This was a cutting edge organic food company, founded by grocery retail executives to build an organic food brand for sale in conventional supermarkets. The New Organics Company was in the vanguard of what has proven to be the “mainstreaming” of organic processed foods. Like other pioneering enterprises, however, it did not survive, even while helping to pave the way for other more established companies to jump on the organic bandwagon. But before it did, I had the good fortune to be brought in as CEO to facilitate a major expansion of the company’s product line and presence on retail shelves.

The challenge was in trying out targeted marketing techniques aimed at the LOHAS consumer that in the late ’90s were just getting established, which included ‘green’ web sites and the placement of organic products on such popular TV shows as “Friends”. Our sponsorship of cooking shows on PBS eventually succeeded in getting this company on the radar screens of many retailers as well as consumers. The New Organics Company also teamed up with Viacom to launch a Richard Scarry line of organic food for kids in 2001. This line was accepted by almost all retailers and at its peak had some of the fastest moving SKUs in the business. Its vanilla cookie line, for example, was selling six boxes per week in some stores, far exceeding the typical one or two per week for most organic food products.

Reflecting on this pioneering effort, I have come up with the following insights:

1) Employees of such a company must possess authenticity, commitment and passion -- and any who don’t shouldn’t be working there. This is a key to success in categories such as organic that stir strong customer feelings. One of the first things that I had to do when I got into The New Organics Company was to evaluate all the employees in terms of whether they themselves were users of organic products – a test I have since used to determine whether the lifestyle of employees jibes with that of the consumers we want to reach. I also made a point of answering the consumer line myself once every month. (To be sure, we were a small operation so there weren’t that many calls, but it became a lot of fun and eventually all the senior managers began taking a turn, enabling us to drop the call center we had been using.)

The point is, sincerity is the thing that counts most with such consumers. You can’t launch an innovative product line without adapting your thinking to the consumer culture that supports it. Customers for alternative-type companies tend to be educated individuals who expect the people running them to be “true believers,” and who won’t warm up to an organization that seems to lack passion, dedication and a sense of mission. Every person in your company and every advertisement – everything, in fact, with which it is associated -- should reflect the basic virtues, values and beliefs that its customer base either already possesses or that you’re striving to cultivate.

2) When innovating a food line with organic ingredients, there is no room for co-packer inexperience. This one factor basically doomed the company right when it was at its peak of sales and distribution. The co-packer for its highest velocity product, Richard Scarry Vanilla Cookies, had switched our original formula from organic safflower to organic canola. What we failed to realize (since they used very little) was that the organic canola in the plant had become rancid. This resulted in a nationwide recall just as the product was being actively promoted by one of the largest retailers in the country. While the retailer, who was happy with the product’s performance, worked with us to switch out the product, little did we know that its replacement contained the same bad oil. This brought about a second recall, not just of the cookies but of all the New Organics products on the shelves – a double whammy from which the company was unable to recover. Has we been working with a more experienced firm, however, this entire fiasco could have been avoided.

3) Failure needn’t be a source of shame. The fact that the New Organics Company could not recover from the one-two punch of a double recall doesn’t mean that I’m not proud of what we managed to achieve in successfully promoting the organic concept to mainstream consumers. A venture of this sort in which one is intrinsically involved, especially a trail-blazing one, may fail for any number of reasons, but it need not have a negative impact on one’s career. In fact, it can be the key to learning the vicissitudes of an industry fast and provide a rationale for getting to know its movers and shakers.

For that reason, If I had to go through it all again, I would. It taught me a lot about not just the marketing of organic products but sourcing and manufacturing them as well, and I am constantly meeting people for whose plants we pioneered organic certification or sourced organic ingredients. In essence, The New Organics Company experience proved to be one of the best things to happen to my career by opening doors to a whole new cadre of contacts and enabling me to reach out to everyone in the industry with an honest story about how a new venture can end up sabotaging itself. (Special thanks to Mark Retzloff the founder of Horizon Organic Milk, for reaching out and giving me an opportunity while we were winding down the company’s operations.)