Hey everyone,
Great thread! And it's hardly a heretical observation. If you suggested we get rid of Briar Fox, now that would be heresy (and would never happen).
Seriously, we're working on these things, but it also takes time.
Given the number of things mentioned, I thought I'd pick some and weigh in:
1) Back in the fall, when Chris Tarler and I were still talking in terms of possibly merging the companies, I suggested that C&D's product catalog was vast and ungainly. I helped Chris and Keith with some new ways to look at the problem and they started trimming selections from the catalog. I helped, but sort of in the way a marriage counselor helps: I tried to bring a fresh perspective to the deliberative process and helped them to think in new ways, but didn't push for any particular outcome or blends. So, in September/October, the catalog was cut by around 30%. Indicative of the size of the catalog and the overlap with so many very similar blends, that 30% went away without anyone much noticing.
That took it down to around 140 different blends in the C&D catalog (TR will have more because they have listings for everything, ever). It looks like a lot more on various websites because a given blend is often offered in two, three or even four formats, which was something else we were working on reining in. I don't know what we'll do in the future, but I do know that we'll manage the blend portfolio carefully.
But, I hear you, it's still a lot and still a bit of a muddle. Some of it is a function of the number of blends and some of it is a function of communicating about the line (which business people like to call 'marketing').
We've done a few things to try to ameliorate the latter:
- New label art for everything that had generic labels in the past, color coded by blend type, with descriptions on the tins/labels. There are still some older tins floating out there, but everything being made now that didn't have labels previously, now has them.
- We reworked a bunch of blend descriptions. I say we, but mostly Bear Graves and Keith Toney. The blends didn't change, but sometimes the descriptions previously required a level of intimate knowledge of the line that was unreasonable to expect for anyone who hadn't worked there for a decade (me included: I found myself asking Keith and Chris, 'so what is ____ blend?' on a ton of occasions because the description would be something like: "We took 942 base and added 421 to it, plus some perique. Which is good." I mean, that's awesome and all, unless you don't have any idea what 942 and 421 are (and I totally just made up the example, but there were a bunch like this).
- New C&D website (www.cornellanddiehl.com). It's still a work in progress, but we've tried to make it much easier to find stuff you're after by grouping things by blend type and components.
- We're working on, though I don't have date yet, on a small leaflet/catalog for the line with blend descriptions and the like. I don't know exactly what this will look like yet, but it's in the works. Once it's done, we'll give a ton of them away.
- We're working on new label art for the rest of the line (the part that already had artwork), both to help folks understand what's in the tin and to generally update it and make it snazzier. This is a mammoth project. We just wrapped up Autumn Evening and Briar Fox and we'll slowly work our way through the line over the coming months (or years, though I hope it doesn't take years).
- And the line needs better groupings into series. Interestingly, C&D thought of the line this way to a great degree, but the artwork and descriptions didn't tie the series together. We're working on that.
And generally, Peck, you're right about the need to step back and create show-stopping blends. We're working on this. Or, mostly, Chris is working on this. But what Chris has now that he didn't have before is a whole lot more knowledgeable tobacco folks at hand to help him flesh out ideas. It used to be just Chris and Keith, but now Ted, Adam, Jeremy, Shane, Brandon, Josh and a host of other pipe smokers in the greater Laudisi family are all serving as sounding boards too. Similarly, we're working on (though we're still at the infancy stage of this) developing some mechanism to focus group potential new blends with pipe clubs (or something; as I said, we're figuring this out).
2) The move:
Yes, C&D will move in August-ish of next year (2015). Offers of moving allowances and whatnot have been extended to the existing staff. It looks like some will move and some will not (Ted, head blender at C&D is 78, so he's been talking about retiring for awhile). C&D needs to move regardless. If they were to stay in Morganton, they'd either need to expand the existing plant or move into bigger digs (probably the latter) simply because they don't have the space.
3) Big company / Small company stuff:
Yeah, most mergers/takeovers suck. Most of the time, big company buys small company, totally screws it up and ends up selling it for parts on the side of the highway. Even successful mergers--in a money sense--often still suck for consumers and employees.
Some things to keep in mind with this one and why it's different:
Laudisi is a small company. It has 60 employees, not 60,000. I've known the Tarlers for fourteen years. Craig was like an extra uncle to me. We're not suits sitting in New York or Atlanta looking at income statements. We're pipe smokers. Looking at tobacco. And thinking: what cool stuff can we do with this? What can Laudisi do as a parent company to make C&D even more awesome?
Laudisi acquired C&D because we wanted a company we could work together on to make better, not because we wanted a revenue stream or because bigger is better. I think we are make it better. Chris and the guys at C&D have worked really hard, as have folks from across the company, to take a good company and make it great. It will take time for the benefits to be widely visible--we're just six months in--but, as you all observed, some of those benefits are beginning to be apparent.
In brief: we want what you guys want.
4) Thanks for all the kind words about Smokingpipes.com. We're constantly trying to make that better too. Today we launched the Tobacco Locator (after a few weeks of Jeremy and Adam and Shane going through 1600-odd blends with tweezers) analog to our Pipe Locator. It's here:
http://www.smokingpipes.com/searchtobacco/search.cfm
You can use it to help figure out which C&D blends you want to try
In general, thank you all for the feedback and for sharing your thoughts.
FWIW, I'm smoking Bayou Morning Flake right now. If you're looking for a Virginia/Perique in the C&D line to try, it's pretty awesome.
Sykes
