Chapter 407 - Danger and Trouble (1)

11 May, Flight between City Y and City F

While ignoring everyone around her, Lexi pondered the outcome of last night. Her instincts were right about Yvonne and Nancy. They were not only hard workers but appreciative of the chance she had given them. Yvonne's mother and Nancy's parents when they came and collected the girls at the end of the night could not keep thanking her for taking a chance on their daughters.

Yvonne had been right, her mother viewed her as an inspiration. Nancy's parents had senior positions in local banks and her mother's family owned a small engineering company. While them were well off, it was nothing like the wealth that her family and Matthew's family had. But they were right in teaching their daughter about earning her own money to be responsible for themselves.

When both she and Karen reached the hotel accommodation, they sat in the suite talking for a couple of hours. Karen was surprised not only at her appointing staff but working in the store until they shut. She did promise that she would, with the staff that were arriving today to take over the store, see if they were suitable, and if they were, they would have a job.

However, despite the fun it was working in the store for a few hours, Lexi was grateful that she had little to deal with the retain stores. It was draining working in retail, even for a few hours. In doing that, it at least made her appreciate the work that Karen did, as well as generally those in the retail stores.

As Karen explained to her, after speaking to the police the number of criminal charges that were pending on the staff from the store was breathtaking. The police decided to transport the staff member separately to the police station, which gave them each time to consider what they wanted to do. When the police made it clear that they were facing criminal charges that would result in years in prison, it was amazing how quick they all started to turn on each other attempting to secure the best deal possible, including avoiding or minimising jail time.

Karen explained that after they all started turning on each other, the extent of the fraud and the problems created quickly started to come to light. The only innocent staff member was the initial store manager, who went on maternity leave early due to pregnancy complications. As of the rush to appoint someone, she had approached Karen to appoint two managers to cover for her, who had previously worked on retail, but due to the closure of the companies they had worked for, were currently unemployed. Both were happy to cover on a temporary basis as they were not sure what they wanted to do. While, as Karen recalled, she had done preliminary checks that revealed nothing, the urgency of the situation made her place extra weight on the initial manager's words.

Once the initial manager went out on leave, the two temporary managers as they were only given initial training in company policy started to operate the store as if it was their own kingdom, giving massive discounts and manipulating stock to suit themselves and the customers they preference and hired two new staff they trusted on temporary contracts. Those they changed a culture, into focusing on a few customers, giving massive discounts not sanctioned under company policy and using the defective garment policy to manipulate things so they could quickly amass an expensive LY wardrobe. When the existing staff say this happening, without penalty, they all decided that it was allowable.

Karen as she was retelling the extent of what they told the police was highly angry, not only at them but at herself for creating the situation. Lexi, however, knew that Karen was not to blame. In the combination of circ.u.mstances that created the situation she had made the right decision because the initial store manager was highly skilled and had been their best performing manager world-wide.

They sat for a while and talked about how they repaired the damage, but Lexi had to keep reminding Karen that she was not to blame.

But it raised for her concerns about company policy. How could she act to prevent this from happening again? How did she ensure Karen had proper team she needed, rather than always trying to take everything on herself.

Maybe it was time, as Karen had previously talked to her about, a complete restructure of the business. Presently, she had the perfect excuse to do so. Dominic, and what he had coming up needed to have priority rather than her business.

The question was, how to affect a restructure? Karen had been right about appointing additional directors to manage aspects of the business. Design was a given. While she was close to the rest of her design team and they were highly skilled they needed someone at times to keep them under control. That, by default always ended up being her role, but if she was focusing on Dominic, that was not going to be easy.

Despite her still hating her parents, one thing she had to acknowledge was her father was a brilliant businessman. He thought the archaic family structures to reorganise the family business, buying out many of the extended family interests to benefit the company, ridding it of those who had no concept of business and appointing capable people to deal with each aspect of the various businesses it had. Maybe she needed to be like him when it came to business. Consider what was the best for the business rather than her.

As soon as that thought crossed her mind, it made Lexi realise that she needed to appoint other capable people to run aspects of the business. Procurement of materials. She loved her buying trips and she always found something, but if she was honest, she was stuck in going to the same areas time and time again, simply as she felt comfortable there. How many opportunities to find amazing materials to use had she been missing?

Manufacturing was a given, due to the ongoing expansion plans in Asia, and the plans for the Pacific and Americas. One thing she was definite on was not sub-contracting out the making of her designs. For quality control purposes she wanted to retain that inhouse. Yes, there was additional expenses for that, but so far it generally proved that it was the right decision. Couture for coordination of everything with that aspect. Administration and Finance, to create checks and balances to ensure LY remained profitable. Marketing and Public Relations, was another area that needed separation, because there was always issues that would cut across all areas, and there needed to be coordination.

Most importantly she needed to ensure Karen had deputies to manage regions, to ease the burden on her, ensuring that situations like what occurred in City Y could not happen again.

Lexi pulled out her tablet and started to compose an email to send to herself as soon as she could connect to wi-fi. Getting the ideas down now, would allow her to move quickly towards implementation.

-------

If you are reading this novel anywhere other than at or its apps then you are reading work that has been stolen in breach of the authors rights and those rights assigned to others.

Please support this author and only access this novel through at /book/15095783406874805 and report the illegal posting of this work.