Despite all these internal adjustments, it's an outside event that may in the long run alter Harbor Sweets the most. Last spring USAir Group Inc.'s supplier began ordering logo-imprinted chocolate mints to serve first-class passengers. In one respect, the contract is the best thing that ever happened to the company. If demand like this continues, Harbor Sweets will have a major new source of year-round sales and profits. But it also calls into question the company's very way of operating. To meet the airline's needs, Harbor Sweets added a shift, from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. For this small shift, the company faced steady demand for a single product, rather than fluctuating retail demand. It could offer a $2 premium to workers who would commit to five nights a week. As a result, new late-night workers are making more than the most longtime day-shift workers.
Even Strohecker admits that contracts like USAir's could change the company. Harbor Sweets, he says, had never planned to do as much business as it now does in custom chocolates. At first these customers were suitably small and chichi groups such as the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. But today, even without USAir, about 10% of the company's business comes from more than 100 corporate customers. For big orders like USAir's, Strohecker isn't sure Harbor Sweets's labor-intensive production method makes sense. What USAir wants is a customized version of the Marblehead Mint, the Harbor Sweets product most easily produced in volume. Strohecker wonders if he should spin off the custom chocolates into a separate, highly automated division that would offer better-paying but less flexible and fun jobs.
"The reality is that a piece of our business is not as unique as the rest," he says, acknowledging that Harbor Sweets is at a disadvantage when competing against more efficient producers like Godiva Chocolatier Inc.
But does Harbor Sweets really want to go head-to-head with Godiva, a subsidiary of Campbell Soup with estimated sales of $42 million? After all, Strohecker loves to tell cautionary tales. Many candy companies, he says, start out to serve only the best. As they grow, these companies get greedy and begin selling to more and more customers, and their products become pedestrian. Strohecker argues that that is beginning to happen to Godiva: the company, he says, is too big -- and sells in too many outlets -- for the chocolate to be seen as really special.
To retain its identity, he says, Harbor Sweets must remain true to its market: "the certain number of consumers who want the best, understand the best, and are willing to pay for it." One way the company restricts distribution is by generally not selling to candy stores or department-store candy sections (that's also because Strohecker figures it's easier to sell $25-a-pound chocolates as moderately priced gifts, rather than as extremely high-end snacks). As long as the company isn't seduced by the lure of growth and money, he thinks, it won't lose the qualities that make it and its chocolate special. "I want the company to grow as much as it wants to," Strohecker says. "I don't want to get small and I don't want to get big. What I want to do is stay conscious of the consumer need for our type of product."
Yet it's not so simple. Just as Strohecker finished explaining his philosophy of controlled growth, Harbor Sweets's one and only salesperson, part-timer Penny Wigglesworth, spotted him on the factory floor and hurried over. She hadn't seen Strohecker in a while and was eager to tell him of her latest coup. It's a project she's been working on for years. For the first time, Wigglesworth told her boss proudly, Harbor Sweets had joined Godiva on the preferred-vendor list for bedside chocolates at Marriott Corp. That means the 500 Marriott hotels have all become potential customers, a move that could mean millions in sales for Harbor Sweets.
But growth means more strain on what makes Harbor Sweets special, both in its policies and its products. Maybe that's why Strohecker himself didn't sound as if he knew the answer to the question he gently asked Wigglesworth. "Is Marriott good enough for us?"
ON THEIR OWN
Harbor Sweets Inc. carries flexibility to the nth degree. Even attendance is optional
How on earth can you run a factory when you're not sure who's going to show up each shift? Here's the system that works for CEO Ben Strohecker:
* No assembly line. Production is organized into work stations, where groups of employees perform the same task.
* Cross-training. Workers learn several jobs, increasing the company's flexibility.
* Few machines. Since there aren't many machines that must be kept running for efficiency, supervisors can adjust to the changing size of the work force. If the molding crew is shorthanded, for example, fewer people can work there.
* Part-time workers. If the company falls behind, it can easily add more staff hours.
* Substitute, where necessary. Most workers are simply asked to notify their supervisors of a planned absence -- or they can just not show up. But in departments such as order processing, where the staff is small and customers must always be served, employees must arrange for someone to cover their shifts.
* Seasonal layoffs. Harbor Sweets hires only for September through December -- after that, everyone is laid off. Some employees are asked to return, and that work force gradually shrinks through layoffs. Since attendance helps determine whether an employee is asked back, it's simple for Harbor Sweets to weed out unreliable workers.
