Woven In: Karen Wehner’s 40 Momentous Years
Karen’s appreciation her for the Momentum community is overflowing and she would love to stay in touch. She finally has a personal email account for the first time in 40 years! Feel free to send her well wishes at wehnerk63@gmail.com.
01
03 I think it has to be Sheila Hicks because I’m a textile geek and her beautiful, intricate, ginormous artworks that are in major museums around the world are stunning. Do you have a favorite Momentum collaboration?
06 It’s going be a big exhale. I’m not quite sure yet how I go from 70 miles an hour by choice and in love with my work to, I don’t know, three miles an hour? But I’m looking forward to spending more time with my 92 year old mother, my husband, my dog. I love to cook and garden and sew, and so I look forward to filling every day with spiritual activity, physical activity, creative activity, and having that time to exhale and heal as I continue to battle Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer. My health and wellness is really what precipitated the decision to retire. So I’m going to find joy in different ways and reinvent myself. I have a lot of interests and maybe I’ll join some clubs and do some activities that I would normally never have the time to do. I live in nature. I love nature. There’s a whole new horizon for me so let go and let God. Trusting in new possibilities is really my motto. I mentor a couple of other Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer patients through Imerman Angels, an organization based in Chicago, and it’s really important to me. Momentum’s culture of community service involvement has been a key reason I’ve loved my career. I’m also finding other ways that I can help in my own community, whether it’s with cancer organizations or making quilts for the homeless. It’s been an amazing, amazing career. I really have had so much opportunity to meet and collaborate with the most wonderful creative people. I’ve traveled so many places in my career with my different roles of being in sales leadership or working with our correctional industries market to go to trade shows. And I’ve always been a traveler. I love learning about a city’s culture and international culture and how people choose to live their life in certain places versus other places. So it’s given me so much opportunity for fulfillment and ways to give back that I’ll always have a heart for Momentum and Momentum alone. How do you plan to spend your retirement?
Do you have a favorite story from your time here that sticks in your memory?
It was love at first sight for Karen in 1984 when a couple visiting sales managers from Momentum rolled out a mill blanket filled with vibrant warp and weft yarns while in her Style Club in the home economics department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. As a self-proclaimed textile geek, this sight made her heart race and something clicked. “This is what I want to do,” she thought, “this is the company I want to work for.” That same day, she called her parents and her boyfriend (now her husband of nearly 40 years) and declared “I found the company I’m going to work for today.” She was only a junior so the team told her to come back next year, and that’s exactly what she did. Karen landed her first role as sales trainee in 1985, and within a year, she had gained experience in purchasing and stepped into a full sales role covering Orange County and San Diego. That was only the beginning. In 40 years, Karen has watched and helped Momentum evolve from a small regional residential textile company to a national leader in contract textiles and wallcovering. She pioneered states, such as Florida and Georgia, and covered territories including Arizona, Boise, and Honolulu. She also helped grow the correctional industries business. While there has always been great challenge, there has also been great reward.
It was actually my first day of work on July 1, 1985. I show up to our office in Cerritos, California dressed in my 80s power suit ready to learn, grow, succeed. And I walked into the office to be introduced to my supervisor and the air conditioning was out. And I thought, “huh, did I make a good choice? What kind of rinky-dink company is this? Their aircon doesn’t work!” So I just never forgot that. It makes me laugh hysterically because there I am ready to conquer the world, new hire, ready to go, and then walk in and everybody’s wearing their shorts and t-shirts.
04
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned throughout your career?
05 I think it’s about digging in and doing the work. Really using your talents to meet the requirements of the role you’re in and identifying where your talents can take you within the organization. Doing the work day in and day out. Driving for excellence, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps if you need to. Learning can be a challenge because often times for new people or new roles there’s a lot of learning that needs to be done. So it’s about being committed to doing the work and bringing excellence to what you do. What advice would you give to someone starting career? customers, just being kind. I think that’s always been the thread of our culture is to treat other people the way you want to be treated and bring a great deal of empathy to our interactions with each other. It really is the root of our culture to treat others the way you want to be treated. And that sums it up for me in simple words. You never know what other people are walking in. So bringing that to all our interactions, whether it’s with eachother as employees or our internal customers or our external
02
What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in the industry or at Momentum over the years?
Karen eventually hit a personal milestone: $2 million in textile sales in a single year. After conquering her sales role, she became the Director of Western Sales for the last 10.5 years. It’s been a natural fit, allowing her to do what she loves: coaching and mentoring others. “I found a very personal connection to our culture and my ethics and values, and I simply never thought the grass would be greener somewhere else.” When asked why she chose to stay at Momentum for 40 years, Karen said “culture” without missing a beat. Even as a small regional company, the foundation of the culture was well established by the executive leadership team. She felt connected, inspired, and proud to be part of the growing business. In many ways, she’s grown up here, and the culture shaped her just as much as she helped shape it. What an incredible journey.
Oh gosh, so, so many, because I’ve had such a long career within our company growing from being that small regional residential company to contract textiles and then growing the business to be a national entity. There certainly has been a lot of change there, but contract textiles at first were pretty darn basic, kind of ugly, actually. And I look back and I think, “how did I make a living selling some of that stuff?” It was pretty ugly. It was a less sophisticated industry, but we’ve always been developing our brand. And I think seeing the amazing collaborations we’ve had with artists like Sheila Hicks, Emanuela Frattini Magnusson, Shantell Martin, and Rebecca Moses, increased the level of sophistication and our products just kept rising and rising and rising. And the quality of the personnel we have on our team, whether it’s from the marketing department, our sales team, all of our other workgroups that support us in the warehouse, we’ve got amazing people.
02
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker