By PAMELA ROBINSON, Register Staff Writer
Gainesville Daily Register
Cooke County —
Joanie Raley has a lot of business savvy and she should. She loves the retail industry and that’s why she has worked in it for 32 years.
“I love everything about the retail business,” she said, “the selling part, the management part, to hiring and training.”
Raley, who currently works at Beall’s, said the key for business success in retail is good customer service.
“Customer service is a No. 1 priority, but not just in retail, she said. “I think in anything that you go in, you have to have the compassion. You have to have the want-to to succeed. You have to have the drive, you can’t be lazy. You have to go above and beyond the call of duty. You have to love people.”
She works to treat people the way that she would like to be treated.
“I think in this time that we’re in, in retail you don’t see the customer service any more, it’s not important to people” she said. “There’s so much shopping around that we have to provide something so unique to the public that it will make them come back, and that is your customer service, your loyalty to people, how you treat people, how you act, how you demonstrate your life.”
Raley is a hands-on manager and is out on the floor with employees and getting things done.
“How often do you go into a store and you never see a manager because they’re all in the back office working?” she asked.
She likes to know if all the customers are being helped and are they finding what they want. If my employees need me I’m there to help them, they don’t have to wait until they can find me later.
The key to keeping employees is to treat them as you would like to be treated, she continued. It is also important to set the example for the team with a strong, positive role model.
Raley said she feels the same way about her shop as she does her home. When someone walks through the front door they are a guest and she feels they should get guest-treatment. She doesn’t just point to the corner where the swimming suits are located, she takes the customer over to them and helps them out.
Raley said she likes to stay busy and, “In retail, you don’t get bored, it’s always something different.”
The Watts Brothers Pharmacy was the first place Raley went to work. In high school she worked at the soda fountain and helped out over in cosmetics. She moved to work with Montgomery Wards in downtown Gainesville during the school year.
She was also a buyer for a number of years with the Warehouse Outlet.
“I would go to market and went and bought everything and then displayed it, merchandised it, sold it,” she said.
Today she is the store manager for Bealls in Gainesville, but said she started out as an assistant sales associate, became the key person and then moved into the store manager position. She said she tried a few other things but, “she always comes back to retail because it is a people business and she loves people.”
She credits her parents with her strong work ethic. They taught her, “You go to work, you always show up and you give 110 percent.”
Raley met her husband Tom when they both worked at Nolan Chevrolet and they were married 33 years. She lost him in December following a long illness.
“He was everything to us,” she noted. “He taught us a whole lot and he loved people. He never looked at his sickness as a disease, but a way to improve his life and always thanked God for his disease. We had a good life. He was a good man and I miss him a whole lot.”
Their daughter, Ginger, is a pharmacist in Wichita Falls and her granddaughter, Raley Beth will turn three in August.
“She is the love of my life,” she said of her granddaughter. “I love spending time with her and anything that involves her and my daughter, we’re all happy. We’re big on family.”
Goals are important to Raley and she makes them and works hard to reach them.
“I think every person has to have goals,” she noted. “If you don’t you die. Everyone has to have a goal and you have to be able to work and achieve that goal.”
Right now one of her goals is to be strong day by day following the death of her husband. That is one of the things that he taught me and to be independent, she noted.
For hobbies, she loves to be outside. She said she grew up outside and they had horses and cows and sheep like Old McDonald’s Farm. Gardening and working with her roses is important. She also loves family time and shopping, especially for antiques.
“I love animals,” she continued. “I think animals are really good for you too.”
Right now she has a Maltese, Jasper.
“He definitely keeps me going,” she said. “He is a trip.”
Whatever challenges life brings her way, you have the feeling that Raley will be able to ride it out like a surfer in the throes of a dynamic wave. Not only that, after talking with her you get the feeling that you have learned something from her that will help you ride out your own waves.
