Creating an industry around customers.
The Buxton story is one of creating a new industry that focuses on customers. Hear Buxton co-founders Tom Buxton and David Glover describe the company's journey to become the premier customer analytics provider.
[intro music] >> TOM BUXTON: I’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains in West Texas back in that time frame when I was cowboying up there on horseback. I said, “Man, I’m going to start it.” So Glover and I left, we started it, actually Glover left a little bit later but we started it together. >> DAVID GLOVER: Being the financial conservative guy I was, I felt like the thing to do was to really take some time and think through it and develop a written employment agreement, right? Wouldn’t that be the smart thing to do? We met at a public restaurant, Tom looked at the document for about 30 seconds and he stood up, ripped the document in half, and said, “Look, here’s the deal Glover. We’re either in this deal together, we’ll make a lot of money, or we’ll end up pumping gas together.” And that was the beginning of Buxton. >> BUXTON: We started the company working with a little small store within a store concept. And we’ve grown to a very large company. You know, Buxton is unique because we’re retail guys. We have lived and breathed retail. We wake up to a sales report every day. We know what it’s like to open a store, close a store. We’re not just a bunch of bright PhD guys. Obviously, we have that. But we know how to solve the pain points because we know the pain points. We have lived them, we’ve breathed them, we’re apart of those pain points. We’re retailers that created an industry on how to use science to make us more successful. I believe that the only way you grow your businesses you either add new products, you add new stores, you find new customers. And no one knows who their customer is to this day. >> TIM WHITE: Like anything, without a customer, you’ve got nothing. And how we strategize with them is how to be able to understand who their customer is, where they are, what their value is so that we can help them grow their business. >> BUXTON: They think they know who their customers are, we look at who they are, identify them scientifically and say, here’s a whole world of people that look just like them that aren’t your customer. >> WHITE: It’s all about getting return on those customers. New stores, new customers, that’s the key. >> GLOVER: What would make me proud about the culture at Buxton is that each individual deeply cares about the success of the person that they work with, and that is truly an amazing thing. >> BUXTON: If you look at the values of our company, the most important value is our customers, second most important value to our company is us, the people that work at Buxton. There’s no such thing as a great company. Great people make companies great. >> TODD WALLS: We’re solving problems day in and day out with things that don’t exist, with data that didn’t exist yesterday. >> BUXTON: Just think about it, you’re going online, you’re going social, you’re going every form of media there is and you’re still building stores like mad. >> WALLS: People want answers and they want to push a button and get it instantly. And so, it’s forced us to rethink how we deliver our solutions. >> BUXTON: Today, you carry your marketing plan in your pocket. You can look at your store, you can look at your trade area, you can look at who buys it, and you can basically push a button and reach them immediately and actually have a return that day if you want to. The future of Buxton is at your fingertips.