Hot Product, Cold World

Many company founders talk about their first failures with a touch of nostalgia. At the time, though, they probably sounded like Rick Duhé does today. 'With Cajun Cola, I thought I had the world beat,' he says. 'What I had was a product from hell.'

During the summer of 1988, Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic nomination for President, Dan Quayle and Roger Rabbit came into their own, and I tried my very first Cajun Cola.

It arrived in the mail one morning in early July -- looking, for all I knew, like one more public-relations ruse. Lifting the six-pack of bright red cans out of the box, I expected to see beneath them a sheaf of press releases and a stack of tasteful product photos.

Instead, I found a small greeting card with a hand-scrawled message inside. The author explained that an article I wrote nearly a year earlier had inspired him to make and market his own soft drink. "You have provided a story that has changed my life!" he wrote. "Currently, opportunities for my company grow every month. Whenever I'm asked 'How did you think of a spicy soft drink?' it begins with mentioning Inc. magazine's March 1987 story. Thanks again!" It was signed, with a flourish, by R. Duhé.

Already I loved the stuff.

Just to be sure, I popped a few tops and assembled a few colleagues. It tasted like every other cola in the world -- at first, anyway. But as it reached the back of the throat, the spices asserted themselves mightily, a sensation one taster dubbed a "delightful dropkick." We all agreed: the Bayou boy was definitely onto something.

We were in good company, as it turned out. While Cajun Cola was available only in Shreveport, La., Richard Duhé's hometown, USA Today deemed it worthy of two mentions. The Wall Street Journal gave it a sentence on page one. The host of "Good Morning, America" held it high. True to his word, wherever Duhé appeared -- and he eventually appeared in many newspapers, from the San Jose Mercury News to The Anchorage Times -- he always gave credit to Inc. magazine.

And during our periodic talks, he always had plenty to tell me. He informed me that Alan Canfield, senior vice-president of A. J. Canfield Co., the respected Chicago bottler and main subject of the Inc. article, had agreed to teach him the business and to produce Cajun Cola; that Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt Inc., the giant public-relations and advertising machine, believed in him so strongly that it was working with him largely on spec; that two fast-food chains wanted to serve it. He even hatched a successful scheme to slip a can into Barbara Bush's hands. "If a guy can get rich off a pet rock," Duhé asked giddily, "why not a Cajun Cola?"

Certainly, lack of money wouldn't stand in his way. One contact in the venture capital community had talked about raising as much as $1 million; on Duhé's first trip to the Big Apple, an investment banking firm presented a list of 12 potential investors for his perusal. It was all pretty heady stuff for the 32-year-old Duhé, who, having decided that "I had something worth going after," quit his job with a medical cost-containment service. "Rick Duhé walked in here, and he was the American dream," recalls Arthur Eisenberg, who designed the Cajun Cola can. "He had this idea and threw everything at it. You couldn't help but respond."

For most of 1989, I did not hear from Rick Duhé. He had talked of moving operations to New Orleans, or even selling out if the money got serious. Wherever he had gone, at least he left me with the warm feeling -- a delightful dropkick -- of knowing that I had played a part. "When I read your article, it was like a light bulb went on in my head," Duhé once told me.

Rick Duhé broke his silence in January 1990. Where had he been? I asked. How on earth was our product doing?

Gone was the playfulness in his voice. I can't talk long, he said brusquely, I have to get back to work. Work? I didn't have to ask. "I guess I've let everyone down," Duhé began in a sad voice. "I thought I had the world beat with Cajun Cola. I was convinced that we could make it. Maybe I was a con man, I don't know." His voice trailed off.

"You can get so connected with a dream that you lose touch of the factual place of where you are," he continued. "We had gotten so much acceptance in such a short time. . . . What else was I going to think but that I've pulled off a pretty incredible thing?"

Duhé paused for a moment. "I don't think I'll ever feel good about myself again until I pay back what I owe," he said.

He talked for another minute or so, rambling a bit. Then, with an edge in his voice, he said he really had to go. I didn't get to ask him many questions. And though he never got around to saying it, I understood what he had called to tell me this time.

Richard Duhé had failed.

No one was ever surprised to find Rick Duhé (pronounced do-AY) at his desk, hunched over some reading material. During breaks in his workday, he'd close his office door -- one of his prerogatives as a supervisor -- and study any of a dozen or so business magazines. He spent much of the spring of 1987 looking for ideas. Duhé yearned to be his own boss, earning maybe $35,000 a year by producing and distributing a product of his own making. The only hurdle: figuring out what that might be.

Enter Inc.

Our March 1987 issue featured Alan Canfield on the cover and told the story of how the family-owned independent bottling company weathered the runaway demand for Diet Chocolate Fudge, a lackluster product until a syndicated columnist developed a very public taste for it. During a lunch break in April, Duhé reached for the magazine.

Then, as he tells it, right there -- among the loose files and the unfinished futurity reviews -- nearly 200 years of Duhé family history took over. Duhé's Cajun heritage began shaping his idea, atavistically forming his lips into a new declaration of purpose. Why not . . . a spicy cola? he thought. Call it . . . a . . . "Cajun" cola. "I can't say there were lights, bells, whistles, or a parting of the skies," recalls Duhé. "It was just very intuitive."

And motivating. Not 10 minutes later Duhé was on the phone with Alan Canfield. He explained as much as he could, given that his idea was only a quarter of an hour old. Thinking out loud, he ruminated about America's increasing affection for spicy food, especially the Cajun kind. Canfield wasn't encouraging. "Look, son," Canfield, then 46, told Duhé, "thousands of people work for Coke and Pepsi, and they'll step on you like a bug. I've been at this for 29 years, and there aren't many independents left."