Chapter 38

I found out, in bed, that Emily had been afraid I was going to follow Joyce's plan about saying I only had one wife. Hearing from me, that this wasn't ever going to happen, had opened all of her emotional floodgates. She let me know, in no uncertain terms, how important it was to her that I acknowledge her as my wife. I accepted her love, and the physical outpouring that went with it, with joy. I had to wonder what Joyce had been thinking, to even suggest such a thing to all the other wives.

I went into Macklinson's before six thirty, to find that Tom Fremple, the on site coordinator at our Atlanta rail hub, had dropped off a small truckload of vending machine products for me to attempt to sell.

Joyce had called me back a little before eleven, interrupting Emily and me in our second bout of lovemaking, to give me the pricing information for the vending products Tom was bringing to me. It was a simple pricing strategy that Joyce had come up with. Eighteen vending products, all priced at seventy nine cents, retail. Wholesale price was nine dollars and sixty cents for a box of twenty four. This worked out to a cost of forty cents per unit. The retailer would just about double his money each time he sold one of our products.

One advantage Joyce told me to stress was that our products had a much longer shelf life than most other fresh baked sweet rolls and snack foods. I knew this was true, because of the complex preservatives we used to ensure that it was. Shelf life is important in the vending machine business. Some of our products had an effective shelf life of a year or more.

I was very surprised to find Kyle Macklinson waiting for me over at the loading docks. Gene had come home late, gotten my message from Cindy, then had called Kyle up, telling him to be at the plant before five o'clock, to take care of whatever it was I needed. Kyle was Gene's oldest son, and was a plant production man who worked directly for his Uncle Larry. Kyle hadn't impressed me in the few times that I'd had an opportunity to talk with him. He seemed too casual about everything, like nothing really mattered to him that much.

I told Kyle what I needed, and showed him the thirty six cases of vending product that had been dropped off. Each case had four boxes of twenty four units each inside. It wasn't a lot of product, but when added to the breads and rolls that Macklinson's usually sold, it should be enough to give a fair test of whether we could make any sales inroads with the convenience store businesses.

Kyle headed off to get one of the company delivery vans. These were mostly used as back ups for the independent drivers experiencing break downs during their own deliveries. Kyle had told me he knew the perfect guy to go out with me. I went upstairs to try to find something in the way of a sales book to record whatever sales results the driver and I were able to make.

In the vending machine placement business, opening one new location per week was considered good. We had some people who averaged more than two per week, but one a week was good enough. I had decided that opening two new convenience store accounts in one day would be a positive indication of the viability of entering into this market. The thing that worried me the most was whether we would be able to make a sales pitch in front of the owner, or someone who had purchasing authority. I didn't know much about convenience stores, or whether they usually had the owners present.

I found a sales book that would work well enough, just something the drivers used to record bread returns. It had the Macklinson name and logo printed on the top of the page, and about thirty lined spaces below for people to fill in which product was being returned. I picked up two of them, one for the driver to record any sales, and one for me to write notes for critiquing each sales call. I wasn't an expert in making sales calls, but I thought I might show my notes to Shirley's dad, and ask him to give me suggestions for the next try we made.

When I got back down to the loading dock, Kyle was waiting for me, but he was alone.

"Did you get the driver?"

"I sure did. Me."

"Kyle, I appreciate your being willing to help me with this, but I think it would be better if we tried one of the regular route people. I want to get a good idea about whether this would work or not."

"I had my own route for four years, Kenny. I wasn't always stuck working in the plants you know. I can talk to people, and I know most of the people that live anywhere's close to here. We don't want to take a man off of his route anyway. Don't you worry none, if them convenience stores are buying, I can make the sale."

I wasn't convinced. I hadn't seen anything from Kyle to make me think he had any sales ability. He certainly hadn't sold himself to me in the few times we'd been talking together. I figured the reason Gene had kept his younger son, Jerry, with him and had Kyle working with Larry, had been because he didn't think Kyle could cut it working in an executive role. All I had to go on were my first impressions, and the way my own father had kept me close to him in the business.

"When you had your own route, Kyle, how'd you do?"

"I had eight routes in four years, Kenny. I built all of them from scratch, then sold them, and started new ones. There's lots of delivery people that make good route drivers, but don't know how to open new accounts. Me, I was just the opposite. I loved opening new accounts, but I didn't much care for servicing them. I made a lot more money building and then selling them anyway, a lot more."

"Why did you quit doing it then?"

"They made me. Said it wasn't fair what I was doing. They said I was only doing so good because I was a Macklinson, so people would naturally want to buy from me over someone who wasn't part of the family."

"Were they right?"

"Hell no! What they were was jealous. One of Phil's boys tried to do the same thing, after I'd been doing it for a year. It was plumb pitiful what happened. I bought his new truck off of him two months later, at a deep discount from what he'd paid. None of the rest of them tried it, because they were afraid the same thing would happen to them that happened to Billy Ray."

"How long ago was this, when you went out opening new routes?"

"Eight or nine years ago was when they made me stop. I still go out once in awhile though, whenever one of our drivers jumps to the competition. I usually bird dog his old accounts he took with him, and any new ones he opens for a few months after he leaves. They usually hate it, because I generally can pull a good number of them back to doing business with us again. It kind of serves as a deterrent for other drivers thinking about doing the same thing. I don't know but two drivers that made a real go of it after jumping to another baker, but both of them were good at getting their own accounts. Sometimes today, if its a fellah I sold a route to, I'll go out and drum him up some business, when his route starts getting a mite peaked."

I still wasn't convinced. In fact, I was more than half convinced he was making up a lot of his supposed success. At the very least, I thought he was embellishing quite a lot. I didn't see where I had much of a choice though. I wanted to spend a whole day trying to open new accounts. I'd find out soon enough if Kyle had any ability at all.

I was right, it didn't take long. I was wrong, very wrong, about Kyle's abilities and his truthfulness when he told me of his past sales history. He was good. In fact, he was far better than just good. He was a star. I'd been out with some good route salesmen, professionals at opening new routes for the vending operation. I'd watched them closely. None of them had a thing on Kyle. He was smooth and friendly, but, he never stopped working to make the sale, and later, to improve upon it. We ran out of vending product by noon.

He opened nine accounts in the morning, between eight and noon. Nine. We stopped at another four or five where only a clerk, with no buying authority, was on duty. There were three others where the individual with the buying authority was there, but didn't buy. Two times, they listened, but didn't buy, and the other time, the owner refused to listen, claiming he was well satisfied with his current vendors. We had a total of one hundred and forty four boxes of vending product when we started. We came back with nine unsold boxes.

A small part of our success was that we were offering something new, something that looked different from the usual competition. A bigger part was our pricing. Other vendors were selling for either two thirds or three fourths of retail. We offered to let them double their money on a sale. That was, perhaps, forty percent of the reason we did so well. Kyle was the remaining sixty percent. They liked him, and they wanted to buy from him.

"How many accounts like that would it take to make up a route, Kyle?"

"Like those, probably one hundred and twenty. Those cakes aren't all going to sell in a week's time. Some will sell out in a few days, but a lot of them will take a lot longer than that. What does the driver make on each cake sold?"

"My wife said she figured a dime per item for distribution expense, so two forty a box. Your drivers only make five dollars on thirty five dollars in sales."

"Fifteen percent, and you're saying the commish on your product is twenty five percent?"

"That's what my wife says, and she knows all the numbers better than I do."

"A good route would be eighty stops a week then. You can figure an easy ten dollars for the driver, per stop, with your products and the numbers we're giving them. We're going to have a hard time keeping our own guys from jumping over to this. This is twice the money, for the same amount of work."

"We wouldn't allow that. All your current drivers can sell our vending products. They should just add to their current sales, and try to add a few new accounts as well."

"You going to try to put these cakes in with the bread and rolls at the small grocers too?"

"That's always been a part of our strategy. All non competing products. We'll just pass on our normal distribution costs and allowances to the drivers."

"Pop isn't going to like that. That won't leave any money for the company to make. You'd be better off giving two cents a unit to the company, and eight cents to the drivers. He'll still need to bail some of them out, when they go off and get in trouble from trusting people they shouldn't have ought to."

"Why don't I just put you in charge of this whole program, Kyle? You seemed more excited about this than I ever saw you about any of the rest of the operation."

"I'd like it, but they'd never allow it. Can't never let Kyle shine, that's what they'll tell you."

"I don't understand."

"Been like that my whole life. Macklinson people are all the same. Can't have one stand out, else it reflects poorly on all the rest. I'm no better than Jerry, Dougie, Wayne, Billy Ray, Jessie or Steve. They don't want to have it end up like it did with Pop, Larry and Phil. See, that's what caused all the trouble they say, because Pop stood out head and shoulders above his brothers. Caused a lot of bad feelings, they say, and made Grampy pass over Larry for Pop."

"You can't run a successful company that way, Kyle. You have to use people's strengths. If you don't, you can't get nearly as much accomplished."

"Tell them that, not me. Look at Jerry, he's purely being wasted in sales. He knows more about how to run a production line than anyone, but they won't let him near the baking floor. Steve should have Jerry's job, because he likes all that suit and tie bull shit. Dougie is wasted working for his Daddy too. It seems like they look at a body, and then do their best to put him where he can't possibly enjoy himself or get anything good done."

"Why haven't you or your cousins quit? I would think they'd stop doing that if they knew it would drive you all away from the company."

"We love the company, that's why. All of us have been here since before we had our adult teeth. We were all biding our time until it got to be our turn. We were biding our time, but only until they sold it out from under us. Now, I don't know. We all seem to be waiting, to see what changes you make here. If it's still the same kind of company, maybe it will end up being a good thing that they sold. If it changes too bad, then we'll have to think about what we want to do."

"Well, I can't really advise you about that. I'll tell you one thing though, and it has to do with what you just told me. This is your time now. This is something brand new that you'd be perfect to head up for us. I watched you this morning, and it was easy to see that this is where you belong. I feel the same way about your brother and your cousins. If they are good at something, and that's where their interest lies, they should be doing it.

"We want Macklinson's to stand out, to shine. That can't ever happen, not unless the people who make it happen are doing what they do best. I'll handle your father, and your uncles, if it comes to that. They have to understand that this is a business, not a kingdom that they rule. We need to do what's best for the business, and that doesn't include holding anyone back from excelling."

"I can't do it if they say they won't allow it." Kyle was looking at me with one of the frowns I had gotten used to seeing on his face at our earlier meetings. It had been absent all morning while we were out selling. I didn't like seeing this new change in him. I really was impressed with the Kyle I'd spent the morning with.

"Right now, Kyle, there isn't any program more important to the company than opening up new routes, and expanding on the products being offered on the old routes. These are the two keys to the company becoming profitable again. You are the perfect man for running this new program for us. You're young, energetic, and one hell of a salesman. This isn't your Dad's decision or either of your uncle's decision. They sold their rights to make those decisions. Right now, today, you work for me. I'm promoting you to vice president of marketing and distribution for Macklinson's Bakeries. It has nothing to do with what your father or uncles want or allow. You work for me now."

"Things might be simple like that up North, Kenny, but down here, family is everything. I'm not going to go against my Daddy's wishes, not for anything."

"I'll go up and talk to him. I'm sure he and I can reach an understanding."

I left Kyle there on the loading dock. He needed to figure out the money and take his sales book upstairs to have each new account registered, and a folder made up for it. I headed over to speak with Gene.

"Hey, Kenny. Good to see you. You and Kyle went somewhere?"

"Hi, Gene. Yes, Kyle and I had a most profitable morning together. We went out and opened up some new accounts. Nine new ones, all convenience stores in the local area. We sold out before noon and came back. I just asked him to head up a new marketing program for us."

"Here, or up in Kansas?"

"Here. We're going to open up all these convenience stores, and we're going to start selling our vending machine products to your existing accounts."

"Jerry would be better. He's the one in marketing. It should be him that does this for us."

"Well, I did want to talk to you about Jerry too, and all the other Macklinson boys that work here at the plant. It seems that we have conflicting philosophies about how to run a company. I believe you should put a man to doing whatever he likes the most, whatever he'd be best at doing. Kyle told me that Jerry is a real production whiz. I wondered why he isn't down on the baking floor, working his magic for us?"

"Its tradition, Kenny. Macklinson people can do anything they put their minds to. We train them in every phase of the business. You listen to Kyle, and you'll come away with the wrong impression. He's always been one of them conspiracy theorists. Thinks we all have it in for him, that we want to keep him down from shining as bright as he thinks he ought to."

"He is one hell of a salesman, Gene. No question about that. Until today, I always thought he was something of a mediocrity. In fact, I've noticed that none of your sons or nephews seem to stand out in a crowd. Why is that?"

"They're all still young men. They'll come into their own in time. All of us went through that."

"Not you, Gene. From what I hear, you were the shining star of your generation. Didn't your father pick you to run the whole company, over Larry, who is the oldest?"

"He did do that, but he was wrong to have done it. We all agreed it was the wrong way to do things. After he died, the three of us split things up differently, we did it our own way, to make each of us the head of an area. We were all equals after that, it was how it should be."

"A worthy sentiment, I'm sure. Unfortunately, you can't run a successful company that way, as all of you eventually discovered. Somebody has to be in charge. There has to be a single clear plan and vision, and someone to see it implemented. My father gets a lot of advice, but he makes the final decisions. He's the one in charge, all the rest of us just support him. Right now, I'm the one he wants in charge of Macklinson's. I have hoped to leave here, after turning things back over to you, but that was only if we're in agreement about what direction we're going to be taking this company."

"Well, that's what I told you on Tuesday, Kenny. This isn't really our company anymore. You call the tune, and we'll dance to it." Gene didn't look very happy when he said that. This wasn't how I wanted to have our working relationship turn out either. I needed someone in place who was in agreement with our plans and ambitions. Someone who would happily implement a strategy that he was in substantial agreement with.