Eric Crown - Company Culture

Company Culture

Eric Crown was known at Insight Direct (c. 1988-1995) for wearing simple loafer shoes with no socks. He was creative with publicity and employee morale. In 1995, after studying "casual" dress workday sales patterns, they announced that salespeople would no longer be required to wear ties. In recognition, they had the receptionist cut each tie in half with scissors as the employees entered.

As another example, an employee had lost his hair due to cancer treatments. Crown announced that in solidarity, employees could volunteer to have their hair shaved in the front lobby for free. He promised to donate $100 to the American Cancer Society for each head shaved. He also promised to shave his own head if 100 employees took place in the volunteer hair shaving drive. Over 100 employees shaved their head, and Eric Crown held true to his word.

When the company began to grow, a state-of-the-art company headquarters was designed and built. It contained four giant arenas for salespeople to hold training presentations and coaching for sessions from a centralized hub. In acknowledgment of the newly built headquarters, Crown wanted to notify the local businesses that 2,000 employees were now based in the area. So he sent a letter to local restaurants alerting them that all of the employees would utilize only $2 bills. This would enable the restaurants to know the direct impact of the newly located company. This known direct impact would then be utilized as leverage in negotiations conducted to obtain employee discounts for local area purchases.