The Apprenticeship of Irwin Simon

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"At 17 I'm off to school in Halifax, St. Mary's University, and I wanted to go there because it was good and it was small. I could be effective, and just like in high school I was a B and C student but very involved -- student council, senate, ran for president. I was paying for my schooling with campus-police jobs and desk-clerk jobs and I became a don in residence, in charge of a dorm, so that was free housing, and being a don, the Moosehead Brewery rep used to give me like 10 cases of beer each week to give out as samples. I said, 'Wait a minute, I can't give this away.' "

It should now be clear that even then Simon was not some kind of burlap-shirted nutrition nut whose vision of creating America's leading and most aggressive natural-foods company would lead accidentally to his taking home more than $5 million last year (in salary, bonus, and traded shares), to say nothing of his ownership of stock worth some $80 million.

Nope, Simon -- the sight of whom wolfing down a huge steak-and-pepper hero might send Veggie Bacon enthusiasts into shock -- hardly came to the natural/organic industry out of ideology. He simply observed that the health-food stores metastasizing in half the malls in America were onto something, then parlayed that into an aggressive and well-run business through shrewdness, charm, good luck, and wisdom gained from a solid apprenticeship in specialty foods. In fact, the only two brands he worked with before setting off on his own were H?en-Dazs, which, with Ben & Jerry's, actually invented its own unique subniche in specialty foods -- call it frozen sin -- and Slim-Fast, which grew fat sending backsliding high-calorie-ice-cream noshers back to the supermarket for contrition. Beyond his flair for finance and branding, Simon was able to recognize that good-for-you doesn't have to taste like it: a typical Simon product can best be described as the synthesis of sin and atonement in the same shiny wrapper.

"I didn't have the marks to go to law school, so I was recruited for an insurance company, in sales. I spent the summer training, but when it came time to write the test, I failed. I just was not into it. I didn't want to do it. Things happen for a reason. Six months later I got a job in Toronto -- my three sisters were living there; my father and mother and brother were still in Glace Bay -- at a company that was a Canadian licensee for H?en-Dazs, and did very well with them in sales and marketing. So I lived in Toronto for three years. My family was there, and I was living with a lovely woman from a very, very wealthy family. Her father kind of inspired me because he had started out from scratch. One day he said, 'You know, marry my daughter and you probably won't have to worry the rest of your life.' "

Though better-for-you foods is one way Simon describes his category, no one really knows whether a daily diet of soy smoothies and spelt flakes really improves human innards: fed enough of this stuff, lab rats may or may not sprout green leaves for ears. Hain Celestial's message is thus directed to the cerebrum's nodus guiltus: eat as much of this stuff as you like, because it won't hurt you -- and to prove it's better, note the price.

"I never wanted to be a bought person," says Simon. "So when I was offered a job in New York for H?en-Dazs, I jumped. It was just a great move in my career." With a telling beginning. Simon flew to New York to find that his new bosses had neglected to lay on transport to their headquarters in New Jersey. The airport cabbies wouldn't go there. Simon noticed a limo driver holding up a sign with someone else's name on it. "That's me," he told the driver.

That would hardly be the last time Simon saw opportunity in taking a ride on an underutilized name. Simon himself conflates a good name with a good brand. "In a small town, what was important was maintaining the reputation of the family name -- that's the thing you'll have till death," he says.

Many natural and organic foods cost more than their nonorganic cousins, but the higher prices often merely reflect the higher costs of smaller and less efficient manufacturing. But in this niche a really good brand name, even a new one, can practically set its own price -- regardless of costs. A six-ounce bag of Terra Chips -- taro, cassava, sweet potato, batata, and parsnip -- cost this writer $4.79 at a New York-area supermarket -- or about 8?iece. The only chips more expensive are made by Intel. In a supermarket in the Hamptons, close by Simon's summer spread, any illiterate can pick up a box of name-brand nonorganic pasta for as little as 69?pound; it takes a truly discriminating shopper to pay a cool $3.62 for a pound of Simon's DeBoles organic brand. At these prices, Simon's products had better be good for you.

At these prices, they've certainly been good for Irwin Simon.

"I was lonely in New York, a real hard adjustment. I was totally an outsider, but at the same time I was not going to give up. Many nights I put my head down on my pillow, and there were tears. I missed my family and thought maybe I should scrub this and go back. I was 23, 24. But I loved what I was doing, working for a major brand, creating growth, learning a lot. I was maturing -- plus I was making American dollars. Things at H?en-Dazs went well. I went up through the ranks in sales and marketing, working with H?en-Dazs in Europe, running operations for our retail stores. But there was just something missing that I couldn't put my finger on. I was frustrated. I wasn't being challenged. Things moved much slower than I wanted. A new product took two years. It was almost as if somebody was in control of my destiny, how much I was going to make, what I was going to do."

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