Wisdom Born from Experience

Simple Beginnings

Fred Meyer has 128 stores in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska, offering everything from clothes to groceries and fine jewelry. When Sutera first arrived at Fred Meyer, the 11-employee in-plant was serving just 35 retail stores, and things were "pretty simple," he says.

The shop printed signs, posters and forms, and his first improvement was to add a series of clotheslines inside the shop to dry the signs. The shop was located about 10 miles from company headquarters, so in 1977 Sutera moved the in-plant closer and added a one-color, 29˝ Harris press to the new space.