Purchasing Transformation

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
Are here to make everything right that’s wrong
Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too
Are here to make it all okay with you
Billy Bragg, Levi Stubbs’ Tears (1986)

Norman Whitfield supplied hits to Motown Records. He didn’t sing, he didn’t perform, he sat in the basement of Motowns Hitsville U.S.A office and supplied The Temptations, Gladys Night and Mavin Gaye with hits. He is generally acknowledged as being a key figure in the creation of the Motown Sound.

You see, Berry Gordy’s Motown Records took the “make” path to success.

Motown had an inhouse songwriting staff that included Norman Whitfield, Barret Strong, Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland. They resided in the basement of the Hitsville U.S.A studio with the so-called Funk Brothers (keyboardists Earl Van Dyke, Johnny Griffith, and Joe Hunter; guitarists Joe Messina, Robert White, and Eddie Willis; percussionists Eddie “Bongo” Brown and Jack Ashford; drummers Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones, and Richard “Pistol” Allen; and bassists James Jamerson and Bob Babbitt).

This approach to supplying the sound of young America (such was the Motown motto) earned the label 110 top ten hits in the US alone from 1961 to 1971.

While this was going on in Detroit, out on the east coast, record producers were taking the “buy” approach to hit creation.

In 1962, 165 music businesses were crammed into the Brill Building on Broadway in New York City. It was a one-stop shop where you could match the songwriting power of Lieber and Stoller (Stand By Me/Jailhouse Rock), Goffin and King (The Loco-Motion), Greenwich and Barry (Be My Baby/(And) Then He Kissed Me), Mann and Weil (You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’) and Bacharach and Hal David (Walk On By) against one another by just walking down the halls of the office building asking for a hit record.

“Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific — because Donny (Kirshner) would play one songwriter against another. He’d say: ‘We need a new smash hit’ — and we’d all go back and write a song and the next day we’d each audition for Bobby Vee’s producer.”
Carol King quoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith (1978)

Competition is truly one of the great driving forces for innovation, and as purchasers, the job is to see to it that this comes to the benefit of the company. But as the example of Motown shows, this doesn’t mean that you automatically lose out by taking the “make” approach.

Sad to say, Norman Whitfield one of the creators of the Motown Sound died on September 16th 2008. I’m going to put “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” on repeat this afternoon to honor his memory.

With the Euro2008 in full swing, football fans from all over Europe are flooding into Austria and Switzerland to see their faves duke it out on the pitch. But in the background an amazing supply chain has been processing stadiums, balls, trophies, mascots, fan-zones, and accommodations etc for years.

The revenues for this years event is expected to be up 50 percent from Euro2004 in Portugal, landing at an astonishing 1,3 billion Euro, most of which are coming from broadcasting rights,

The budget – or shall we call it purchasing volume – for the organizers were set at 147 million Euro; covering stadiums, fan-zones, mascots, promotions, logos, and – the always as controversial – a new ball: the Adidas EUROPASS.

Since every championship needs a sense of urgency and innovation – and with rules pretty rigid – organizers and suppliers often start to look at the details to develop the game. The Adidas EUROPASS was unveiled late 2007 and reactions from the players was skeptic, at best.

“Those balls are going all over the place, changing direction all the time, especially if fired from a distance,” Croatia goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa said to India Times earlier this week.

“They are not designing balls for goalkeepers,” Netherlands goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar said in the same article, referring to the technological wizards at Adidas who designed the white ball with the black patches.

Although Adidas are keen to point out all the high tech features of the ball, as seen in this promo film there are still loads of manual labor involved; supply chain management at Adidas has to be top notch for the players to succeed.

The ball is also made in custom batches, with unique graphics for each game including the names of the opposing teams, group, date, city and stadium. The final is to be played with a special edition entitled EUROPASS Gloria.

No matter who actually wins the Euro2008 using the new features of the Adidas EUROPASS (my bet is Germany, consistency always pays off, and they’ve kept their world champ runner-ups from 2006 intact), one thing is certain; the ball is still round. But only just.