Posted On: February 1, 2008, 4:21 pm CST

Posted By: Too soon old, too late smart

I was a FIG agent for 32 years and could see the handwriting on the wall. In my span with them, I watched the whole FIG corporate culture evolve from a solidly-run company, due to its family-like relationship with producers and employees, to a cold one-sided business proposition.
Their underlying business philosophy under Marty Feinstein was to wildly depart from the original model of products & services and come up with clunker products with no sense of what the customer really needed, sorta like Detroit did in the sixties only to find Toyota was eating their lunch. Rather than trim their sails, FIG just pushed even harder in the wrong direction, taking the names of recalcitrants and kicking their asses. When I saw them play hardball with some friends of mine who also were a longtime FIG family and jerk their contract, I realized I needed to make a move proactively into the independent environment, rather than wait for Marty's droogs to knock on my door.
So, yes, if you are evaluating a career with FIG, you want to earnestly consider all the previous comments in this string and look at alternatives available in the real independent distribution model, where am now very, VERY happily situated