Operations Success: Gamification at Broad River Retail

Interview with Tim Clouse, SVP of Operations

Furnishing life’s best memories isn’t just a tag- line at Broad River Retail. It drives decision-making and affects every customer and employee.

Furnishing life’s best memories isn’t just a tagline at Broad River Retail. It’s a mantra that drives decision-making affecting every customer and employee experience. 

Fast-growing Broad River Retail (broadriverretail.com) operates 33 brick-and-mortar Ashley Stores and three distribution centers in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Tim Clouse, SVP of Operations, recently discussed the company’s operations department in an in-depth interview with Furniture World. “We are authentic and transparent, and nothing is left unsaid. Broad River is on a mission to improve operations in ways that align with our stated purpose: to furnish life’s best memories.”

When Clouse mentioned that “nothing is left unsaid,” it’s not just talk. He is serious about communicating with the 200-plus employees working at Broad River Retail’s original distribution center in Fort Mill, South Carolina, and two others that opened more recently in Four Oaks, North Carolina, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. Together, they created new and lasting memories for 113,000 guests in 2024, delivering half a million pieces. "We don’t call our people employees or team members,” he explained. “We call them Memory Makers because their purpose here at Broad River Retail is furnishing life’s best memories.”

Excited to Come to Work

“I dream about the day when every Memory Maker who works in operations rolls out of bed excited to come to work,” Clouse shared. “To approach that goal, we identify opportunities, offer solutions, and execute as quickly as possible.

"Recently, Broad River’s CEO Charlie Malouf and I discussed the book, ‘What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture,’ by Ben Horowitz. The book asks the question, ‘Do your employees know who you are, what you do, and how you do it?’ It clicked for me that I’ve been talking to our Memory Makers about this for the last three and a half years, but there’s always more work to be done to drive messages about integrity, unity of purpose, and enthusiasm in our DCs.”

Hearing that message or seeing it presented on a poster in a DC is one thing, but making it happen on a deep level is another. “We believe,” Clouse said, “that if we help our employees to be happy and healthy, excellence and enthusiasm will follow.”

About Tim Clouse

Clouse’s career has focused on distribution. He joined Coca-Cola right out of college, then traveled the world working for the industrial distribution company Anixter. “Eventually,” Clouse recalled, “I joined Ashley Furniture Industries. Less than a year later, I met Charlie Malouf, Broad River Retail’s CEO, and Manny Rodrigues, its President and Chief Operating Officer, and moved over to Ashley’s licensee side.”

Clouse belongs to the Collaborative Operational Retailer Excellence Group (CORE), an operations performance group hosted by USSI. “It’s been valuable to collaborate with other furniture retailers who work with USSI to compare retail challenges and opportunities,” he said. “Let’s face it: I could read every operations book under the sun and never find out what Nebraska Furniture Mart has learned along their journey.”

BRR has attended every CORE meeting since inception. “Our partnership with USSI and the connections with other furniture retailers allow us to benchmark, innovate and advance our continuous improvement mindset.”

At his second CORE meeting, Clouse presented information on how Broad River Retail has successfully used gamification to achieve important operations goals. “It was a great experience for the whole team and created new connections and discussions with other furniture retailers. Most recently our Best Practice/Change Management Director joined the newly created CORE Advisory Board.”

Gamification

“I read about gamification while working for Anixter in Australia. It’s about introducing team-building game elements into non-game activities to enhance productivity. Manny Rodrigues and Charlie Malouf encouraged me to experiment with the concept. The result is that we’ve taken gamification initiatives to the next level at Broad River Retail."

Fun & Unusual Events: "It started by weaving monthly events into each distribution center. These include regular holiday celebrations as well as unusual fun observances like National Mini Golf Day, Pin the Tail Day, Popcorn Day, Back to the Future Day, Holly Jolly Week, Gingerbread House Day, Bowling Day, Wellness Day, and Arcade Basketball Day.

“Any retailer can use gamification to increase productivity, morale, and retention,” he explained. “Broad River Retail’s three distribution centers provide extra opportunities to encourage friendly competition between Memory Maker groups.”

Home Away From Home: “During COVID, when many employees worked from home, our DC Memory Makers showed up for work. It was a stressful situation for them. So our management team brainstormed, asking the following questions: ‘How can we make the DC feel more like home? Are we just a warehouse where people work or a DC that’s capable of furnishing life’s best memories for our Memory Makers?

“Based on those conversations, Broad River’s Distribution Center of the Year Award (DCOY) was introduced. Every year since then, we create a play sheet with KPIs that define the current years behaviors to meet our enterprise goals.”

Changing Behaviors: “DCOY gamifies how we ask the Memory Makers who work in our DCs to improve performance individually and as a team. The competition is designed to focus their attention on small changes to their behaviors, such as showing up to work on time, improving scanning performance during cycle counts, and reducing inventory damage every day. Improvements in KPIs related to the tasks they perform compound over months and weeks. This has helped Broad River Retail meet its delivery success, returns, and inventory profitability goals.
"Each week we share DC point scores on BrightSign (www.brightsign.biz) digital signage so Memory Makers can see what’s going on locally in their DC and enterprise-wide. It’s important to visually make sure everybody sees and understands what’s going on; one source of truth.”

Who Wins?

Broad River Retail’s recent 2024 DC of the Year awards celebration recognized the Fort Mill Otters. They earned the most points for performance based on nine benchmarked behaviors.

“The competition is a big deal and lots of fun for everyone,” Clouse noted. “Each DC has a team name; the Fort Mill Otters, Four Oaks Falcons, and Spartan Ridge Bruins. The winner is announced at a celebratory event. The lights are dimmed, a spotlight is turned on, and the winning DC’s banner is revealed. There are speeches and presentations. The winning team earns BRR swag embroidered with a star for each year their DC came out on top. Our most impactful leadership moment is when we serve each Memory Maker their meal, break bread and share our memorable moments from the year.”

Onboarding

Broad River Retail’s WISE (Warehouse Information Support Environment) program accelerates operational improvement. “With the help of the program's mascot 'WISEr the Owl' we use videos, PowerPoints and Word documents to provide continuous education throughout our Memory Makers journey," Clouse explained. “It’s a day-in-the-life approach that provides the information they need when they need it. That's true on their first day at work and every day thereafter, so they are not overwhelmed by information overload.”

Next Level Onboarding: Clouse further explained, “Our operational excellence team is working to make our WISE program more robust and scalable. Right now, we use a mentor program approach that hasn’t produced consistent results. Depending on the luck of the draw, some new hires have great experiences, and others don’t.

“We are working to define management’s expectations and test for the level of comprehension new hires should have at various stages. That will help us to provide educational materials as required. The documentation will be created soon to help us build our ultimate onboarding program.”

Data Flow

“Presently, Broad River’s analytics and reporting team grabs reporting data from STORIS, our ERP, pushing it into what is essentially a shareable PowerPoint presentation. Information is updated every Wednesday, pulled down by each of our DCs, and displayed on monitors.”
Further Automation: One of Broad River Retail’s key 2025 initiatives is to automate this data flow.

“We are very spreadsheet-heavy,” he explained, “which isn’t scalable for the level of growth we want to achieve. Speeding up information flow to the DCs using AI tools like Nack AI to replace spreadsheets is on our to-do list. We’re also looking to streamline and speed up labor-intensive data mining processes. The goal is to enable quicker decision-making by bringing data to our users on time with a long-term goal of using AI algorithms to provide a suggestive approach.”

Retail Alignment

Aligning operations processes within and between departments to reduce friction and improve coordination is another area Clouse has focused on.

“Last year,” he said, "we moved responsibility for our supply chain department to the operational side. Home delivery had been siloed, so we also brought it over to create alignment with tasks. For instance, the supply chain department controlled capacity and inventory but was limited by the number of trucks our final mile provider, Riverstone Logistics, could offer. That resulted in inefficient back-and-forth discussions regarding capacity. Any inter-departmental friction prevents us from delivering premier experiences and life-changing moments for our customers.
“Aligning the supply chain team, home delivery and the DC in the same vertical increased our efficiency and capacity. Now, everyone works better together to identify opportunities, offer solutions, and execute as a team under one roof.”

Operations Challenges

Furniture World asked Clouse to comment on operational challenges facing furniture retailers in 2025.

Delivery Success: “Delivery success is a problem for many furniture retailers,” he replied. “Broad River Retail’s goal is to produce life’s best memories, so a delivery problem of any sort lets Broad River Retail’s customers down.

“Delivery is a crucial part of the experience we provide,” he said. “We put in the work to improve our success, and that effort pays off. Last year was a record year for delivery success at Broad River Retail."

Measurement: “Improving performance always begins with measurement. Let’s say we deliver five pieces, and one comes back for any reason. Some retailers would score this at 80% success. We see it as a failed delivery and assign it 0%. Even though we calculate the metric this way, we are up to a 94% first-time delivery success rate compared to the industry standard, which is in the 85% to 86% range.”

Returns: “Reducing our return rate from double digits to low single digits has increased delivery success and reduced operational spend. Returns result in wasted time and dollars. A piece is picked, opened, prepped, loaded, and driven to the customer’s home. If the customer isn’t there to receive it or rejects it for any reason, it has to be driven back, unloaded, inspected, repaired and perhaps returned to the rack.

“High return rates are not just an ops problem. It’s a company-wide metric that requires communication and cooperation among departments to set realistic customer expectations and perform every necessary step to set the stage for perfect deliveries.”

Bench Strength: “Another challenge for furniture retailers is bench strength. Improving ours is an intentional focus at Broad River Retail. If somebody leaves the company or moves on to another position, it’s extremely important we have our next candidate ready to maintain and improve the status quo.

“We don’t want to put ourselves in a position where an employee leaves, and there’s no second. To do that well requires attention and documented processes. We have new stores planned in the Inland Northwest and need to maintain a deep enough bench to expand while continuing to drive company-wide improvements.”

Operations Advice

“My advice for furniture operations professionals,” Clouse concluded, “is to start any project with the end in mind. If you don’t know where you want to go, it’s easier to get distracted. Stay the course. Don’t just talk about goals; write them down and create timelines and calendar reminders for what you want to accomplish; build accountability into your process.

“Always remember what your organization stands for and ensure that information is communicated in clear and concise ways to every member of your team. Use visuals whenever you can and constantly talk about them. Then, work tirelessly to engage and excite your people in ways that help them to get the job done. Don’t ignore problems. Create positive cycles of continuous improvement in your DCs. 

“Finally, align every process with goals. Furnishing life’s best memories at Broad River Retail isn’t just a tagline. We work every day to incorporate that purpose into everything we do. It’s easier for us to take our purpose seriously and drive positive results because we know who we are and why we come to work every day. That’s the foundation for what we do here and why I love working here.”

HIGHLIGHTS:

“DCOY gamifies how we ask people who work in our DCs to improve performance individually and as a team. The competition is designed to focus their attention on small changes to their behaviors.”

“Any retailer can use gamification to increase productivity, morale and retention. Broad River Retail’s three DCs provide extra opportunities to encourage friendly competition between Memory Maker groups.”

“We don’t call our people employees or team members. We call them Memory Makers because their purpose here at Broad River Retail is furnishing life’s best memories.”

“Aligning the supply chain team, home delivery and the DC in the same vertical increased our efficiency and capacity.”

“High return rates are not just an ops problem. It’s a company-wide metric that requires communication and cooperation among departments to set realistic customer expectations and perform every step.”