Ring Puts Executives on Path to Success

Visit Larry Ring’s office in the Mason School and you get a sense of the incredible breadth of his work with executives from corporations around the world. Not to mention the high regard in which they hold him.

A wall next to his desk, for instance, contains many framed letters of gratitude. One from Bunning’s Building Supply Company, a company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, thanks him for offering what can only be described as a grueling retail boot camp for executives.

“That’s what they wanted, that’s what they get for an entire week,” says Ring, the Chancellor Professor of Business Administration and Executive MBA Alumni Professor at the Mason School. “It is total immersion--morning, noon, and night.”

An expert in marketing strategy, Ring began developing seminars for retailers as a University of Toronto faculty member in 1983, offering executive leadership workshops focusing on strategic planning and management in retailing. Since he came to William and Mary in 1985, requests for the seminars have grown by leaps and bounds.

On an open enrollment basis, the program has run more than 90 times, both at William and Mary and at Babson College, as well as in such far-flung locales at Australia, Singapore, and Europe.

Ring and his associates also offer private versions of the program for individual companies. “We get requests from companies when anywhere from 30 to 200 of their employees need training, so we develop tailored programs for them.”

One such company was Bunning’s in Australia. Ring describes how in 1993 a young man from the company came to his workshop looking for ideas on how to fix his bankrupt small chain. After the week-long seminar, the executive decided to close all of his stores, spend time in the U.S., and study some of the big box retailers.

“That young man returned in 1994 after opening his first revamped store,” Ring says. “Today, the company’s business is the leading home improvement retailer in Australia and has 200 stores doing over $6 billion in sales. We’ve worked with them since day one; it’s a great success story.”

Ring’s consulting and executive education activities have made a difference for retailers across the world. Besides Bunning’s in Australia and several U.S. retailers, his clients include Migros Turk in Turkey, Dairy Farms Ltd. in Hong Kong, Shoppers Stop Department Stores in India, Mr. Price Group in South Africa, the Intercontinental Group of Department Stores in Europe, and the United States Marine Corps Exchange.

He currently serves on the board of directors of Mr. Price Group, Ltd., of Durban, South Africa and has previously served on the boards of directors of the  C. Lloyd Johnson Company, Inc., Norfolk, Virginia; Retail Ventures Incorporated, Columbus, Ohio; Acme Markets of Virginia, Bon Ton Stores, Inc., and Sportmart, Inc. He was also a member of the International Advisory Board of Angus and Coote Limited, Sydney, Australia.

Ring’s busy schedule has kept him away from doing marketing research for several years, and although he doesn’t do survey research for companies; he does analyze it for them. Above all he likes maintaining long-term relationships with companies and bringing it all back to his work at the Mason School.

“Because I’m constantly out there working with companies, I get a lot of ideas for my scholarly pursuits and teaching here at Mason,” he says.

That attention to detail and willingness to travel across the world ensures that the accolades from satisfied customers keep coming. And Ring has the framed letters from grateful customers to prove it.