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Lesson #4: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Keep Going

Article Overview: Newman's second law: “Just when things look darkest, they go black.”

Lesson #4: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Keep Going

Newman's second law: “Just when things look darkest, they go black.”

When Newman and his business partner approached one of the largest marketing companies in America to discuss launching their product, they were met with much skepticism. “There’s never been a real celebrity success in the food business,” Newman was told. “We estimate the total start-up loss for celebrity products somewhere close to $900 million. No offense, Mr. Newman, but just because they liked you as Butch Cassidy doesn’t mean they’ll like your salad dressing.”

Nolan Ryan’s All-Star Fruit Snacks, Tommy Lasorda’s spaghetti sauce, Mickey Mantle’s barbecue sauce – successful people who all met with unsuccessful results. Would Newman be any different, the marketing agency wondered? Instead of becoming disheartened by the executives’ comments, Newman did what he did best – he cracked a joke. “Maybe we should call it Redford’s Own,” he said in reference to his cast mate in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, Robert Redford, not because consumers might like it better, but because he’d “like to have someone to blame” should the product fail. With that, Newman left the executives’ office armed with a renewed drive to prove them wrong.

“I check my pulse and if I can find it, I know I’ve got a chance,” says Newman. He still had a pulse and so he took his chance. He set off to find a bottler willing to work with their product. One after another, the large companies proved unenthusiastic about Newman’s venture and turned him down. “None of the big commercial bottlers took us seriously,” he recalls.

Finally, Newman succeeded in retaining the help of a small bottler named Andy Crowley just outside of Boston. However, the problems didn’t end there. Crowley said that because Newman’s products contained no chemicals, they would spoil quickly on store shelves. Newman refused to add any chemicals and instead, sent the dressing for tests. Chemists subsequently found that the combination of oil, vinegar, and mustard created a natural gum that would preserve its shelf-life. In the end, Crowley gave up on Newman and his venture, forcing Newman to search for a new bottler all the while filming one movie after another.

It wasn’t until Newman happened to mention his salad dressing adventure to a friend of his, Bob Sharp, that he was introduced to the bottler with whom he could later come to work. Nevertheless, even once their products were on the shelves, Newman kept fighting an uphill battle. “We didn’t have an office, a bookkeeper, or any other employees, not even a telephone,” he recalls. Newman himself had invested $40,000, but that was all they had to work with. “We felt we were on shaky ground.”

Newman finally rented a two-room office above a bank in Westport, but refused to purchase office furniture. Instead, he used his own outdoor pool furniture, since the pool had recently been closed for the winter. His desk was a picnic table, while his ping-pong table became the conference table. When summer came around the next year, Newman’s wife asked where her pool furniture had gone; she was told to replace everything. “It looked as though we were going to last longer than expected,” Newman said.

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Article Tags: barbecue sauce, bottler, bottlers, business partner, butch cassidy and the sundance, butch cassidy and the sundance kid, chemists, crowley, food business, fruit snacks, marketing agency, marketing companies, mickey mantles, mr newman, robert redford, skepticism, spaghetti sauce, star fruit, store shelves, unsuccessful results



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