Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer
by A. Alfred Taubman
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Book Summary Information
Author: A. Alfred TaubmanEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-01
ISBN: 0061235377
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Collins Business
Book Reviews of Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer
Book Review: An Essential Life Skill: Overcoming Threshold Resistance
Summary: 4 Stars
Arthur Taubman's "Threshold Resistance" provides a candid read about the rise of a business giant over the last fifty years. During this period, self-made Taubman played an influential and innovative role in the unrelated fields of retailing, real estate, art, restaurants, and professional sports. The book is rich with business history - the migration of retailing from America's cities to suburbia, the rapid growth of the franchise industry, and the reinvention of the auction house.
The concept of threshold resistance, after which the book was titled, is defined as the physical and psychological barriers that stand between a customer and the sale of merchandise - the force that keeps the customer from opening the door and coming in over the threshold.
Taubman expands on this concept and applies to everyday life. In order to accomplish anything, people have to find a way to get beyond the limitations they believe that personal background, conventional wisdom, common practice, or experience has placed on our imaginations. These limitations are set by psychological, physical, cultural, social, and economic barriers we encounter. Assessing and overcoming threshold resistance is an essential life skill. While threshold resistance might stop a customer from entering a store, it might also stop a young woman from applying to medical school, stop an engineer with a great idea from leaving the comforts of a job to start his own company, or stop a politician from seeking votes among a vital growing constituency.
"Threshold Resistance" fills the gaps not covered in the press about Taubman's price-fixing indictment and conviction in the well publicized case of collusion between Sotheby's and Christies. One cannot help but feel sympathetic to Taubman for what appears to be a wrongful conviction. He also covers his experience while serving time in a low security federal prison. Finally, the book includes Taubman's four marketing precepts, an interesting history of Detroit, and his thoughts on Internet's impact on retailing.
It is clear that Taubman enjoyed great success and suffered gut-wrenching personal failure at the end of his 70's. But along the way, he showed he was pretty good at assessing and responding to threshold resistance in both business and life. He found breaking down barriers to be very scary and risky, but once done, very rewarding and fun. He advises all that "you will always face resistance with a new idea...in fact, the better the idea, the greater the resistance and the more people will want you to fail... believe in yourself and be on your way."
Summary of Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer
In this candid memoir, A. Alfred Taubman explains how a dyslexic Jewish kid from Detroit grew up to be a billionaire retailing pioneer, an intimate of European aristocrats and Palm Beach socialites, a respected philanthropist and, at age 78, a federal prisoner.
With a unique blend of humor and genius, Taubman shows how selling fine art and antiques really isn't that different from marketing root beer or football, and offers penetrating insights into that quintessential palace of commerce, the luxury shopping mall. Alfred Taubman may not have invented the modern shopping center but, in the words of The New Yorker, "he perfected it."
Taubman's life has been a storybook success, with its share of unique challenges. A pioneer builder and innovative real estate developer, he was also a brilliant land speculator, operator of a quick-serve restaurant chain, and owner of a major department store company. But what seemed like the pinnacle of his career, buying and reinventing the venerable art auction house Sotheby's, would lead to his conviction in an international price fixing scandal.
Despite the twists and turns, Taubman's life and business philosophy can be summed up in one evocative phrase: Threshold Resistance. Understanding and defeating that force-breaking down the barriers between art and commerce, between shoppers and merchandise, between high culture and popular taste-has been his life's work.
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