Obroni and the Chocolate Factory

by Steven Wallace

  Furthermore, I would have to finance this order—to buy more gift box parts and fund all the costs associated with producing more chocolate inventory—but my ability to borrow any more against my house was nonexistent. I was starved for working capital. Would Costco pay promptly? Might they return unsold units? What was their propensity to claim unwarranted damages or spoilage as a means of delaying or avoiding payment? I had been cultivating many smaller customers to whom I felt a great degree of loyalty. I wanted to make sure I had enough inventory, custom-cleared and sitting in my warehouse here in the US, to supply their reorders promptly. Potentially, it could take three to four months to resupply by the time I accounted for the printing of labels, shipping of the labels to Ghana, undertaking the production run itself, securing a refrigerated container, and then hoping that it would ship in a timely fashion and not be held up at port or subject to a longshoreman’s strike or a rent-seeking stevedore or an intensive FDA inspection in the US, or any number of other risks that made it hard to produce within the “just in time” standards touted in all the management magazines I’d ever seen. What were the long-term and short-term consequences if I ran out of inventory for one of my existing, promptly paying customers? Sure, these customers were smaller by far than Costco, but they believed in Omanhene, and you never, ever forget your first customers. To the displeasure of our broker, I passed on Costco with no regrets. None at-TALL.

  I had no regrets because I understood what we could do well at this particular moment. I’d have one chance to make a first impression with Costco, and we were still undergoing our sea trials: working out logistics, setting up office procedures, and redesigning our packaging. Costco would have to wait.

  With some other brokers and prospective customers, the wait would be very long. I’ll give you an example. I received an overseas call; the phone line crackled with possibility. “Steven? Is this Steven? Of the Ghana chocolate company, yes? I am talking to the president?”

  He sounded skeptical. Callers often seemed perplexed to learn that they were talking to the company president. They didn’t realize it, of course, but they were also talking to the selfsame person who packed most of the orders, opened the mail, and cleaned the toilet. Today, in this era of automated corporate voice recognition systems, we are left gob-smacked when we reach a living, breathing human being at a company, much less one with a title of authority.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Yes, Steven, I am Grigori Koropkin from Russia, yes? I have a concern, a big customer, needing cocoa powder. I need you to step up to the plate. What is price?”

  Here we go again. It’s the law of crazy numbers. It’s one of two options: either no one wanted to buy even a single case of my product, or else someone wanted five, forty-foot sea-freight containers a week, starting next Tuesday. Would it be too much to ask, Lord …?

  “Do you want our natural, non-alkalized cocoa powder?” This was my test question for how close these intermediaries are to the actual buyers.

  “Yes, fine. Your regular cocoa powder. Standard.” Grigori was failing the test.

  “So, you don’t want alkalized cocoa powder—you don’t want it Dutched?” I pressed the issue.

  “Yes, standard. Dutched.”

  “Grigori—may I call you Grigori? Most companies sell Dutched cocoa—it’s another word for saying it’s alkalized. We only sell a non-alkalized cocoa powder, one that’s very authentic. We need to confirm what your customer wants—”

  “He wants it cheap. It is a big concern.”

  “Yes, but I’m concerned that I’m not your man. There are companies that produce cocoa powder cheaper than Omanhene. We use single-origin beans, and they are more expens—”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Grigori said. “But you are up against the Chinese. We must have low price. The Chinese are dealing and wheeling.”

  “The Chinese are always dealing and wheeling. I’m not your source.” I knew full well that these chimerical international customers, with dozens of commission-based brokers trying to source the lowest-price, lowest-quality cocoa, were not our target market. Still, it was amusing, and I learned, anecdotally at least, what the spot market price for generic cocoa powder might be. “Let China have this one, Grigori. We can’t win a price war with China.”

  “I know, I know, Steven. Stick to your shoelaces. But please, China can’t deliver until next March.” The date that morning was August 3.

  “Then China’s price is worthless if they can’t deliver the product. Tell you what, I’ll match China’s price for product I don’t have, either. Grigori, when does your customer need the product? Can you get me a written delivery schedule? How many containers, starting when, and for how many months?”

  “Steven, this a big concern, I already told you. You are losing yourself in details. You are blowing wind in my face.”

  “How can I plan production without a firm order?”

  “Steven, you are more Menshevik than Bolshevik,” Grigori said, losing patience, his voice rising in exasperation. “I can’t read the mind of a big concern. I don’t have crystal balls!”

  I considered whether to correct Grigori on his use of metaphor, but he waited for no one.

  “Why can’t you just give me a price right now?”

  “Grigori, we package our cocoa for smaller retailers. I’d have to work up a new price if your customer is truly going to buy full container loads. Otherwise you’ll be paying for packaging you don’t need. But if you want to place an order today, a ten-pound box of Omanhene non-alkalized, all natural, single-source Ghana cocoa powder sells for $X per pound.” I assumed my “small quantity” price was far higher than his big concern wanted to pay.

  I could hear the frustration in Grigori’s silence. Then he said, “Steven, that is a bad-tasting joke.”

  * * *

  I needed to concentrate on finding domestic customers. Customers who fit our target market: small, independently owned retailers that wouldn’t place excessive demands on us. Stores less likely to make us pay for shelf space, known in the retail industry as “slotting fees.”

  I decided to visit a coffee shop, a local competitor of Starbucks, the sort of place with a strong, loyal following, full of people whom marketers call “first adapters”—customers willing to try something new, who define themselves by the fact they like to buy local, or, put another way, customers who lack a strong affinity for established, national, legacy brands. They tend to be skeptical of big corporations and see right through attempts by food conglomerates to greenwash their niche-product lines. I figured that the Omanhene Idea would appeal to such customers, and, on a more fundamental level, chocolate bars go well with coffee (they’re de rigueur in European cafés), and many people drink hot cocoa instead of coffee when they go to coffee shops.

  The barista wore a flannel lumberjack shirt over a gray T-shirt. He sported a tattoo of pictographs that prominently encircled his neck in bold, black characters. I was overdressed in a navy business suit. The barista’s body art was so prominent, so transfixing that I couldn’t help but stare. I was embarrassed by my lack of courtesy. My thoughts raced to the pain he must have endured to get a neck tattoo—and secondarily, how improbable it would be for my stuffy, white-shoe law firm in DC ever to hire someone with such visible body art.

  “Impressive tattoo,” I said, hoping he hadn’t noticed I was staring. “What does it say?”

  “It’s Chinese,” he said. “It means, ‘Make good decisions.’”

  The barista was true to his tattoo. He agreed to try our chocolate bars and our hot cocoa mix.

  There are many ways to bring a product to market, but all involve a lot of legwork if you don’t have the budget for a national advertising campaign. Indeed, even if you have such a budget, I doubt that national advertising would secure the sort of loyalty and immediacy that face-to-face customer contact provides. I hit the road.

  * * *

  It was effing cold. Snot-chilling cold. So cold—minus twenty
-six degrees below windchill—that I wore boxer shorts over a pair of tight-fitting long johns under my wool business suit. This made going to the bathroom a small challenge.

  “It’s colder than a witch’s you know what!” my father said impishly as we unloaded the Toyota minivan, the wind-whipped snow sandblasting our cheeks.

  We set about transforming a couple of four-by-six-foot folding tables into an Omanhene chocolate wonderland. I futzed with the table skirt as if draping fabric on a runway model, stepping back periodically to consider the symmetry, before squatting down to adjust the pleats one more time. My father carefully built a pyramid display of chocolate gift boxes and tins of hot cocoa mix. I screwed a canister of fuel into a portable gas hot plate and began heating up two gallons of whole milk for hot cocoa samples. We carefully positioned our two brand-new Cambros, which are large, insulated drink dispensers for the hot chocolate—a steep investment that I hoped would pay off. My father and I tried to make the Ojibwa Conference Room at the Roadway Inn motel in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, look like Martha Stewart’s conservatory during Advent. It was a tall order. I didn’t have pinecones, oversized brandy snifters, candles, or the assorted bric-a-brac of Christmas, despite the fact our Toyota Sienna had seemed loaded to the ceiling with craft items scavenged from my basement and, most critically, lots of product to sell.

  Jolly Tim O’Toole commanded the room. He used the word “Christmassy” to describe how to lay out a buffet table when entertaining guests, as his chubby digits fastidiously placed a decanter on a floral table runner just so. He enthused about a “big, jammy red” when referring to a favorite merlot. Tim used to perform with the famed Second City improv comedy troupe in Chicago. Today he was playing Oshkosh, with me as his new sidekick, conducting the first of three consecutive wine tastings for a German firm, for which Tim had become the state manager and most successful salesman in the entire country. Under Tim’s direction, DPQ (Deutsche Predikant Qualitätzfermenter) Wines sold more wine in Wisconsin than it did in California, New York, and Texas combined. That’s a testament either to Wisconsin’s capacity for imbibing or Tim’s remarkable salesmanship. Both, most likely.

  A few weeks earlier, Tim called me, schmeikeling for deeply discounted chocolate to pair with his wines. “I’m always looking for something extra to give my customers and thought you might like the extra publicity.”

  Yes, publicity would be nice … but I’d rather have sales. People assume you should be grateful for the chance to give away your chocolate to their school group or book club for free. Do they think that they hold the keys to some undiscovered consumer juggernaut, a demographic segment coveted by corporations around the globe? Well, yes, they do. And they’re right. The chance to talk about my product before a community—even if that community doesn’t think of itself as a community—is a rare gift when you are starting out in business.

  I make it a point never to refuse free product for local charitable endeavors, because I believe it is good for business and, in a karmic sense of justice, it just seems like the right thing to do. Lutheran church raffles, Future Farmers of America fundraisers, Waldorf School parent associations…. I love discovering these small communities. They are invariably earnest: devoted to a particular cause and unabashedly supportive of those who support them.

  Truth be told, at this moment, I had no advertising budget at-TALL. I was desperate for any sort of exposure.

  Tim explained that a key part of his marketing plan, his crowning achievement, was the use of hotel events (which he shortened simply to “hotels”) in selling wine directly to consumers. He would rent conference rooms in small towns in Wisconsin—places where there is not much to do when the snow falls. He then mailed out invitations offering free samples of wine (a minimum of eight pours of wine), with the caveat that purchases had to be made in half-cases—multiples of six—for any particular wine you purchased. It wasn’t unusual, he said, for a couple in Kimberly or Mishicot, for example, to buy $2,500 of wine at one of his “hotels.” The genius of Tim’s approach was that his customers got to sample the wines before buying. No gazing at intimidating racks of bottles, trying to pick a compelling label or spending too much on a bottle of wine simply because you equated high price with good taste. Tim brought the show to you. Established brands might covet Dubai or Park Avenue, but Tim brought pallets of good wine to Oshkosh and Kenosha and Waukesha, with sales commensurate to his peregrinations.

  Taking a gamble, I countered Tim’s offer. “What if I give you the chocolate for free, but you let me talk about my company, how to pair wines and chocolate—and you let me sell my product to your customers at each event?”

  “Deal! We get 150 people per tasting, three tastings a day; we start in late October.”

  Tim thought he had hit the mother lode. “Free chocolate for a few thousand people? Plus someone to teach my customers about chocolate—and how to pair it with my wines? Product plus teaching equals entertainment!”

  That night in Oshkosh, my father wore a blue apron (I didn’t have the budget to embroider the company logo yet), handing out a sample Omanhene 48-percent cocoa content chocolate bar to every person in the room. Tim introduced me. “We’re delighted to have with us, as special guests, Steve and David Wallace, the Omanhene boys! And wait until you hear their story and try their chocolate and hot cocoa! He’s going to teach you how to taste a chocolate bar so you too can impress your friends when you throw your own swanky holiday parties.”

  “I’m his brother,” my handsome, gray-haired father cracked wise from the floor.

  A husband, either hard of hearing or not paying attention, poked his wife, asking her to repeat what my father had just said. The crowd was a combination of middle-aged couples, some groups of younger women—“hunting widows”—whose husbands or boyfriends were out deer hunting or ice fishing this weekend, leaving them to look for some diversion of their own. Whatever the age and whether they were wearing Green Bay Packers sweatshirts, holiday sweaters, woodland camouflage, or blaze-orange hunting gear, the crowd was all smiles. People were here to drink free wine, revel in the holiday season, and have fun. I made my way to the front of the house.

  “I’m Steve Wallace, founder of the Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, and today I’m going to show you how to taste a chocolate bar. Fine chocolate is one of life’s pleasures and one of society’s permissible vices. Here’s how to do justice to exquisite chocolate.”

  I picked up a bar reverentially.

  “The first thing you do is, address the bar. ‘Hello, bar!’”

  This hackneyed line got a chuckle from the audience, their joviality secured after six pours of Beerenauslese. By this time, many in the audience had perfected the affectations of wine connoisseurs. They also had deduced that it is permissible to ask their wine consultants for additional pours, the better to discern some incremental difference between two varietals. The audience was … well, pliant. The importance of imposing a two-drink minimum in comedy clubs was not lost on me.

  “Now we really address the bar. Look at the list of ingredients on the label. You should be able to pronounce everything on the list,” I said, launching into a spiel that’s pretty much what I presented to you at the start of this book. This time, I added a few lines to call attention to one of my pet peeves. “And, to dispel a widespread myth: while the labels on many milk chocolate bars often show a stainless steel pitcher of cold, frothy milk enticingly being poured into a vat by a fetching milkmaid wearing a dirndl, actual chocolate production does not use milk in liquid form, as it can scald. Look for the use of a full-cream milk powder, instead of skim-milk powder, for maximum flavor.”

  By now I could practically hear the audience thinking, “When can we eat the chocolate? It had better be worth it.”

  “There should not be a white powder or bloom on the surface of the chocolate…. Vanilla, while natural, is sometimes used to enhance flavor, but Omanhene doesn’t use vanilla at all…. We use all-natural ingredients—no artificial flavors or color
s—and a natural recipe…. Our chocolate is crafted entirely in Ghana, West Africa, and we were the first company to produce a ‘single bean’ chocolate bar specifically designed for export markets. And right on the label it says, ‘Made in Ghana.’ Interestingly, many chocolate bars have names suggesting tropical roots or they tout their single-origin cocoa beans.”

  Time to throw down the “cheese” card shamelessly. When raising the specter of a rival’s inauthenticity, any reference to the East Coast invariably plays well in Wisconsin. “So, while these other chocolate bars might be labeled as ‘tropical’ or from the ‘rain forest,’ check the label carefully and you’ll find they’re manufactured in New Jersey, for example.” Somebody booed. “Not Omanhene. We go from bean to bar all under one roof at our factory in Ghana—just a short distance from the farms where our wonderful cocoa beans are grown.”

  These bars had been in a cold minivan for the last two hours. They were brittle and hard. When I snapped the bar right in front of the microphone for maximum effect, it snapped, by God, like a ruler being slammed on a school desk. A roomful of people snapped in unison and murmured approval.

  “You know,” I said, “I’ve been accused of taking all the fun out of eating chocolate.” What? They wanted to hear my confession. And it’s true that some people think it’s a mistake to talk in such detail about chocolate. I’ve found that, on the contrary, my audiences want to learn why marketers promote the percentage of cocoa solids on their labels instead of disclosing the truly important ratio of cocoa liquor to cocoa butter. They want to know if the raw cocoa beans are sun-dried and why. Education sells.

  “The best way to sample aromas is to compare several different chocolate bars at one sampling.” At events like this one, I sometimes bring a competitor’s bar and pass one around to show that they don’t have any appreciable cocoa aroma at all.