Until Death, or Some Other Sticky Problem, Do Us Part

 

D'Artagnan's IT guy stopped her that afternoon and asked what he should do with Faison's e-mail account. That night, in her Manhattan bedroom, she read his sent items, which he'd forgotten to delete. They left her nauseated. She says she learned that Faison had been arranging the deal since December, talking to investors who wanted to minimize the restaurant-distribution side and look into selling the business within a few years. She also saw, she says, that at least one key person had helped Faison. With D'Artagnan entering the busy season, she knew she couldn't afford to lose him. (Faison would not comment on the deal except to say that no one employed by D'Artagnan helped him arrange financing.)

She began arriving at the warehouse at 4 a.m., navigating among the piles of grainy gold chanterelle mushrooms and vacuum-packed boar sausage. "It was a new sheriff in town," says purchasing director Kelleher, who had reported to Faison, "and it became a very efficient warehouse."

On Adopting Ideas

All of the ideas that she implemented after Faison was gone were probably ideas that could have been implemented along the way if they had been talking. --The Marriage Coach Daguin installed scanning equipment so workers didn't have to pack using invoices anymore, which resulted in quicker, more accurate packing. She asked various managers to run meetings so she could get a read on their skills. And she told everyone to float ideas, even bad ones.

The company is speaking with one voice

On Getting Big

Yeah, one voice is good, though it took 20 years to get there. It is extremely rare that a company gets to the $30 million to $50 million size with multiple voices. You can wing it to $10 million, maybe even to $30 million, but when you start getting to the size this company was, one last human needs to be in charge. --The Lawyer now, but, since it's Daguin's voice, she's overwhelmed with tiny tasks. In her office, where tins of caviar are piled alongside a QuickBooks user's guide, she'll discuss how to source pig's bladder, what to serve at a Nantucket food festival, where missing capons are, how to fight a Chicago foie gras ban, and how salty the venison bacon should be, before walking to the warehouse to attack a different set of problems. If this level of micromanaging is tenable, it doesn't seem scalable. Still, the company made it through the Christmas season, even handling a New York City transit strike that restricted commercial traffic to the city. Today, D'Artagnan sells 200 prepared products and 700 raw ones. In retail, it's focusing on just 35 or so of those products, is selling them in six-case packs rather than 20-case packs so retailers aren't left with expired product, and is selling them only in stores with high-end demographics. In restaurant sales, it has switched its salespeople from commission to salary-plus-bonus compensation, primarily to discourage them from promising special products to chefs (a hassle for the purchasing side). "The business seems to me to be even more vital and stronger than it was," says Steven Jenkins, a partner in Fairway, a New York City gourmet retailer. "She makes sure [what she sells] is absolutely as good as can be." Annual revenue is now $46 million, up almost 18 percent from when Faison left.

That is how their story ends. As for Faison, he now has a nice check

On the Resolution

Many times, the person triggering the buy-sell secretly wants to be bought out himself. It looks as if Faison was hoping the whole time that she would exercise the buy-sell the other way. --The Lawyer and is considering his next move; his noncompete expired in August. "I learned that my identity is not what I do for work," he says, "and if I hadn't had the opportunity to reflect on that, I might never have gotten that gift."

And his mark is still on D'Artagnan. It would not be the successful company it is today if it hadn't been for that partnership; neither partner would have, could have, done it alone. But there's also the frustrating thought that D'Artagnan could be much more today had they worked together better or stopped the partnership sooner. "George and Ariane's relationship prevented this organization from becoming everything it can and should be," says Needleman, who's now the CFO of D'Artagnan and owns a small interest in the company. "But that's what happens when a partnership doesn't work."

Stephanie Clifford is a staff writer.

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