They want salespeople with a flair, not designers.
Pros
It's really hit and miss. Not a horrible place to work if you are a *decorator*, however if you are a proper *designer*, you are wasting your time here. 1. Some of the stores have FABULOUS "design center managers" who heavily invest into their employees. Some of them came from design firms or ran their own businesses (others came from Walmart though...). 2. The hours at my location were good for retail: Monday-Saturday 9:30am - 6:00pm and Sundays 12:30- 5:00. 3. They have literally thousands upon thousands of fabrics to work with, scores of leathers, dozens of wood finishes-- there is definitely room for creativity! You're allowed to dress creatively, too (no uniform, only a small nametag).
Cons
I'm going to divide the following sections by category in CAPS so you can skim to the parts you want to read. ANCIENT COMPUTER SYSTEMS: They still process orders with carbon paper! Returns, defectives and custom softgoods orders have to be handwritten by the designers and then entered into the system by the office administrator. It's ridiculously inefficient. They did recently start using Surface II tablets though... MISLEADING WORK ENVIRONMENT DESCRIPTION: Ethan Allen promises a glamorous, high-end "design firm" type of environment up front, but once hired, you quickly learn that their bottom line is SALES, SALES, SALES! They promise, "It's like owning your own business, but under the well-established roof of Ethan Allen." Just beware-- they do not offer much support to their design consultants. You have to be the designer, salesman, project manager, account manager, and secretary. You do everything from booking your own appointments, to working out on the floor to doing all of your own paperwork. PAY STRUCTURE: It is a "commission against draw" pay structure. This means that they pay you a base salary (mine was $30,000), but at the end of every month they subtract your monthly salary from your commission check. Also, if you don't hit your sales goals, you become endebted to them and they withold future commissions to pay themselves back. The whole time I worked there, no one (not the manager, the office administrator or the operations manager) could accurately explain the pay structure to me. This left me uncertain of my income every month and that made it very difficult for me to plan my personal finances. I was constantly made to feel like I could be fired at any moment. The first 90 days are salary only (no quotas or commission) during training. TRAINING: This is another area that varies by store. One of our sister stores had a FABULOUS manager who was extremely entrepaneurial and creative. She was always great for giving practical advice. But... at MY store, I spent the entire first 3 months of my employment watching training videos and shadowing other designers. They didn't let me on the sales floor until the end of my 90 day trial. This meant I got no practice before becoming accountable for sales. Because of that, I stumbled through my first month and started my sales career there in deficit (see "pay structue" section above). NO TIME OFF: You work every single weekend and I believe 6 different months of the year had vacation/weekend blackout dates (meaning you couldn't request time off then). EXPENSIVE BENEFITS: Crummy 80/20 HMO insurance with a $3,000 deductible per person was almost $400/month... enough said about that. I couldn't afford it on my salary and prayed my husband and I wouldn't get sick.
