Face-to-face meetings are critical to my business and the result is I travel – a lot. Destinations this year include Costa Rica, Dubai, France and Singapore internationally, and California, Illinois, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Washington, D.C., domestically. One upshot to traveling is it gives me time to catch up on reading that I just never seem to get around to when I’m at home.  Beginning with this post, I would like to share key messages and ideas from books that I found interesting and that I think you might enjoy.

The Starfish and the Spider
This book is about the power of decentralized organizations; I decided to read it after seeing the co-author, Rod Beckstrom, at the annual Inc 500 conference.

Readers are asked to consider why, for example, Al Qaida is so powerful. How were they able to inflict such damage and emotional terror on Americans?  (As a frequent traveler, this is something I unfortunately think about every time I pass through security. The size limit on liquid and gel containers particularly impacts me since I can no longer travel with 12-ounce bottles of chocolate syrup samples for customers.  Since the gel ban, I think I have become one of UPS’s best customers.  And the last time I packed bottles in my checked baggage, all my syrups were confiscated.  In their place was a note from the TSA saying my bag had been examined. The business appointment that afternoon didn’t go so well!)

So the book looks at how decentralized, leaderless organizations with a strong sense of community can produce outsized, amazing results.  One of the examples is Wikipedia.  No real hierarchy, just people who want to contribute articles about myriad subjects and a self-policing community that ensures the articles are accurate.  One of the comments Beckstrom made in his talk was that, as organizations give up control, they have to increase their trust. When graphed, it looks like this:

As he spoke I kept nodding my head in agreement,; I realized how this applies to Mont Blanc’s business model. Because we use a number of regional production plants, our trust in the plants’ quality operations goes up and some of our control goes down. Giving up some control allows us to greatly expand our production capabilities.  But in the end, we still make and deliver on our promises.

Our unique business model has been key to keeping down costs and maintaining the same level of quality as we weather the current economic storm.

Maybe we are a starfish organization after all.

There were certainly plenty of drink choices here at SIAL. Coffee and tea, fruit juices, water, soft drinks, energy drinks, wine and spirits. Aisle after aisle — and there were hundreds of aisles — showcased bottles, cans, bags and boxes of beverages.  The trick, of course, was standing out in the crowd.

My favorites were the fruit drinks from West Africa. Unusual flavors, such as baobab, soursop and tamarind, are interesting to try. I got some samples to bring home to the lab to see how we might use them in some drinks. I’m thinking about a white chocolate hibiscus drink. I wonder how it will taste … ?

The largest grocery store chain in the United States recently announced its earnings. Profits were up almost 3.5 percent.  What is most striking about the numbers is not the increase in revenues and profits, but that more than 25 percent of the total revenue is a result of private label products.  The private label category is the fastest growing for the entire chain.

At Mont Blanc Gourmet, we are experiencing the same thing. Our lab is developing more and more private label products for our customers, and those products represent the fastest growing part of our sales.

We create private label products for well-known, well-established consumer brands, enabling these national entities to effectively extend their brand identity into more aspects of their operations.

One customer offers to consumers a private label retail bottle of chocolate syrup that is the same product they use for making their mochas.  Another client supplies its franchise partners with proprietary products to ensure consistency in drinks served in stores that they don’t operate.

CoffeeTalk, a major specialty coffee trade journal, published a private label article in its September issue entitled “Build Your Own Brand through Private Labeling.”

With both the foodservice and retail packages, Mont Blanc has experienced significant sales increases in the past year.  The private label trend is strong and growing.  In tough economic times, it makes sense to act on the strong trends.