Free reprint articles - copywriting & marketing articles

You’re welcome to reprint these articles on your Web site and in your e-newsletters free of charge, provided:

you don’t change the article in any way
you include the byline (including a link to our website)
in doing so you agree to indemnify Powerwriting.com, Power Communications and its members, officers, employees and agents from and against all losses, claims, damages and liabilities which arise out of their use

SHE GOES FOR THE GOLD

by Susanna K. Hutcheson

When is a gold box just a gold box and when does it belong to Campbell Soup Company? That's the question that's gotten a small Tennessee gourmet food company and its tenacious owner in an onerous legal battle. It isn't, however, the first giant corporation she has successfully fought on behalf of her tiny company. Dot Smith, 54, started Pepper Patch, Inc. 17 years ago in Nashville. An active energetic woman, Smith is a fiery and feisty business owner, as her battles with Jack Daniel's and Campbell's attest.

Since she and her tennis partner started the business with $2,000 of their own money and $1,000 they borrowed to buy a stove, Smith has gone from making her products in a cow barn to manufacturing them in three locations. She bought out her partner in 1983 and is now sole owner.

Today, the Pepper Patch makes 38 products that include pepper jelly and Smiths' famous Tennessee Tipsy Cakes. It was the Tipsy Cakes that pitted Smith against her first giant obstacle, the powerful Tennessee liquor wholesalers. Three years ago Smith challenged a state law governing liquor purchases and was awarded the right to buy Jack Daniel's whiskey directly from the distiller rather than from retailers.

"In our state, the retailer cannot buy directly from the distiller," she explains. Only a retailer can buy from a wholesaler. "There was not a confectioners license here in Tennessee," she says. "We just wanted the right to buy at a discount. So our attorneys said that if we held a distillers license in the same county with Jack Daniel's then we could purchase directly from Jack Daniel's." So, upon the advice of her attorneys, Smith purchased a distillers license and moved her bakery to the county where Jack Daniel's headquarters is and she now buys the liquor wholesale.

The spirits are used in the Tipsy Cakes and other specialties. Her efforts saved Pepper Patch tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Then, another giant stood in her way and again Smith challenged the big guys. She got a letter in May 1989 from Campbell Soup Co. demanding that Pepper Patch stop packaging its whiskey-laced Tennessee Truffles in a small gold box that looked like the containers that Campbell's Godiva Chocolatier Inc. unit use. "The letter Campbell sent was like taking a cannon to shoot a gnat," Smith told The Wall Street Journal. "I think the tactic is for me to run up my legal bills," she reckons. "They go in to intimidate small companies," she says. Then, after they have intimidated a string of small companies, they have a precedent when they go against a big company. She says she knows of several other owners of small companies who The Campbell Company has similarly intimidated. The difference is, unlike Smith, they did nothing about it. "If, as a small businessperson, you don't stand up for yourself, you are going to get trampled," she says.

Smith says that Campbell's said Pepper Patch was infringing on their trademark. "Yet the trademark was not anything like what we were using," she says. Smith was very angry. "How could anyone say they owned a shape or a color?" she wonders.

Rather than let them sue her in another state, Smith struck first and sued them in Tennessee, saving her the cost of fighting the battle elsewhere. "Somebody, sooner or later, just had to say no more of this," she says. While neither side can claim victory yet, Pepper Patch still uses the gold boxes.

Pepper Patch employs 25 people and has gone from a first year gross income of $29,000 to $1.2 million last year. Although besieged by battles, Dot Smith loves being in business for herself. "If you're enthusiastic about what you're doing it makes all the difference in the world," she says. That just may be why she is making a difference in her world.

Susanna K. Hutcheson is a professional advertising and direct mail copywriter. She was the first copywriter to utilize the Internet as a place to market this type of service. Susanna has clients all over the world. She writes everything from Web site content to direct mail and radio spots. Visit her Web site at http://www.powerwriting.com. Her email address is powerwriter@powerwriting.com. Telephone: 316-665-7626.

© Copyright 2006 by Susanna K. Hutcheson and Power Communications LLC. Any republication in any manner is prohibited without the consent of Power Communications LLC or the author. We do give you limited permission to use this article on your Web site or in your newsletter if you print it or reproduce it exactly as it appears here including this entire notice. This article cannot be sold by you or published in a for-profit publication, a pay-per-view site or a site which sells memberships. It cannot be used by schools or in textbooks without our consent in writing. Rights to use this article for a purpose other than the type of distribution for which it is intended may be purchased from us. Call us at 316-665-7626. You may, however, link directly (not by redirect) to this article.