Is Dave Insane? Inside a Brand Makeover

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Stallard arranged for a get-acquainted meeting in December at Dave's corporate digs in an industrial section of San Francisco. There, Stallard and Neary introduced themselves and Deskey to Dave, and Dave told them more about his company, its strengths, its struggles, and his dream of taking it well beyond its current $2.5 million in annual sales. A few weeks later, Stallard dangled Deskey's services, offering a day of branding brainstorming, to be followed by specific recommendations and design concepts--a marketing makeover, at no cost, from brand experts Dave's Gourmet could otherwise never afford. Convinced of Deskey's talents, though still puzzled how this quite made sense for his benefactors, Dave gladly accepted. Like Cinderella, he was bound for the ball.

II. Day One at Deskey:
Intervention and the Seeds of Invention

In early June, Dave's day of branding dawns. The creator of the self-proclaimed "hottest sauce in the universe" and author of Crazy From the Heat: Dave's Insanity Cookbook strides into Deskey's first-floor conference room toting his laptop, looking less like a lionized, autograph-signing chilehead chieftain, for whom "mild is a four-letter word," than a pedestrian ketchup maker. Dressed in jeans and a beige polo short, a PDA holstered at his hip, his retreating hair cropped close, Dave would disappear in a convention of CPAs. But he proves early on that he can hold his own in a room packed with more than a dozen quick-witted creative types. When the around-the-table wave of introductions reaches his chair, he says, "I'm Dave. If you don't know who I am or why I'm here by now, we have a serious issue."

The morning session begins with some background lessons on classic branding success stories, and then Dave is invited to talk about his company. He moves in front of a countertop display of his many products, which nowadays range far afield from hot sauces. He makes a line of spicy snacks like habanero pretzel nuggets. He's also into heirloom and organic pasta sauces, and, under a line called Palette Fine Foods, makes specialty items like mission fig preserves and lavender honey. Dave's Insanity Sauce, he explains, started as a joke--he made it to drive late-night, unruly customers from his first business, a Mexican restaurant in College Park, Maryland, called Burrito Madness. He kept making his provocative sauce hotter and hotter, finally relying on an industrial flavor enhancer called oleoresin capsicum (not coincidentally, the debilitating ingredient in pepper spray).

"It developed a cult following in the restaurant. Then we started putting it in bottles. We went to the National Fiery Food Show in 1993, and," continues Dave, as innocent as a character in a Charles Addams drawing, "we were banned from the show because some guy had a minor respiratory problem."

He returns to his laptop to consult the company timeline. It tells two stories. First, the tale of ongoing, steady growth in the line of Insanity products, everything from cheese straws and bloody mary mix to limited-edition hot sauces that sell in the secondary market as collectibles for as much as $1,000 a bottle. The second tale is less linear--all manner of acquisitions and attempts to garner shelf space and improve sales. A natural food company, Uncle Grant's--bought in 1995, shut down in 1999. A maker of flavored mayonnaise--acquired in 1998, RIP 2001. In 2000, Dave created a line of spreads called Garlic Masterpiece. It, too, is no more. In 2001, Dave's Gourmet leaped into pasta sauces. In 2005 Dave acquired Palette Fine Foods, and in 2006 he bought Chili Today Hot Tamale.

"So why all these acquisitions? Why all these brands? I guess this is the central thing I'm going to ask your help on," Dave says. Then he identifies the core conundrum of his accidentally launched enterprise: "You have a product called Insanity Sauce, and it's so hot that a bottle takes three years to use up. But people love it. It has really connected with consumers. That's very gratifying and it's fun. And we've always focused on fun."

He goes on. "Last year we came up with an adjustable hot sauce. You can actually change the heat level of the sauce by turning the top because it mixes two different sauces in the appropriate portions. We're about to come out with something called Lucky Nuts--where every 10th nut is super hot. But you can't tell them apart."

There are giggles in the room and nods that mime, Dave is indeed one of us, an idea jaywalker. His personal resumé certainly veers from the norm. Majored in Soviet and Eastern European studies. Sought a job as a CIA operative. Worked at a mortgage brokerage. No business degree, not even a business course to his name. He's learned at the helm.

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