Success Stories
Small
Business Management Program Produces a Rising Star
Story by Chris Cunningham
“I
do question if I would still be in the business if I hadn’t gone
through that course (Small Business Management Program).” -Kirk
Guidici
Kirk Giudici remembers well his father’s instructions while they
prepared plump spinach-sausage ravioli pillows for the family’s
traditional Christmas Day dinner. “Roll the dough so you can read
the newspaper through it,” the senior Giudici advised his 8-year-old
son - certainly never suspecting the younger Giudici would launch a nationally
recognized organic ravioli company 15 years later.
Kirk Giudici’s Eugene-based company, Rising Moon Organics, is surviving in a fiercely competitive organic foods market, ringing record sales of $1.6 million and selling ravioli and pasta sauces in every state. “We grew 45 percent from 2002 to 2003,” he says.
He credits
Lane’s Small Business Management Program for helping him develop
skills to compete in a niche food market. “I do question if I would
still be in the business if I hadn’t gone through that course,”
Giudici says.
Before he enrolled in the SBM program, Giudici says, “I didn’t
know margins on products, for example. Now, when net profit is not where
I want it to be, we change the course of the ship.”
He commends Lane business instructor Bill Klupenger for helping Rising Moon Organics set realistic goals for growth and expansion. In fact, sales volumes increased from 10,000 pounds per month in 1999 to 35,000 pounds per month in 2003. “He doesn’t try to solve problems,” Giudici says. “He asks questions to help us think through our own solutions.”
Lane’s approach is to help business owners clarify their direction and goals, Klupenger says. The SBM program curriculum concentrates on marketing, financial analysis, and general management and planning, at a cost of $478 per year, which includes classroom instruction, materials and monthly site visits.
Klupenger says, “(Giudici) continually looks at lots of different options, from using sales reps to selling the business or bringing in a partner or raising capital.” Giudici dropped out of the University of Oregon in 1990 because he was worried about amassing too much debt. The following year, he and his partner Jade Elms decided to launch an organic pasta business. With their last $300, the couple bought business insurance and a Cuisinart from Goodwill, and made photocopied labels for their ravioli packages.
A Department of Agriculture inspector certified their tiny kitchen on the condition that they use the space for commercial purposes only during ravioli production. To meet that requirement in a house shared with six others, Giudici and Elms made ravioli from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., hence the name Rising Moon Organics.
To make ends meet, they peddled ravioli door-to-door in a student housing complex on weekends and sold pasta at the Oregon Country Fair each summer. When Elms suggested that she, Giudici and a new business partner enroll in Lane’s SBM Program a few years later, Giudici remembers thinking, “I don’t want to know about marketing. I just wanted to make ravioli.”
When their associate left the partnership, Giudici and Elms divided the workload. She focused on bookkeeping, and he on employee supervision and production. But, they eventually discontinued this arrangement “to preserve our personal relationship,” admits Giudici, who then assumed sole responsibility for operations.
However, once the Italian pasta machines began breaking down, Giudici decided, rather than invest $600,000 in new equipment, to close the Willamette Street production center and contract with a California plant to manufacture the pasta and sauces. That was “the best move I ever made,” Giudici says.
These days, Giudici manages the company and a sales team; works with organic certifiers and distributors; conducts research for equipment; and develops recipes, while seven employees run the Eugene office and make sales calls. “We are currently the national leader for organic ravioli,” says the 35-year-old Giudici. “Our distributors tell us that we sell as much as the number two and number three ravioli (producers) combined.”
Klupenger says, “That’s what it takes to be successful - to explore different options. Kirk is good at building a business. He’s moved from learning about pasta and doing the work, to learning more about the business.”
For more
information, contact Bill Klupenger at (541) 463-4614.
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