If you’ve worked in law enforcement anytime in the past 54 years, there’s a company you’ve surely heard of. More than likely you’ve gotten one of their catalogs in your mailbox or at your station. It’s hard not to have heard of a company that’s been serving the law enforcement and larger public safety communities for over half a century. What is that company? GALLS… and just recently they’ve made some changes that should have them firmly on your equipment radar.
A year and a half ago, GALLS hired a new Chief Executive Officer, Mike Fadden. Mike comes from a family line of police officers that include his father, his grandfather and his uncle. His priority when he took over as CEO for GALLS was to change the culture for a singular purpose: Relentless Focus on the Customer. You can’t talk to Mike about GALLS for more than ten minutes without hearing that phrase. It is certainly one that all of GALLS employees know and recognize constantly: Relentless Focus on the Customer is how GALLS has become the leading catalog equipment company serving public safety – but they worked hard to get there. Mike Fadden plainly states that when he took over as CEO he saw supporting all of law enforcement as the driving focus moving the company forward.
Despite the massive supply chain and delivery issues everyone has heard about repeatedly on the news, GALLS prioritized shipping every product for every delivery on time, and as a result, their current Customer Satisfaction scores are the highest they’ve ever been. When asked to explain how that can be done, Mike tells the story of how he operated when he first took over and what company guidance steps he’s taken. It’s interesting and impressive to say the least.
GALLS Distribution Center, roughly 500,000 square feet of space, is located below the corporate headquarters. When he first started, Mike would go down to the distribution center, randomly select fifty boxes (ten boxes, five times randomly through the day), and open them to check for mistakes in packing or order fulfillment. Anytime he found a mistake, it was immediately fixed. Across the span of the past eighteen months of his tenure as CEO, that random inspection process has been reduced to ten boxes per week and Mike proudly states that GALLS has gone five weeks without any mistakes being found.
To further insure Customer Satisfaction, Mike’s business card goes into every box. Yes, you read that right: The CEO’s business card, with an email address that he reads and answers, goes into every box. ([email protected] – Mike Fadden specifically asked for that to be included in this article.) CEO Mike Fadden considers Customer Satisfaction the number one priority of the company whether orders are being fulfilled via online or catalog orders or purchases are being made in any one of their sixty brick and mortar stores located on military installations.
Oh, you didn’t know GALLS had those? There are 45 GALLS outlet stores around the country and 15 Patriot Outfitter stores (GALLS owned and operated) on military installations. The Patriot Outfitter stores carry a slightly different product line, focusing on the items most needed by our military members.
Mike is well aware though, that maintaining that high level of service and customer satisfaction requires investment as well as employee care. On the investment side, he directed the entire 2021 IT budget into five projects that were specifically designed to enhance customer experience. On the employee care side, Mike expressed his desire to make GALLS a premier employment destination. His goal is to have employees who are proud to work there. To do that, he believes the company has to embrace six attributes:
1. Relentless focus on customer
2. Working for a noble cause – supporting first responders and law enforcement
3. Fun place to work
4. Charitable in the communities served
5. Diversity in the workplace
6. Investing in the employees
On Mike Fadden’s LinkedIn page, you can find his series of six videos covering each of those attributes for making a company a premier employment location. You can also find a series of videos titled Chief to Chief, that Mike has made to directly address Chiefs and Sheriffs about various concerns or topics. There are also videos about the company’s charitable outreach programs.
On the charitable involvement topic, GALLS partnered with Fund the First, a crowd funding site for first responders. GALLS is also partnered with The Hero Hut, a company that hosts premier sporting events for those who have served in public safety.
Understanding all of the above, it’s easy to see that GALLS has developed into a company far beyond what most people think when they see an advertisement or receive a catalog. The company has evolved - intentionally recreating itself at the corporate culture level – for that relentless focus on the customer in every way it serves those customers. Whether you’re ordering a product online or picking it up in one of their outlet stores, if you’re less than pleased there’s an open email channel direct to the CEO. He will insure your customer satisfaction and correct any deficiency that might be discovered. It’s the foundation upon which he has built his leadership platform.
For more information or to do some shopping, visit GALLS.com.
