by Al Drinkle
My father made his living selling sporting goods. As an adult I'm entirely apathetic about sports and the goods that they require, but as a youngster, I didn't know that there was any other option but to participate in endless variations of physical activity. Dad made sure that I was well equipped for all of them.
My parents didn't impose sports upon me in a domineering fashion. It's just that physical activity was such an integral part of their extracurricular endeavours that it was taken for granted that I would enjoy it all as much as they did. Although a few of my earliest existential crises were initiated by freezing my ass off while careening down a mountain on waxed fibreglass planks, in general I was accepting of the sports that I was unsolicitedly committed to. The competitive aspect aside, most of it was at least more appealing to me than church—another obligation of my childhood.
It was a given that I would be registered for baseball in the spring, soccer in the fall and basketball in the winter. I'd join the volleyball team at school and sometimes I'd find myself on tennis courts or laced into skates or rollerblades. In the summer I was dragged behind a boat with my feet strapped to fibreglass planks (these ones had fins), and I also recall a season or two of football. The only sport I vehemently opposed, due to its inherent irrationality that even my 7-year-old self couldn't abide, was golf. My father would try to entice me by asserting that experience on the golf course would be essential for future business meetings and so forth. Of course this path of argument held no credence whatsoever to a child, and at age 40 I can confirm that my disdain for golf has never once proven to be a social or professional setback. (Dad should have been helping me to build my drinking tolerance instead!). I also hated dressing up like a Nordic gladiator to play hockey, but luckily my mother equally abhorred driving me across the frozen city to make 5:30 a.m. practices. Hockey was quickly relegated to drop-in games at the community rink.
It's not that I'm ungrateful for what in retrospect were absolutely privileged experiences, it's just that while I was immersed in these activities I didn't recognize them as being anything but quotidian. It was always very strange to me when I'd meet other children who were genuinely enthralled by sports. To me that was like being passionate about getting dressed in the morning or going to school… isn't it all just part of the routine? Despite the countless photos of me as a child holding badminton rackets or baseball bats as if they were guitars, it took a long time for anybody to notice that I really just wanted to play music. Taking subservience as a granted fact of being a child, I accepted it all, free from the existential confusion that would impose itself upon me in my teenage years. In the meantime, I don't think I realized how fortunate I was.
My dad can't recall whether or not he completed high school. More specifically, he suspects that he hadn't quite earned enough credits to graduate, but was so disenfranchised with school by the end of the 12th Grade that he didn't care. Knowing that post-secondary was not to be his path, he eagerly entered the workforce. He cited that in the meantime, sports, and particularly solo athletic pursuits, had kept him at the mere periphery of the party scene, and provided him with a beautiful distraction from the pressures of life.
Dad was one of the lucky ones. Very few of us begin our working lives by recognizing that a prime interest could be a viable source of income, but such was the case with him. He got a job retailing sporting goods, and soon moved to the distribution side of the business. By the time that I was a teenager, my father was running one of the most successful independent sporting goods agencies in Western Canada, and representing some of the most enviable athletic brands on the planet. It took me a long time to recognize that this was an unusual vocation, and one that was the envy of several of my friends whose fathers were accountants, plumbers or part of Calgary's extensive oil and gas industry. Barely understanding that my father's job was uncommon, I certainly didn't comprehend that he was inordinately successful at it.
A significant part of my father's talent for sales was to first convincingly and genuinely sell the product to himself. When he represented Kastle downhill skis, he would regale me in articulate detail as to why Kastle made the greatest and most progressive skis on the planet. A few years later when he instead began distributing Volkl skis, he had convincing arguments as to why Volkl was the premium brand, eclipsing even Kastle's quality. He was never, ever lying about any of this, and much of his success must have been founded on the unshakeable belief that at any given time, he was selling the very best products in their respective fields.
It wasn't until I was a teenager that I began to consider that my father was good at his job, instead of him simply having a job. While at Canada Olympic park for an evening of snowboarding years ago (that's what teenagers are supposed to do in the evening, right? Some kind of sport?), I happened to ride the chairlift with one of my dad's employees. This young man spoke extensively about the amount of respect that my father had earned in the industry, about how lucky he was to be working with my father, and about how invaluable this mentorship was for his career. This gave me a lot to think about.
I had always thought that since humans seemed to instinctively engage with sports, there must be people to sell sports equipment, just as we need others to sell us food and clothes and cars. But what did it actually mean to be skilled in this line of work? What is the definition of success? I knew that my father's level of accomplishment couldn't have been achieved through greasiness or duplicity. Alberta is a small province, and conning someone into buying something they shouldn't have bought doesn't engender repeat sales. It took a long time—not to mention fledgling years in my own career—to slowly begin to understand what my father's employee was talking about.
There are certainly extreme differences between my father and I, not the least of these being disparities in recreational interests. However, we share the propensity towards very strongly held opinions (though not always the same opinions), and deeply-rooted convictions as to what constitutes “quality”. Additionally, we tend to arrive at these certainties independently, and aren't strongly influenced by the opinions of others. We're both deeply passionate about the things that matter to us, and perhaps an unintended consequence of our vehemently-held stances is that others in our orbits are swayed by these convictions. Naturally, this doesn't hurt one's potential to sell something that they believe in.
My luck in finding a vocation that gives me personal satisfaction didn't materialize as rapidly as it had for my father. For years my career opportunities seemed depressingly unattractive, and I dreamed of a world where somebody would pay me to watch movies, read novels, play my own music or get drunk. Curiously, as my interest in the benign influences of alcohol eventually led me to the most fascinating way to experience these effects, it would be the latter of these activities that would open doors to gainful employment.
My first professional wine position (not including a job at a neighbourhood liquor store during university) was as a sales representative for an importation and distribution agency. I had become a salesman, just like my father and his father before him. There were a few things that I liked about the job, such as the lack of a fixed schedule and being able to spend most of my time in wine shops and restaurants. But regarding my actual responsibilities, I couldn't be said to have been a successful or valuable employee in any way, shape or form. The company that I worked for had national distribution, and given its size and scope was working almost entirely with huge, industrial wine producers. Despite my runaway interest in wine, I found the products that I had been commissioned to sell to be about as enchanting as paperclips or garbage bags. Ironically, my sales figures were satisfactory to my superiors, but this was probably because the well-marketed products that we represented were inherently attractive to the general public who bought them as if by instinct. It certainly wasn't due to any talent for sales that I might have possessed. I thought that this highlit a stark difference between my father and I, but after several years I realized that his success was predicated upon working with products that he had selected based on his belief in them, and not by magically selling any old bullshit that was imposed upon him. He would have been just as uninspired as I was, and perhaps just as unsuccessful.
After 18 months of service to the wine agency, I realized that I had effectively stopped working, and I felt genuinely terrible about the fact that since my sales were still satisfactory, I was still being paid. I recognized the value of taking a pay cut in order to work for somebody who actually loved wine and respected the tenets of what makes it beautiful, and began with an independent wine retailer in 2008. It goes without saying that in order to perpetuate as a business, the shop had to make money, but the thing that I loved about it right from the start is that absolutely no compromises were made regarding the kinds of wines that were sold. In other words, trends were never chased, industrial-scale producers whose values weren't in line with ours were never represented, and popular wines that could have made us a lot of money were never stocked if we didn't think that they were great. This, of course, isn't the easy path.
After many years at the wine shop, I feel that I'm beginning to understand what my father's employee was talking about that night on the chairlift; and the way that my father himself, and those who respected his work, might have measured his success. I think it has to do with values that also give me satisfaction at my job. Financial reward only factors in as a potential—and exceptional—byproduct here, because nobody who wants to get rich is going to dedicate themselves to selling sporting goods or artisanal wine.
Perhaps this idea of success entails adhering to one's own standards of quality, and not other people's compromised ideas of what's good enough. This should also preclude inexorable values that inform quality, be they environmental, ethical, philosophical or otherwise. Perhaps the success I'm speaking of involves a comprehensive understanding of the discipline and the products in question, partly to ascertain quality itself, but also so that this knowledge might be helpfully communicated to colleagues and customers. Maybe part of it is the intrepid introduction of superior but unknown products to a market that would much rather buy a recognized brand, and thus the requisite conviction to slowly educate the public as well as one's peers—ultimately benefiting all parties. Undoubtedly, success in such lines of work must include positive relationships with customers, suppliers, employees and colleagues. Everyone within this nexus should be treated fairly and honestly. Lastly, in an environment as tiny as Alberta's sporting goods or wine industries, combining all of these facets of professionalism will ultimately prove to be inspiring, thereby fostering opportunities for others to similarly pursue success.
On a daily basis, the kinds of wine that my colleagues and I choose to sell and promote, and the values that dictate how we go about it, impose countless challenges upon ourselves—challenges that could be easily avoided if we instead purveyed mainstream mediocrity that sells itself. But our plight to provide Albertans with the opportunity to drink meaningful wine has also unexpectedly helped me to understand my father better. I see that the athletic endeavours that were endlessly imposed upon me as a child were merely an extension of the inextinguishable passion that allowed my dad to be so successful at his work. In turn, this has inspired me to strive for his level of professionalism in my own career, and perpetuating this curious legacy gives me great satisfaction.
Thanks, Dad, and Happy Father's Day to good dads everywhere.
