If It's Not One Thing It's The Other

Many people are willing to take risks, but fewer recognize when that risk isn’t panning out, and it’s time to switch gears.

Lesley Stowe ran retail stores and a successful catering company before she became “the cracker lady.” And when she walked away from those ventures to focus on a single product, she proved she knows exactly when to move on.

BY JANE DOUCET

In 2003, Lesley Stowe was running her Vancouver retail store, Lesley Stowe Fine Foods, a boutique shop loaded with exotic cheeses, breads, homemade entrees, desserts and other specialty edibles. That’s when she noticed that her “birdseed crisps”— crackers she and her staff made by hand on-site — were selling like crazy, outperforming any other product in her line. Packaged in clear cello bags and tied with raffia ribbon, the crackers were so popular that customers were coming from various parts of the city to buy them. That was good news, but Stowe was drained.

She’d been working 10-to-16-hour days, six or seven days a week for nearly 20 years, running her catering business; add the retail shop to the mix, and she was at a professional crossroads. If she didn’t change something, she would completely burn out. “It’s challenging to sustain a high-level catering operation over a long period and keep your sanity,” she says. “And it was hard to make money at the store. Although we had a loyal following, the overhead kills you in a small operation.”

Stowe shuttered the shop – and her catering company – to refine her birdseed crisps. To an outsider, walking away from a successful and established business could seem like a gamble. “I like to say that I’m not a risk taker but that I’m very calculated in my decision-making,” she says. “When it came to the crisps, I decided to focus, focus, focus — and do an amazing job at one thing.”

FIRST STEPS

There were no personal connections financing Stowe’s venture; she didn’t borrow from family or friends to lease the new warehouse or pay for the commercial equipment and new hires needed to increase production. One of the big banks offered her a loan — provided her husband or father co-signed it. “I was furious and walked away,” she says. She headed to HSBC and, without co-signers, secured a loan for about $150,000.

TRIAL AND ERROR

In 2004, birdseed crisps became Raincoast Crisps. Besides that branding, the distribution channels had to change, too: Stowe approached six small Vancouver stores to sell a combined 2,000 boxes a month; they flew off shelves as quickly as they had at her own shop.

In the new warehouse, Stowe and her staff baked the crisps themselves. “It meant we had total control of the product,” she says. For 18 months, she operated an on-site mini store that was only open on Fridays. “It didn’t work, and I didn’t make money at it, so I closed it,” she says. Still, the company continued to expand: the original Raincoast Crisps were followed by four new flavours within two years.

EXPANSION PLANS

In addition to rolling out more products (Raincoast Cookies were introduced in 2011, followed in 2012 by Raincoast Oat Crisps), Stowe decided to test new markets, distributing in major cities in British Columbia and Alberta, then Ontario. Today customers can buy Raincoast Crisps in every province, as well as in the United States; the crackers got the Oprah Winfrey stamp of approval when they made it to the 2012 O List in the O Magazine. “There are lots of opportunities to expand into the United Kingdom, Asia and Norway, but shipping is expensive,” says Stowe. That realism doesn’t mean growth is stalled: Stowe’s considering opening an East Coast operation and further expanding her product line.

WISDOM FROM THE TRENCHES

“No risk, no reward” is one of Stowe’s mantras — and entrepreneurs need to watch out for the moment that this “calculated decision-making” is required.

You know it’s time to take a risk when you have lost the passion for your existing venture, and your new idea has to be pulling you in that direction and pumping in your veins.

Start small, she adds, and study your marketplace to learn who your competition and customers are, and how you plan to make your business stand out. Make sure you have financing in place before you start. Get advice from people with more experience than you. “And expect to work hard,” she emphasizes. “I had to work hard for 20 years to achieve overnight success.”

Register today to see Lesley Stowe at the Deloitte Women of Influence Luncheon in Vancouver, November 6th, 2013.