest of buying, made possible in part by the huge volumes
purchased; (4) gross margins, and therefore prices, far below
competitors'; and (5) friendly personalized service with family
members on hand at all times.

Another plug for newspapers: NFM increased its linage in the

local paper by over 20% in 1989 - off a record 1988 - and remains
the paper's largest ROP advertiser by far. (ROP advertising is
the kind printed in the paper, as opposed to that in preprinted
inserts.) To my knowledge, Omaha is the only city in which a home
furnishings store is the advertising leader. Many retailers cut
space purchases in 1989; our experience at See's and NFM would
indicate they made a major mistake.
1990 Letter:
While Fran Blumkin was helping the Friedman family set records
at Borsheim's, her sons, Irv and Ron, along with husband Louie,
were setting records at The Nebraska Furniture Mart. Sales at our
one-and-only location were $159 million, up 4% from 1989. Though
again the fact can't be conclusively proved, we believe NFM does
close to double the volume of any other home furnishings store in
the country.

The NFM formula for success parallels that of Borsheim's.

First, operating costs are rock-bottom - 15% in 1990 against about
40% for Levitz, the country's largest furniture retailer, and 25%
for Circuit City Stores, the leading discount retailer of
electronics and appliances. Second, NFM's low costs allow the
business to price well below all competitors. Indeed, major
chains, knowing what they will face, steer clear of Omaha. Third,
the huge volume generated by our bargain prices allows us to carry
the broadest selection of merchandise available anywhere.

Some idea of NFM's merchandising power can be gleaned from a

recent report of consumer behavior in Des Moines, which showed that
NFM was Number 3 in popularity among 20 furniture retailers serving
that city. That may sound like no big deal until you consider that
19 of those retailers are located in Des Moines, whereas our store
is 130 miles away. This leaves customers driving a distance equal
to that between Washington and Philadelphia in order to shop with
us, even though they have a multitude of alternatives next door.
In effect, NFM, like Borsheim's, has dramatically expanded the
territory it serves - not by the traditional method of opening new
stores but rather by creating an irresistible magnet that employs
price and selection to pull in the crowds.

Last year at the Mart there occurred an historic event: I

experienced a counterrevelation. Regular readers of this report
know that I have long scorned the boasts of corporate executives
about synergy, deriding such claims as the last refuge of
scoundrels defending foolish acquisitions. But now I know better:
In Berkshire's first synergistic explosion, NFM put a See's candy
cart in the store late last year and sold more candy than that
moved by some of the full-fledged stores See's operates in
California. This success contradicts all tenets of retailing.
With the Blumkins, though, the impossible is routine.
2001 Letter:
We continue to expand in both jewelry and home-furnishings. Of
particular note, Nebraska Furniture Mart is constructing a mammoth
450,000 square foot store that will serve the greater Kansas City area
beginning in the fall of 2003.

2002 Letter:
Nebraska Furniture Mart will open a new blockbuster store in
metropolitan Kansas City in August.
With 450,000 square feet of retail space, it could well produce the
second largest volume of any
furniture store in the country – the Omaha operation being the national
champion. I hope Berkshire
shareholders in the Kansas City area will come out for the opening (and
keep coming).
Buffett’s Answer to a question asked by an interviewer

What are your views on education, since many of his top managers did
not have a college degree?

Buffett: One can be successful in business if they have desire and

energy. Any IQ over 125 is wasted in business or investments. WB
visited Wal-Mart last week in Bentonville, Arkansas (Wal-Mart
headquarters). At Wal-Mart ordinary people are doing extraordinary
things. Susan Jacques is the CEO of Borsheim’s Jewelry (a Berkshire
Hathaway company). She lacks a college degree, but her leadership has
energized her employees. Mrs. Blumkin (Mrs. B) (Nebraska Furniture Mart
– a Berkshire company) was a Russian émigré who did not speak any
English. She learned the language from her 5-year old daughter who
would teach her mother the English words she learned that day in
school. Business schools should study Mrs. B. Her business today does
$350 million in business. Mrs. B could outperform the CEO of any
Fortune 500 company. She loved her work so much, that she kept price
tags on her furniture at home to remind her of her business. WB
discourages his top managers from retiring by telling them that Mrs. B
died one year after she retired (at age 103). If you told Mrs. B the
dimensions of a room in feet, she could immediately tell you how many
square yards of carpet it needs. She even successfully defended herself
in court when a competitor sued her for charging prices that were too
low. She told the judge that she paid $2 per sq. yd. for a carpet, and
sold it for $3.98 per sq. yd. (vs. $5.98 for a competitor). She told
the judge that if she raised prices she would be robbing her customers.
“How much should I rob my customers?” The judge dismissed the case.
Charlie Munger

4) Too Much Emphasis on Macroeconomics

My fourth criticism is that there’s too much emphasis on
macroeconomics and not enough on microeconomics. I think this is wrong.
It’s like trying to master medicine without knowing anatomy and
chemistry. Also, the discipline of microeconomics is a lot of fun. It
helps you correctly understand macroeconomics, and it’s a perfect
circus to do. In contrast, I don’t think macroeconomics people have all
that much fun. For one thing, they are often wrong because of extreme
complexity in the system they wish to understand.
Let me demonstrate the power of microeconomics by solving two
microeconomic problems. One simple and one a little harder. The first
problem is this: Berkshire Hathaway just opened a furniture and
appliance store in Kansas City, Kansas. At the time Berkshire opened
it, the largest selling furniture and appliance store in the world was
another Berkshire Hathaway store, selling $350 million worth of goods
per year. The new store in a strange city opened up selling at the rate
of more than $500 million a year. From the day it opened, the 3,200
spaces in the parking lot were full. The women had to wait outside the
ladies restroom because the architects didn’t understand biology. It’s
hugely successful.
Well, I’ve given you the problem. Now, tell me what explains
the runaway success of this new furniture and appliance store that is
outselling everything else in the world? Well, let me do it for you. Is
this a low-priced store or a high-priced store? It’s not going to have
a runaway success in a strange city as a high-priced store. That would
take time. Number two, if it’s moving $500 million worth of furniture
through it, it’s one hell of a big store, furniture being as bulky as
it is. And what does a big store do? It provides a big selection. So
what could this possibly be except a low-priced store with a big
selection?
But, you may wonder, why wasn’t it done before, preventing its
being done first now? Again, the answer just pops into your head: It
costs a fortune to open a store this big. So, nobody’s done it before.
So, you quickly know the answer. With a few basic concepts, these
microeconomic problems that seem hard can be solved much as you put a
hot knife through butter. I like such easy ways of thought that are
very remunerative. And I suggest that you people should also learn to
do microeconomics better.
Now I’ll give you a harder problem. There’s a tire store chain
in the Northwest that has slowly succeeded over fifty years, the Les
Schwab tire store chain. It just ground ahead. It started competing
with the stores that were owned by the big tire companies that made all
the tires, the Good years and so forth. And, of course, the
manufacturers favored their own stores. Their “tied stores” had a big
cost advantage. Later, Les Schwab rose in competition with the huge
price discounters like Costco and Sam’s Club and before that Sears,
Roebuck and so forth. And yet, here is Schwab now, with hundreds of
million of dollars in sales. And here’s Les Schwab in his eighties,
with no education, having done the whole thing. How did he do it? I
don’t see a whole lot of people looking like a light bulb has come on.
Well, let’s think about it with some microeconomic fluency.
Is there some wave that Schwab could have caught? The minute you
ask the question, the answer pops in. The Japanese had a zero
positioning tires, and they got big. So this guy must have ridden that
wave some in the early times. Then, the slow following success has to
have some other causes. And what probably happened here, obviously, is
this guy did one hell of a lot of things right. And among the things
that he must have done right is he must have harnessed what Mankiw
calls the superpower of incentives. He must have a very clever
incentive structure driving his people. And a clever personnel
selection system, etc. And he must be pretty good at advertising. Which
he is. He’s an artist. So, he had to get a wave in Japanese tire
invasion, the Japanese being as successful as they were. And then a
talented fanatic had to get a hell of a lot of things right and keep
them right with clever systems. And, not that hard of an answer. But
what else would be a likely cause of the peculiar success?
We hire business school graduates, and they’re no better at
these problems than you were. Maybe that’s the reason we hire so few of
them.
Well, how did I solve those problems? Obviously, I was using a
simple search engine in my mind to go through checklist-style, and I
was using some rough algorithms that work pretty well in a great many
complex systems, and those algorithms run something like this: Extreme
success is likely to be caused by some combination of the following
factors:
A) Extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables.
Example, Costco or our furniture and appliance store.
B) Adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives
success, often in nonlinear fashion, as one is reminded by the concept
of breakpoint and the concept of critical mass in physics. Often
results are not linear. You get a little bit more mass, and you get a
lollapalooza result. And, of course, I’ve been searching for
lollapalooza results all my life, so I’m very interested in models that
explain their occurrence.
C) An extreme of good performance over many factors. Example,
Toyota or Les Schwab.
D) Catching and riding some sort of big wave. Example, Oracle.
By the way, I cited Oracle before I know that the Oracle CFO (Jeff
Henley) was a big part of the proceedings here today.