2016 Slow Living #2: Get a Scoop of the Action, Chico Lager

Explore slow living principles, community-focused entrepreneurship, and the pioneering Ben & Jerry's 1984 direct public stock offering.

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Key Takeaways

Slow living emphasizes slowing down to care for oneself, community, and others rather than extracting value.
Community-focused apprenticeship programs can effectively support economic independence and skill development.
Ben & Jerry's 1984 stock offering was a groundbreaking example of crowdfunding before the internet era.
Direct public offerings face regulatory challenges but offer unique opportunities for local investment and business growth.
Sustainable business models that prioritize mission and community engagement can create lasting impact.

What the video covers

Introduction to slow living principles through the story of Barbie and Paul Schulick, exemplifying community care and giving back.
Overview of the Farm to Table apprenticeship program, supporting people with limited means to gain job skills and nutrition education.
Announcement of Windham Grows initiative to scale up small farm and food businesses.
Storytelling session 'Show Me the Money' highlighting entrepreneurial experiences and fundraising.
Historical recount of Ben & Jerry's 1984 direct public stock offering, a pioneering crowdfunded stock sale to Vermont residents.
Discussion of challenges and lessons learned from the Ben & Jerry's stock offering applicable to modern entrepreneurs.
Insights into regulatory and legal aspects of direct public offerings and their evolution over time.
Examination of the impact of Ben & Jerry's mission-driven business model and community engagement.
Presentation of local food business competitions and successes in the farm and food sector.
Closing remarks on the importance of entrepreneurship, community support, and sustainable business practices.

Chapters

What are the core principles of slow living discussed in the video?

Slow living focuses on slowing down to take care of oneself, the community, and others. It emphasizes giving back rather than extracting value and promoting well-being for all.

How did Ben & Jerry's 1984 stock offering innovate fundraising?

Ben & Jerry's sold shares directly to Vermont residents in 1984, creating one of the first crowdfunded public stock offerings before the internet era, enabling community investment in a local business.

What is the Farm to Table apprenticeship program mentioned in the video?

The Farm to Table apprenticeship program trains people with limited means in nutrition, job skills, and decision-making, helping them gain employment and economic independence.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

Uh, welcome. Thank you so much. We had a great opening last night with Barbie and Paul Schulick, who told their story, and they are really true, true examples of living the slow living principles. It was sort of, for me, sitting there listening to them, it was like winning the lottery because here is a true example of when my team got together six years ago and had many sessions of formulating our mission and so forth. Every single word that they expressed really defines what it is and what we're trying to do with slow living.

Speaker A

listening to them uh it was like winning the lottery because here here is a true example of when my team got together six years ago and um had many sessions of formulating our mission and so forth and every single word that um they express

Speaker A

You know, you can't be an entrepreneur. You can't move mountains without moving fast, but the whole idea of slow living is to slow down and take care of yourself, take care of your community, and take care of others. Instead of extracting from the community, it's about giving back. Clearly, we all like to live well, but the people around us should live well as well.

Speaker A

yourself and take care of your community and take care of others and instead of extracting uh from the community it's about giving back um and clearly we all like to live well um but the people around us should live well as well so

Speaker A

So that's what it's all about, and we're so glad to see all of you here and learning. Maybe you can take that back. The Schulicks definitely went through many years in their life where there were a few bumps, but they never forgot to give back, and they still don't. From what I know, they're also incredibly good to their workers and their community.

Speaker A

few bumps but they never forgot to give give back and they still don't and from what I know they're also incredibly good to their workers and their community so um just want to welcome you to the river garden those of you who weren't here

Speaker A

So, just want to welcome you to the River Garden. Those of you who weren't here, just wanted to mention that our parade and festival is our fundraiser for all the good work we do year-round. The kitchen that you just enjoyed some breakfast from two days ago opened after a lot of renovation happened here, thanks to USDA for very low mortgages and a couple of very nice grants.

Speaker A

thanks to USDA uh for very low mortgages and couple of very nice grants um the kitchen is going to be used for something we call um uh Farm totable apprenticeship program uh we're very successful program uh our last cohort uh we had 12 uh people with

Speaker A

The kitchen is going to be used for something we call the Farm to Table apprenticeship program. We're very successful with this program. Our last cohort had 12 people with limited means, and they are all now working six months off welfare, doing very well. We're very excited, and by hook or by crook, we're going to have another cohort starting in July.

Speaker A

cohorts and really what I hope is what we're doing is um uh teaching people about nutrition about decisionmaking job skills providing them with uh skills uh that this kind of program will lend itself to other Industries as well uh

Speaker A

Our vision is to have three of these cohorts. Really, what I hope is what we're doing is teaching people about nutrition, about decision-making, job skills, providing them with skills. This kind of program will lend itself to other industries as well because it's very successful and very inexpensive to put on in comparison to some other things.

Speaker A

if you've got any great ideas uh please come and talk to us and without Much Ado I'd like to introduce you once again to Shanta crowy who is the coordinator and mover and Shaker who put this thing together thank you Shanta

Speaker A

Downstairs, we're going to launch in September our Windham Grows, which is to scale up small businesses that support farm and food. If you've got any great ideas, please come and talk to us.

Speaker A

the money that's going to be happening tonight as a part of our celebration of our Hatchery so if you you are so moved to share a story whether it's about uh Lemonade Stand gone wrong or anything else along those lines or just talking a

Speaker A

And without much ado, I'd like to introduce you once again to Shanta Crowy, who is the coordinator and mover and shaker who put this thing together. Thank you, Shanta.

Speaker A

in the spring of 1984 Ben and Jerry defied the conventional wisdom when it sold 12 shares of stock to any Vermont resident willing to invest $126 in the fledgling ice cream company even without the benefit of the internet

Speaker A

Thank you, everybody, and welcome. So, a couple of quick reminders: we have lots of treats in addition to the wonderful speakers and workshops that are going to be kicking off today. Later, we also have a storytelling session, "Show Me the Money," that's going to be happening tonight as a part of our celebration of our Hatchery.

Speaker A

Rob uh you know those of you who were here last night know that uh the session started with uh a beautiful meditation and uh I've got a an icebreaker that's a little different I'd like everybody to pull out their wallets

Speaker A

So, if you are so moved to share a story, whether it's about a lemonade stand gone wrong or anything else along those lines, or just talking a little bit about your entrepreneurial spirit, we would love for you to share in the storytelling. Just come see me.

Speaker A

are 10 bucks does anybody here have over $126 on them couple of well as Shanta said 32 years ago almost literally to the day if you had $126 you could have bought 12 shares of Ben and Jerry's homemade

Speaker A

I would like to introduce Chico and the session. I'll tell you a little bit of a story of what he's going to be doing.

Speaker A

exist the internet did not exist um but the reality is that uh that's exactly what that Vermont stock offering was and uh it was one of the most unique fundraisers in American history and it remains so to this day and uh what's

Speaker A

In the spring of 1984, Ben and Jerry defied conventional wisdom when they sold 12 shares of stock to any Vermont resident willing to invest $126 in the fledgling ice cream company. Even without the benefit of the internet and social media, it was arguably the first crowdfunded public stock offering.

Speaker A

thought we were nuts um I thought we were nuts um so today I'm going to tell you the story how it unfolded and then uh I really want to focus in and talk about how uh the lessons that we learned

Speaker A

Here's the story of how it unfolded and the lessons learned that are applicable to entrepreneurs and fundraising today. So please join me in welcoming Chico.

Speaker A

to do is take you back to 1984 and and the first slide that's that's actually the second Slide the first slide didn't show up for technical glitch but it was a picture of Madonna uh because in 1984 Madonna was parading around in a wedding

Speaker A

Morning.

Speaker A

first term and the beginning of uh he was running for a second and uh if you had money in the bank uh you were earning 10% interest on a one-year CD hard to believe that was 1984 um in 1984 at the next slide that's a

Speaker A

Morning, Rob. You know, those of you who were here last night know that the session started with a beautiful meditation, and I've got an icebreaker that's a little different. I'd like everybody to pull out their wallets and count up their money. Seriously.

Speaker A

Jerry has grown one but that's how they look back then and uh you know they didn't make uh you know you know the myth they weren't making any money in the gas station it was too cold uh to

Speaker A

Okay, well, if you've got your wallet, I want you to pull it out, count up your money. Don't take too long; we don't have all day, you people.

Speaker A

tubs and then in pints to the restaurants and uh first first and 2 and a half gallon tubs to restaurants and then in pints to the supermarkets and grocery stores uh next slide please that's that's picture me what's the most

Speaker A

Are you at 10 bucks? Does anybody here have over $126 on them? Couple of—

Speaker A

two pencil and on my desk I've got a calculator 1984 is before PCS uh were uh were out they were actually just coming out but you know Ben and Jerry's did not have the money to uh uh to buy a PC so

Speaker A

Well, as Shanta said, 32 years ago, almost literally to the day, if you had $126, you could have bought 12 shares of Ben and Jerry's homemade—

Speaker A

University of Vermont uh got a undergraduate degree in business then went to uh the University of Southern California got an MBA and came back from uh California and I was own I owned and operated a bar a nightclub called

Speaker A

Ink? Anybody do that? Any original shareholders?

Speaker A

to the bank and Ben Jerry and I worked out uh a Free Trade Agreement uh not just free trade but fair trade and so the deal was that I could go up to their place and I could get free ice cream

Speaker A

All right, we got one back there. Will, did you buy stock?

Speaker A

year was 1983 uh by coincidence that was the first year they made any money um next slide please no back back one you've gone too far back there it is World Headquarters Ben and Jerry's World Headquarters this is uh uh 3,000 ft of

Speaker A

Yeah, we got Will.

Speaker A

the the clearance height on the ceiling was just over 6 feet and there were a couple of uh beams that you had to duck under when you moved from one end of the office to the other and as you can see

Speaker A

Okay, a couple—

Speaker A

showed up that day and that was an occasion enough for us to shut down the production line get everybody out and take a picture next slide all right so this is our manufacturing operation uh everything that we made ice cream on

Speaker A

So, as Shanta said, nobody referred to that as crowdfunding. That term did not exist. The internet did not exist, but the reality is that's exactly what that Vermont stock offering was. It was one of the most unique fundraisers in American history, and it remains so to this day.

Speaker A

called it was called the old Commander it was a cherry Burell v1d called the old commander and it was in the hallway at this auction and it wasn't even listed in the catalog and at the end of the auction Ben and Jerry went up to the

Speaker A

What's interesting is now the laws are changing, and raising money directly from the public is becoming more accepted and easier to do. But back when Ben and Jerry's did it, it was totally without precedent, and everybody thought we were nuts. I thought we were nuts.

Speaker A

literally were filling pints by hand I it's hard for me to do this holding the mic but you know a the ice cream's coming out of that pipe in a continuous flow 100 gallons per hour ala there is filling it

Speaker A

So today, I'm going to tell you the story of how it unfolded, and then I really want to focus in and talk about how the lessons that we learned fit into the current regulatory environment. Because, interestingly enough, 32 years later, a lot of what we went through is very applicable today to any entrepreneur who's trying to raise money.

Speaker A

filled down and there'd be a Capper there throwing caps on them they'd invert the PIP the the pints every other one so they would Nest together um there was a a chute they'd put a plastic bag on it they'd slide eight pints into uh

Speaker A

So, first thing I'm going to do is take you back to 1984. The first slide—that's actually the second slide. The first slide didn't show up due to a technical glitch, but it was a picture of Madonna because in 1984, Madonna was parading around in a wedding dress singing "Like a Virgin" on MTV.

Speaker A

Harden because you needed the air circulation around it and the next day they'd restack it so um in 1984 we had uh just entered the Boston Market mostly selling in Northern New England uh Vermont New Hampshire Maine just entered

Speaker A

Now, the second slide was the number one movie in America. Third slide, it was "Morning in America." We all remember that. The president was at the end of his first term and the beginning of his run for a second.

Speaker A

we could then take the show down to New York and uh go on from there um this manufacturing facility had reached its capacity so we're in early 19 1984 we're going to just get by through the summer of 1984 Peak ice cream season but

Speaker A

If you had money in the bank, you were earning 10% interest on a one-year CD. Hard to believe that was 1984.

Speaker A

one official PowerPoint slide that I put together took me about an hour um our sales in 1983 $1.8 million our profits 57,000 the cost of a new Factory just under uh 3.5 million Karen will tell you that's a little bit of a heavy lift uh

Speaker A

In 1984, at the next slide, that's a picture of Ben and Jerry, six years after they opened for business in the original gas station on the corner of College and St. Paul. That's Ben on the left, Jerry on the right.

Speaker A

under consideration uh most of the money was going to come from the banks uh we were going to have to borrow it uh but we really couldn't begin those conversations uh until we brought more Equity into the company uh because our

Speaker A

Interestingly, today Ben has shaved his beard, and Jerry has grown one, but that's how they looked back then.

Speaker A

would have been to go on to venture capitalists and um there were two problems with Venture capitalists uh and we did have some meetings with them the first was is that uh their perception of what the value of Ben and Jerry's was

Speaker A

You know, the myth is they were making money in the gas station. They weren't. It was too cold to sell ice cream in Vermont, even when they ran the "Pops of Bisu" promotion, a penny off per Celsius degree below zero winter extravaganza. Still, they weren't selling enough ice cream.

Speaker A

and A2 and that seemed like uh we'd be giving up too high a percent of the business um the second problem with venture capitalist was it meant that you'd have to give up a certain degree of control and uh uh those of you who know

Speaker A

So they began to wholesale the product, first in two-and-a-half-gallon tubs, then in pints to the restaurants, and first two-and-a-half-gallon tubs to restaurants, then in pints to supermarkets and grocery stores.

Speaker A

Colgate University and he's working for the food service and he's in the dishroom uh and it's Ben's job to scrape the food off the plates into this giant garbage disposal and uh he's very happy in the uh in the dishroom and he's got

Speaker A

Next slide, please. That's a picture of me.

Speaker A

garbage disposal but anyway uh in response what Ben decided to do is he didn't want to shave but he he shaved a very thin strip right down the center of his chin and Ben's logic was he no longer had a beard he had two very bushy

Speaker A

What's the most obvious thing? Carol pointed out it's the fact that you can foresee the future on my hairline. But if you look real closely at this, you'll see in my left hand I've got a giant general ledger, my right hand a number two pencil, and on my desk I've got a calculator.

Speaker A

that's a long way of saying that VCS who were going to have a say in how the business was going to be operated uh was not high on Ben's list and the alternative that Ben proposed uh was that they should sell stock to vermonter

Speaker A

1984 is before PCs were out. They were actually just coming out, but Ben and Jerry's did not have the money to buy a PC.

Speaker A

better way uh to give back to the community than to make them the owners of the business they will prosper as the business prospers so from the outset you know Ben had this Vision that the uh initial investment required from any

Speaker A

So, at Ben and Jerry's in those days, it consisted of that calculator, a copier, and we had one of those IBM Selectric typewriters that had that white self-correcting ribbon.

Speaker A

in $100 increments and they also thought that uh a large number of small shareholders would be a financial burden and it would make it much harder to raise subsequent money uh as the business hopefully continue to grow um

Speaker A

How did I come to work at Ben and Jerry's? Well, I went to the University of Vermont, got an undergraduate degree in business, then went to the University of—

Speaker A

even thought that they would do a th000 shareholders would do what he and I would do whenever we went into the supermarket which was straighten out the pints and make sure that they had Heath bar crunch so um the question of course was

Speaker A

you know was was this idea even possible I get the next slide well Ben's idea that this was possible was based on a conversation that he had with this guy uh this is Harry Lance who was the Securities administrator for the State

Speaker A

Department of banking and insurance uh now Harry was a thesbian uh Janet you're a member of Lyric Theater what what production of Lyric Theater is this do you know anybody recognize the character it's not Death of a Salesman

Speaker A

that is Henry Higgins from the 1989 production of my fair lady you know Harry was was a star he was also tevia and and Fiddler on the Roof so anyway this being Vermont uh you know Ben drives down to Millar you know

Speaker A

unannounced no appointment shows up at Harry's office and says you know I want to sell stock and Ben and& Jerry's to the people who lined up to buy ice cream at the gas station and uh you know Harry

Speaker A

uh Harry listens you know and he's you know kind of uh you know he doesn't dismiss his outand and he actually gives Ben this copy of the Vermont Securities act this is the actual copy that Harry gave to

Speaker A

Ben um and uh he says well there might be something in there and in fact there is this exemption to Federal Securities laws that says that if a business is uh operating and doing business in Vermont that it can sell stock to residents of

Speaker A

Vermont um and uh uh uh you don't have to register with the SEC that's the big Advantage the the the instate stock exemption um but initially Harry takes the position that the offering can't be self- underwritten uh the company can't sell the the stock

Speaker A

directly uh to uh the public it needs to have a broker dealer involved so Harry gave us two options first option is uh he goes uh well Ben uh you Chico you can go down to Boston uh you can take the uh

Speaker A

the 6-hour nasd Series 7 Exam uh and uh they're given the third Saturday of every month and if you pass that you'll be registered stock Brokers and then you can sell stock so Ben and I look at each other

Speaker A

and say okay Harry what's what's option two and uh Harry says well option two is to find uh a registered broker dealer someone who's already registered in the state of Vermont to sell Securities and have them act as your agent so we we say

Speaker A

okay uh but we go out and start talking with people who are registered broker dealers and it's it turns out to be a catch22 uh any registered broker dealer is a member of the nasd any member of the nasd can only sell stock that's been

Speaker A

approved by the SEC so you go around and around and in fact if you're required to use a registered broker dealer then the Vermont exemption uh does not in fact exist so um you know we went back to

Speaker A

Harry and you know he conceded the point and he said okay uh I will I will register Ben and Jerry's as stock Brokers for purposes of selling your stock and had he not made that concession he had not made that decision

Speaker A

the Vermont state offering never would have happened so uh we're now registered stock Brokers and uh the next stop next step is is to uh develop the U prospectus or offering circular and um not yet uh this is this is uh this is our

Speaker A

copy this is the copy of our uh prospectus uh this is actually my copy again I've got all these historical artifacts I know it's my copy because it says Chico's copy right on it and just to be sure I put Fred in parenthesis um

Speaker A

so it's 40 pages and it's got a subscription form in the back and it's got an affidavit because people had to certify that they were in fact Vermont residents if we had sold stock to even one person who wasn't a registered

Speaker A

wasn't uh a resident of Vermont uh the entire offering would have been void and you know the perspectus has all the usual things that you would expect in it you know it has um descriptions of the business it talks about how the proceeds

Speaker A

are going to be used um has brief bios of of the management I I'll read you Ben's bio here it says Mr con first became involved with ice cream in 1968 as an independent mobile ice cream retailer with pi Piper Distributors

Speaker A

Hemstead New York during the Summers you know he ran around and he drove the ice cream truck and rang the bell and sold to the kids that was his background and he did get promoted and started doing warehousing inventory control and then

Speaker A

he spent 3 years as a crafts teacher at Highland Comm Community Paradox New York residential school for Disturbed as adolescence and then he went on to Ben and Jerry so that that was the the bio of the president of the company that

Speaker A

that we were looking uh asking people to invest in um we had audited financials uh in there for one year our our financials had a qualified opinion uh because the Auditors that I had hired when I got there had not observed the

Speaker A

year-end inventory in 1982 and you know sometimes you can back you know you through other means you can you know ascertain what the inventory was and our Auditors could not there there was no way that they could go back they

Speaker A

said we we've tried but there's no other way because you know creativity at Ben and Jerry's in those days was not limited to product development um and we were we were also able to uh include some projections and

Speaker A

um there was a disclaimer with the ejections that said no representation is made or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of such estimates projections or assumptions um it would have been just as accurate if we had said we made these

Speaker A

numbers up we have we have no idea how much I screen we're going to sell 5 years from now um you know right up front uh three pages of what's called investment considerations the so-called risk factors uh the first one was high

Speaker A

risk the common stock offered by the company hereby is speculative and involves a high degree of risk prospective investors should be aware that they may lose their entire investment and in parenthesis if you can't afford to lose it don't do it that

Speaker A

that parenthetical was Ben's contribution to the prospectus and he thought okay if we say that we don't have to say anything else uh but the the lawyers and Harry came up with three more pages of uh of risk factors why uh

Speaker A

uh putting your money into Ben and jurs was going to be a mistake of Epic Proportions um anyway um we uh we got the prospectives completed without the benefit of a word processor we printed it off at a quick Copy Shop uh three

Speaker A

staples down the spine and now we'll go to the next uh slide that is uh what's known in the trade as a tombstone uh it's called a tombstone because it's got uh rows of uh basic information uh in nondescript type um

Speaker A

you look at that last line there get a scoop of the action uh we had many conversations with Harry before he signed off on that one um but you can see the basics of the offer are are listed in this Tombstone ad um the share

Speaker A

price was $150 uh the minimum purchase was uh 12 shares 126 uh we were offering a total of 73,500 shares which was about 17.5% of the company uh which meant that if it sold out we were going to net about

Speaker A

$700,000 after about $70,000 in expenses um we set the valuation for the business at about $4.4 million which is you know not quite double what the VCS had estimated the uh the company was worth um we Justified that because uh it's now in April so our

Speaker A

first quarter of 1984 is complete and our sales were you know comping at about uh uh two and a half times what they had the previous year so we felt that we were going to hit 4 million in sales in

Speaker A

1984 and felt pretty confident about that we priced it at um at four at $4.4 million as the valuation um the offering began on May 1st we could extend it uh for one month if we so chose uh to June 30th and it

Speaker A

doesn't say in the ad but the offering was contingent on us raising at least half a million dollars um you know one of the worst results would have been if we had raised $100,000 and had you know 100 small shareholders but didn't have

Speaker A

enough money to execute our business plan so similar to Kickstarter uh unless it was fully funded or almost fully funded at least funded enough that we thought we could execute the business plan all the money was going to go back

Speaker A

now whenever I tell this story what most surprises people is that we rais the money in two months um because you know most people think the the more time that you give the greater likelihood you have of success um but the reality is is that

Speaker A

uh more time can actually work against you you know people have a natural tendency to procrastinate uh they're not going to make a decision until you say time's up you know are you in or you're out and Ben's thinking was you know if

Speaker A

we give them one month or we give them 6 months they're not going to make their decision until the day before uh the deadline um but there was also a very practical reason why we needed to raise the money uh uh quickly um you know this

Speaker A

is the start of a long journey uh it's uh it's April um and we we need to secure this but then we still need to get the banks to send us you know $2.5 million we need to design the factory we

Speaker A

need to go through act 250 and get all of our permits we need to hire a contractor we need to order the steel which has a an extremely long lead time and we have to get in the ground and

Speaker A

pour the foundation uh before winter um because concrete doesn't freeze that it doesn't Harden that well if the ground is frozen so uh we we said you know if we're going to fail we want to fail fast as and plan

Speaker A

B would have been of course to go back to the VCS and said well after second thought maybe the business only is worth 2 A5 million um marketing the offering um it's April 30th um we're registered uh stock Brokers uh we've got our

Speaker A

prospectus uh printed we're ready to market the stock now in a typical IPO those um those Tombstone ads they don't show up until the offering is already sold out um in the bizarre world of financing you don't advertise to

Speaker A

actually sell the stock you advertise to tell people what a great job the the bankers did uh selling the stock meanwhile they're quietly selling the stock to their best customers and their institutional investors um of course we we needed the ads to actually work we

Speaker A

needed the ads to prompt people to say to call the bener stock line and say you know uh I want to invest in your in your in your company so we put the ads in all the local papers and we um we typically

Speaker A

put them with the uh uh movie and TV listing sometimes with the comics because we figured that's where they'd be most noticeable um we also put out a press release and uh and then by Miracle uh articles appeared the next day now again

Speaker A

no internet no social media no email uh the the the editors of uh the media are The Gatekeepers and uh you're at their Mercy but you know this ties back again to Ben's idea of the low minimum um we

Speaker A

thought this was going to be a story that uh that the Vermont press could not ignore because it was such a fanciful story it was like uh those old Mickey Rooney Judy Garland movies you know let's let's put on a show and sure

Speaker A

enough we put out the press release and and it appeared in the paper um almost verbatim um next slide uh the only other way that we could promote these was through informational meetings um every day around 4:00 uh Ben and I would uh load a

Speaker A

freezer full of ice cream into a van and we drive some place in Vermont to a to a hotel in a meeting room and uh we'd set up and we'd do a dog and pony show about the offering um it was very similar to

Speaker A

what you see on Kickstarter today only we were live in front of an audience instead of on on tape um of course we gave free ice cream at the end so people couldn't leave early and then uh at the

Speaker A

end of the after asking answering the questions uh uh like a rock band with no Ries we'd load the load the van back up put the freezer in and drive back to South Burlington the next we'd go to

Speaker A

work work a full day 4:00 we'd get in the van and we'd go off to another informational meeting uh well we got off to a very quick start uh within two weeks we had uh subscriptions in hand for

Speaker A

$200,000 and uh it slowed down in the second half of May uh but as that deadline approached as May 31st approached you know every day more and more subscriptions started coming in so we extended for uh the month of June

Speaker A

and uh passed 500,000 the first week of June and uh sold it out again on the last day and uh in fact the last day was a Saturday we didn't know until the following Monday and as it turned out uh

Speaker A

the offering was over subscribed we had to return money to about 100 uh individuals um onethird uh about 1800 people purchased stock in that offering we estimated it uh on the back of an envelope and we said that's one of

Speaker A

every hundred Vermont households uh that's that's the the myth that has gone on I think it's fairly close to being true uh one of every Vermont one of every hundred Vermont households was now a shareholder in Ben and Jerry's uh

Speaker A

onethird of those, 1800 bought the minimum uh $126 um there were only 73 people who invested more than a thousand and uh the almost all of those bought 100 shares for $1,050 only 73 now the largest investment we got was

Speaker A

$221,000 Excuse me while I uh look like Marco Rubio here the largest investment was uh $21,000 came from uh the poet and the writer Kenwood Elmsley uh does anybody know familiar with Kenwood uh he lived in uh uh Callis and

Speaker A

Poets corner and and is that how you pronounce that do I get that right callus and um uh he invested 21,000 so two very interesting things about Kenwood Elmsley uh the first is he was the grandson of Joseph Pulitzer uh known

Speaker A

today you know for the Pulitzer prizes um uh he was the publisher of the New York world uh but what you might not know about uh uh Joseph Pulitzer is he probably ran uh the very first successful crowdfunding campaign that

Speaker A

was ever conducted this is in 1885 he raised $100,000 from 160,000 people you know subscribers to the New York world 34s of those people put in less than a buck and he raised that money to build uh the

Speaker A

granted base upon which the Statue of Liberty was placed in New York Harbor you know the Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France uh but it didn't come with the base and uh you know very similar to politics today you

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know it wasn't clear where they were going to put it and no one had the money to you know erect the base and Joseph pzer said you know I'm going to I'm going to figure this out so kenward had

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crowdfunding in his DNA um the other interesting thing about kenward next slide please he he wrote the score for this uh uh Broadway music IAL the grass harp um You probably have never heard of the grass harp cuz it ran for 2 weeks and

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then closed um but there's a great uh uh song on the original score uh and the song is called I trust the wrong people um Kenwood wrote the words for that now I'm going to I just watch Carly

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furina make a a total but I and she has a much more beautiful voice than I do but I am going to sing you the opening chorus of uh of I trust the wrong people and I'll apologize in advance I trust

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the wrong people I take the wrong turn one more bitter ending when will I [Music] learn they're they're singing that up in the Northeast Kingdom right now um so anyway as a turns out you know Kenwood didn't trust the wrong people uh he got

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it right in a big way and by some miracle everything else uh that needed to happen fell into place um we uh we had been turned down by every Bank in Vermont literally every Bank in Vermont turned down uh the deal uh every Bank in

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Boston turned down the deal every Bank in New York City turned down the deal uh we finally found a banker Ken cage worked out of the Albany office of marine Midland based B out of Buffalo New York uh who agreed to lend Ben and

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Jerry's $2.1 million um it was through an industrial revenue bonds that were issued by the state of Vermont uh the state wasn't guaranteeing any money they were just giving some favorable tax treatment to a banker who was willing to take that risk

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uh so we got 2.1 million from Marine Midland and uh the last piece of the financing was a $650,000 uh Urban Development action Grant from HUD um it was a great program they would lend the money to the town of

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Waterbury uh Waterbury in turn uh lent it to Ben and Jerry's um it was basically low interest subordinated debt and the beautiful thing about it was that when Ben and Jerry's paid back the town of Waterbury they got to keep it

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and they could in turn relent it to other businesses so it became this revolving fund that generated a lot of uh really good economic activity so uh next slide please uh we began construction we did get in the ground

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not quite before the snowfly it turns out you can put chemicals in concrete to make it harden when the ground is Frozen that's the Waterberry plant uh under construction you know sometime in the winter of 8485 and then the next

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slide that's uh opening day uh we had yet to landscape uh but that's the the factory on opening day and uh before we cut the ribbon uh representative Jeffs I think he was in the in the house at that point

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was there to cut the ribbon with us uh we held our annual shareholders meeting under that tent so it's a it's a really really great story and I know exactly what you're thinking as you sit there today you you are not the first to have

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had that thought so let me let me finish by by before you get you know all excited about raising money the way Ben and Jerry did let me uh let me tell you a little bit about how I think what we did fits into the

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current regulatory environment uh uh there is good news as I said earlier and as you all probably know uh the regulatory environment is changing uh both uh at the federal level and also at the state level uh have made

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Provisions that make it uh very possible to raise M raise funds uh directly from uh from the public um the uh the jobs act which was the federal law title three uh the regs for title three which is the section of the law that covers

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crowdfunding from so-called unsophisticated investors unsophisticated meaning they don't have high net worth and they don't have high uh net income those regulations take effect uh next month in May um so uh you're going to see uh companies online

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uh raising money and uh per Federal Regulations individuals are going to be able to readily invest in businesses like Ben and Jerry um uh the other the other you know kind of advantage today is that um there's uh the internet there's social

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media there's means to communicate directly to the public that Ben and Jerry's did not have at the time uh so it's much easier to State your case you don't have to go through the editorial Gatekeepers at the newspapers and the third Advantage

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although most people don't think of it as you know a positive is that you know CDs are not paying 10% uh you can't you can't put your money in the bank and make a 10% return and that kind of gets

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people saying well where else can I put my money how else can I get uh a decent return but uh those are the pros there are some obstacles that uh that are going to be in the way I think of uh as

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as direct public stock offerings become uh more readily uh uh more readily used I think some of the obstacles are going to come into clearer Focus so what are those well the first is the real ity that uh despite the great success of

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manag areas most of the people who invest in startups uh lose all their money uh that's just the way it is because the majority of small businesses fail uh even those that don't completely fail uh they fail enough such that uh

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early investors don't get back uh a return um the second uh real obstacle to direct uh offerings like what benen and jer's did is these Investments uh have a very limited uh um liquidity uh you can't get your money out uh once you put

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it in uh you know we're we've become a nation of day Traders we're all used to going online opening up our accounts at erade or Schwab a few clicks we buy and sell well um diamonds are forever and so

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is investing in in startups you put your money in even if the business succeeds often it's it's it's very impossible uh to get your money out now the example of Ben and Jerry's is not really applicable uh because you know we continue to grow

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we did the 4 million uh we did 10 million the next year and we were on track to do 20 the year after that and in the end of 1985 we did a fully registered IPO with Tucker Anthony a

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regional brokerage firm um and then we were listed on NASDAQ so all the Vermont shareholders had instant liquidity a year later but but the listing requirements today on NASDAQ are astronomical um you know in terms of what you need for uh sales income market

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cap uh and that option is uh is really going to be very limited to all but the the most successful businesses so most of the companies that that raise funds through a direct public offering are not going to have the option of then doing

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fully registered IPOs um you know when I look back on this I've also kind of come to the conclusion that Ben and Jerry had a lot of advantages that many businesses trying to raise money directly from the public won't necessarily enjoy you know

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we at the time we did not think they were advantages uh we thought it was uh every obstacle against us but uh in hindsight uh we did have some advantages one uh benarus was highly visible in the community you know you know far

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exceeding uh its size in sales you know we had a presence both locally and nationally um you know I I didn't go into it uh here cuz it's it's a totally uh it's another story that could take uh

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an entire presentation but at the same time this was going on while we were trying to raise the money we were we were fighting with Pillsbury uh which owned hogendas running our what's the dboy afraid of campaign one of the reasons why the

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banks were pretty leery of lending us to $2.1 million was that Pillsbury was trying toh squish us like a bug and they were trying to cut off our distribution in in uh Boston but you know we were getting tremendous publicity uh you know

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there's an article in the New Yorker by Calvin trillum uh cover story in the Boston Sunday Globe uh magazine so we we had a presence and people could see that you know there was something happening there uh you know our product was also

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uh it' been widely sampled and it was easy to understand you know you don't have to explain to anybody what ice cream is um no instruction manual required and our business plan was really easy to understand you know we're

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selling in Northern New England and Boston we're going down to New York Philadelphia and Washington DC there's more people down there than there are up here if we could sell ice cream up here we can sell ice cream down there our

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sales are going to increase you know that that makes sense and people said oh yeah okay I understand that you know uh Peter Lynch who was uh this legendary mutual fund uh manager used to run uh Fidelity uh uh mellan the mellan fund

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for Fidelity uh he had uh he wrote a book and his philosophy was you should invest in what you know if you were a customer of a of a company and you like their product and you'd go to their

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stores and you'd see other people uh buying their product that was was something that should say well maybe I should buy some stock of that company um Ben and Jerry's was perhaps the quintessential investment for people who wanted to follow uh Peter Lynch's uh

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advice I think the biggest Advantage uh that Ben and Jerry had uh was that no other company was trying to raise money the same way we were at the same time uh this is a really really critical Point

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uh the the vast majority of the people who bought Ben and Jerry's stock uh did not have the stock picking prowess of Warren Buffett uh you know they weren't given 100 opportunities and said and and and asked okay pick the one or two that are

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going to be successful and they're going to and they're going to work uh they were given one opportunity and the choice was are you in or are you out and you compare that to today when uh all of these businesses

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that are going to be trying to raise money directly are going to be aggregated on these online sites and they're competing against each other so you could go on Circle up which is one of the sites that um has been under the

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jobs act has been focused on uh sophisticated investors but you can go on Circle up and there's a dozen frozen desserts so if you if you go to Circle up and say oh yeah I heard about this frozen

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dessert company and sounds really good and then you get there and there's 11 others and you're going well they're not all going to make it I mean you know there's only limited space it it creates seeds of Doubt so I think it's it's a

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much more competitive um uh environment today there's a lot of people uh trying to raise money the same way so uh what do you have to do you know you have to you have to think about how you're going

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to distinguish your offering from all the other people who were trying to raise money the same way and you can't just focus on the numbers and try and make an economic argument um you know the primary motivation that most of the

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people had who invested in Ben and& Jerry's uh was the emotional connection that they felt with the founders and their offbeat way of doing business they wanted to be a part of that and you know we made no secret of that you know

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we we at these informational meetings you know we went through the numbers that was my part of it and uh you know we we do our stick and then you know Ben would get up there and says okay well

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that's great you know but you know we're going to have these shareholder meetings under a big tent and uh we're be scooping a lot of ice cream and you know Jerry uh is going to take this sledgehammer and he's going to smash

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this cinder block that is balanced precariously on the ever rounding bare belly of habini Ben cini the noted Indian Mystic and it's going to be a great show and you're going to want to have a front row seat for that so you

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know if if the numbers haven't convinced you that's really why you should invest in Ben and Cherry's and you know people said yeah I got 126 bucks what the hell you know uh so it was that it was that

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more than anything that I think really made the offering successful and I think people who are trying to raise money today have to figure out how to make that same connection that makes people want to say hey I want to be along for

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the ride this is going to be fun well as you know you know Ben Jerry's ride as a uh as a independently owned publicly traded company uh came to an end in 2002 uh company was sold to Unilever by

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a a a very divided board of directors so that to say Liz she was there I was not um sold to Unilever for $326 million and nobody knows it's literally uh was no way to determine uh how many of those

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original 1800 shareholders uh still own stock in Ben and& Jerry's when uh that transaction transpired but uh if you had been an original shareholder and you had purchased uh the uh minimum 12 shares $126 18 years later factoring all the

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splits not including all the ice cream that you would have gotten uh your investment from $126 uh was then worth $ 4,697 which uh factors into a 22% annual compounded rate of uh return which even Bernie maid off would be

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proud of uh but you know as as impressive as as that uh as that return that Financial return was uh it was really the joy and the satisfaction that the shareholders felt uh from being a part of one of

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America's least likely entrepreneurial success stories that really provided the greatest return on investment and when you think about it the reality is that from that perspective it's continuing to pay dividends to this very day so that's uh that's my presentation and

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I'd be happy to open up for questions and have a conversation with you about U this aspect of Ben and& Jerry's or any other aspect and there are some other people here who know a lot more about Ben and& Jerry's today Rob mahalik who's

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going to be uh presenting uh later today thank you [Music] [Applause] Rob well the You Know What's happen you know the evolution was really from Kickstarter you know Kickstarter was essentially you know give money to a startup or a

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business and you know basically get some sort of favor in return you know some free meals or just good karma you know basically you know sometimes people fundraised and they said you know we're doing something nice you know just give

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us some money and there was no uh ownership uh what tidal what the jobs act uh did was basically say taken kickstarted to the next step and it basically said no a business can sell Equity it can sell ownership of the

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Enterprise uh to people who are willing to fund it and so yes uh at first uh the jobs Act only covered uh was you were only allowed to make investments if you were um an accredited or you know I hate

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to use the word sophisticated because it it it denigrates uh people who don't have net worth and say you're unsophisticated but you know accredited investors and you know they're they're defined as people who have net worths of over a million dollars I think a net

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income of $250,000 or something like that um with the in and the intent of that you know from the government's perspective is uh saying you know we only want people to invest in these risky Investments if they have uh enough

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assets so that they can lose all their money and you know they're not going to uh lose the house um but title three of the jobs act which is just going to take effect uh opens the game up to everybody

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now there's limits in terms of how much an individual can invest in terms of a percentage of uh of their income but it's all self uh regulated you know no one is asking you to submit uh financials that prove how much money uh

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you make uh but you're limited in theory to how much you can invest in these types of businesses you know there was a lot of debate you know once Congress passed this act how the SEC would implement it and what regulations

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because you know the SEC wants to protect the investing public it wants to allow uh legitimate businesses who are trying to raise money the opportunity to do that but you can you can very quickly see uh how people could be sold a pig

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and a poke and people could you know paint a real story and people could say oh that sounds good and then um it turns out not to be uh what was presented presented so you know it's going to roll

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out I think uh the way it's set up is uh they all they wind up going on these aggregated uh websites so there's kind of a bit of a middleman for the most part although I think you can do it

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directly I'm I'm not entirely sure and then Vermont has some regulations too that uh um apart from the jobs act that allow you to raise the money you know you can only have so many shareholders if you get to a certain um

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number of shareholders um then the regulations kick in and then you have to start providing audited financials to the SEC so that's why I say it if if a business is planning you know future Equity raises um you know

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the the crowdfunding provisions are probably not the way to go but a business that needs an infusion and then can you know fulfill its Mission it's a it's an interesting concept um there's as I understand a 35 or so

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States who have inate direct public offering Frameworks is that what was used U by Ben Jerry's well you know it it's it's a matter of some debate as to whether there's actually anything in that stat Vermont statute that

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specifically authorized uh what Ben and Jerry did it's it's really an exemption to the federal uh regulations the Federal Regulations basically say that you know our federal laws don't cover uh offerings uh from a business in a state and if it's sold strictly to

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residents of that state um there is some language in in the Vermont offering that kind of Echoes that but that's that's that was the premise and literally uh interesting story you know Jerry who at the time was living out in Arizona uh on

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a bit of a sabatical you know in you know he still owned a significant portion of the business but um in in support of the uh of the Vermont offering he he subscribed to some shares and our lawyer caught it and if the

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lawyer hadn't caught it we would have been have sold stock to somebody who wasn't a resident of Vermont and it would have uh voided the entire offer sorry my my question was though going to be um so that's been on the books for a

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long time this direct public offering can you or k or anyone else here sort of give us a sense of how that has been used over the last 20 30 40 years in terms of the percentage of capital raise

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must be small and can we do any projections about where we might be going with this new authorization well I I I'll let K answer after I I don't think it's been used much at all um and uh and the whole

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what's really encouraging about this is now they're they're basically with with the access to online they're allowing you to Market uh these offerings in a way that they never used to do before you know uh I mean I didn't mention this but you know one

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of the one of the guiding principles of the prospectus is no declarative statements you know basically everything is prefaced by says management believes or it's the opinion of management and you know I think now you can go much

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further than that uh you know you still have to have the disclosures But Ken you want to take a crack it so you you used rule 147 right which which is the SEC rule that allowed for in trate public

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offerings and that's a federal exemption right and if I'm correct very few companies have used a similar offering uh structure across the country I think Costco actually did at one point uh there was also something called a direct

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public offering which is a little more complicated may maybe they use that so it was incredibly creative for for Ben and Jerry to do that uh the the new the new ruling uh that that goes into effect is is uh very different than that but I

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think will you were referring to something even different than that which is that the vibo offering in Vermont okay you were you were referring to the the DPO right yeah I think there was I think the direct public offering actually allowed

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you to offer in multiple States um but do it yourself without an un yeah and the the the famous one for for that was the root beer uh company um virgils or one of those root beer companies that actually managed to pull

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off a public offering by registering itself in all 50 states which took like six years or something to complete there's actually a guy in Brattleboro who was part of that offering believe it or not what's that the Solar Company right didn't yeah

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yeah I think Annie's um Foods did something of a offering when they uh promoted it on their packaging sure I I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the uh struggle apparently about the Legacy

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emission of Ben and& Jerry's in it when it was sold and how has is any of that Legacy Mission Legacy does any of that survive legally at Unilever is it all just you know as um Paul and Barbie were

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talking last night about new chapter they own the company they can do what they want but that they believe in the mission and clearly are are building on it I'm going to introduce uh Rob maholic who in another lifetime used to

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sleep on the floor of my apartment it was a short period of time but boy it was a great floor hardwood floors uh those were the days so interestingly enough in the room we have have the original social Mission director Liz

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Bowski who was also a member of the board of directors and and quite uh I guess uh I was very lucky to be able to come back to the company in 2006 I had left it for a little while been with it

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for 10 years left it for a little while came back in 2006 and the then social Mission director was actually leaving I didn't know that at the time but but when she left uh and it wasn't Liz Liz

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Liz had already left um I got the job so I'm the director of social Miss so to speak directly to your question I think one of the bits of Genius of the acquisition and and actually at least you probably would have more detail on

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that moment what was happening but the leadership at Ben and Jerry's at the time and those at Unilever were able to negotiate this acquisition agreement which is a legal document still exists pretty thick um and in that document and

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this is the way I frame it it actually created so this was 2000 actually in that document in a way it created the first Super benefit Corporation because what it did was it created an independent Ben and Jerry's board of

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directors that would have the ownership of the social Mission and the essential brand equity which you would think as product quality you know the Innovation and all that so that board actually has legal standing to challenge Unilever at

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any time that Unilever might take Ben and Jerry's off its Mission so in a way it created this incredible like intellectual dayon that uh nobody really wanted to take to the full degree there in as as Ben and

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Jerry's went from 200000 to say let's say 2006 there were periods of time in there where it was challenged behind the scenes and it got at moments a little bit tenuous but in the end everybody was able to figure out how to make this

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thing work so from I would say 2008 forward we really started to put in place the uh the the direction governance and support uh in Unilever for all of what we're trying to do the key was and and it was interesting

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because I was thinking of uh Paul and Barbie last night they were talking with the Proctor and Gamble thing and actually Liz would know more about this too and maybe we should bring the mic over there but um I think for Ben and

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Jerry's and I only speak to that the acquisition agreement that legal document was essential for us to really maintain our identity our Vermont uh incorpor which allowed us to later become a Ben a benefit Corporation a certified B Corp

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uh and and keep the social Mission moving forward and while there was a period of time in the middle there I would say from 2004 to 2008 is where we kind of weren't we weren't doing a lot and we weren't so inspired with what we

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could do with the social mission to take it forward from that point forward we have done a lot and actually I've got a breakout session I know you probably want to go to a bunch of different breakout sessions but I'm going to cover

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a lot of that in the breakout session because we are are now doing an extraordinary uh amount of uh initiatives in the social Mission at Ben and& Jerry's and really taking the bar up higher so um yeah sometimes I wonder in

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my life how I came to have these credentials of having participated in the sale of two iconic Vermont companies to two multinationals my children sometimes remind me weren't you a progressive activist at some point um but it is interesting I chaired the

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board through the proctoring Gam transaction with new chapter and I was personally involved with the with the Ben and J's transaction in the Ben and J's transaction the legal documents contained unprecedented protections for the mission and values you know again in

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both instances and what we've seen with all the brands we've loved since people are aware of the strength of these Brands and the whole commercial Marketplace is moving more towards the concepts of social value that these companies is represented especially Ben

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and Jerry's it now has a recognized value in the marketplace so that is a very important part of this there wasn't any debate about it but you know at Ben and Jerry's it was so different from what anybody was doing that this the

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board actually has a legal right of action if things got crazy and over time it's all kind of reached a really Harmony the current CEO is you know he's way out on head on carbon and on everything else and Unilever as in as a

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global company has the premier reputation and one thing I learned in that process is where we were doing a lot of wonderful small things trying to change our packaging trying to make an impact they with one felt swoop were

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impacting water issues and other issues with Proctor and Gamble I had hop we could have the same conversation about could we write in it just didn't work for the process C of going through that transaction it it just didn't work but

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as Paul and Barbie said you know they they also understood what they the brand they understood you cannot death buy a Thousand Cuts to Brands is something we all know happens and I think both cor both corporations sort of understood you

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you got to be careful about that so in the new chapter uh proon gambell is the sole shareholder of new chapter new chapter remains just as it was they haven't you know taken out the back room functions they haven't changed a lot of

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that they've made some change in sales so you know that's the story going forward but the Ben and J's I'm still a trustee of the foundation Unilever F the in the story of the public offering Ben wanted 10% to go to philanthropy at the

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foundation and the people writing it up said no way like what was the maybe 1% or 2% so they are they went to five and then they compromised at 7 and 12% those grants I say basically go to

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troublemakers if you're not a troublemaker don't ask us for the money in all these years Unilever has never once called us on any of them I I mean they've never once called us on any of these grants many of which have been

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very very provocative and they they allow that there's a formula where they provide the funds for the foundation but it's independent so you know I think there's a there is a success story there yeah just just just as a point of

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clarification the uh the the foundation uh the Ben J's Foundation was set up in that uh 1985 offering that we did with Tucker Anthony Ben donated a significant portion of stock uh that was sold as part of the offering and the funds went

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to the foundation and it was disclosed in the prospectus that the it was the company's intent uh to donate 75% of its pre-tax profits uh to the foundation going forward and the investment Brokers as Liz said you know well Ben was

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started at at 10% but the investment Brokers were concerned we were disclosing it because we wanted anybody who bought the stock to have that understanding that that's how the company was going to operate uh and the Brokers were concerned that if you did

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that then people would not uh buy the stock we also marketed that stock by putting stickers on the Pint um that said uh scoop up our stock yes hi my name is Eric I uh lead Slow Money Vermont we've got a uh

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Vermont food investors Network project that's the portal for food businesses to use the milk money Vermont crowdfunding platform that uh works with the Vermont small business offering which which is part of what we've been talking about the way Vermont businesses can raise

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money including Equity capital or convertible debt various forms uh from from vermonter primarily um that regulation has been tweaked within the last couple years um it's administered through the Department of Financial regulation currently you can have and this is my understanding

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people can correct me uh an unlimited number of um unaccredited investors um who can put in up to $10,000 um the total raise can be up to a million if you have audited financials it can be up to 2

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million um and my understanding right now is that you can have a small number of outof State investors as well so if you've got like the proverbial Rich uncle in Florida they can put in some money but the but the lineon share of

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the investors do need to be Vermont residents but also um the Vermont Department of Financial regulation has been in communication at a minimum with their uh colleagues in New England to work towards um Interstate capacity for that and I'm not sure exactly where that

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stands right now and what's possible but I just felt like it would be helpful for people to understand in Vermont um what is possible as this national uh jobs act starts to come online yes um why did um back in the early 2000

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when this was all being negotiated why did Unilever agree to what was the Leverage or what was the incentive for unever to agree to these whereas it sounds like Pro um well um I think they um they very much wanted to preserve The

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Branding and keep the founders identified and understood this is like they understood that that needed to be preserve so I don't think it was you know unlike Company New others Ben and Jerry's had as its proposition in the

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marketplace it had a three-part Mission it would make great ice cream it would look to have a good return for its employees and shareholders and it would include a concern for the community in its day-to-day business decisions it

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wasn't like and we'll do philanthropy we did that too but that was when you started this that's what went out there and so Ben and Jerry's kind of created what does that mean to include a concern for the community in your day-to-day

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business decisions so I think as part of the negotiations around the company and the brand of course you were going to talk about that and how do you protect it so The Advisory board that works on the the board that exists is responsible

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for that part of the mission they don't oversee the business part of the mission in the sense of sales they work on is the company fulfilling that so I think it was so essential to the success that having it negotiated you know new

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chapter it just didn't come up in the same way as you remember last night much younger company and uh you know the whole the whole proposition of the products they make speaks for that they they explained it to you very well last

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night so if Proctor and Gamble looking at that company as they said felt they wanted to get into this space and they wanted to deal with a with a product that met their require IR so it was given that they weren't going to do

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anything to to uh mess with the formulations there was endless discussions during the time we were talking to different suitors about that so um so I think it was just two very different situations not a conscious decision in the new chapter case not to

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just different propositions um so um I'm orle munsing um and uh we have a farm Food business planning competition all of you can see some of the winners who are actually doing very well there's Against the Grain there's

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big picture Farm Etc they're all doing very well um and I just was wondering if um the companies in Vermont does that how much does that play out in uh success because now folks are thinking we're getting a lot of interest in

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coming to Vermont because Vermont has a special uh ring to it in terms of their brand can you speak to that well I I I do think Vermont can be a very powerful component of a brand I mean it was

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certainly the case with Ben and Jerry's I mean I'm I'm not going to get this right but you know the brand proposition was uh in the early days too too crazy guys who make uh worldclass ice cream in

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some very unusual flavors in the land of uh Blue Sky uh Green Mountains black and white cast something like that so you know Vermont was integral uh and you know Vermont's finest was the slogan that you know Ben and Jerry put on the

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Pint you know very prominently uh and I do think that in the food business um you know Vermont connotates uh you know uh positive attributes high quality uh and you know the local Vore food movement is is real now it's you

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know we're in Vermont so we think you know Vermont food products are great and they are but you know if you travel around the country if you go to A Whole Foods in Philadelphia you can see the Local Foods um from Pennsylvania that

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are being prominently featured there and they've got you know you know equally compelling you know very positive stories but um I think you know when you think about uh what kind of businesses are going to work for uh a direct uh

Speaker A

through through crowdfunding or direct public stock offerings I think food businesses is one that can really uh do well and um it's one that I think people can feel that they would enjoy being a part of uh they can relate to it easily

Speaker A

they can they can understand the business easily so you know my expectation is that a lot of these businesses you know if they need you know not millions and millions of dollars but if they need you know hundreds of thousands to kind of elevate

Speaker A

their business and uh commercialize it and maybe take it to the next level um that I think funds will be potentially available to them through the network of investors uh that are out there I'm sh Horowitz and I use you

Speaker A

folks as an example tomorrow my impossible aare talk has three slides about Ben and Jerry's and one of the things that I say is my hypothesis that one of the reasons you were able to go head-to-head with the Exxon of ice cream

Speaker A

being hogendas um is that very factor of the Community Focus that number three in the the mission statement um and I wonder if you would corroborate or disagree well um there's a lot of reasons I think why the business was successful against

Speaker A

hogendas um you know in in the early days you know when we when we first were going up against hogendas in Boston we were having the problem with Pillsbury you know the social mission was part of the business from the early days but it

Speaker A

wasn't quite as prominent as it became you know again the uh the foundation was formed and the principle of giving 7 and a half % uh didn't really happen until the 1985 stock offering you know before then U you know being socially

Speaker A

responsible have been and Jerry's meant uh giving ice cream to any nonprofit that said hey I I want some free ice cream to you know for a fundraiser or uh doing you know Community celebrations in downtown Burlington uh I think the the

Speaker A

most important uh reason why the brand succeeded against hogendas is because it had a unique selling proposition uh you know hogendas established the super premium segment um you know a madeup name you know pretending to be you know

Speaker A

from uh overseas and their flavors were very State and traditional and when they succeeded uh all of the me too players that came into the market fan glage alen Alber they just followed suit they made up a fake name and they had the same

Speaker A

flavors and then Ben and Jerry's you know and others competed in that same Niche but but Ben and Jerry's were successful at saying well we're different you know our packaging is totally different and it's two real guys it's really Ben it's really Jerry it's a

Speaker A

real story it's not made up and uh the flavor is totally uh totally different so we could go to a supermarket and say you know you got five rows of hogendas if you give Ben and Jerry's two of those

Speaker A

rows you know you're not going to lose any sales of hogas and your total sales from that freezer are actually going to increase and we were able to document improve that um because the additional two rows were for flavors that you know

Speaker A

really complemented uh what hogendas presented U but over time yes I do think the um uh the mission driven focus of the company uh was a large part of the reason why the business uh continued to succeed and

Speaker A

continue to grow we have time for three more questions and that will bring us a little bit over so I'm going to go to you you and then you um but keep in mind there is a break so you'll probably get

Speaker A

a chance to catch Chico back to the beginning what was the original stock distribution between yourself and Ben and Jerry and did it change when you went public well uh you know before there was Chico there was Ben and Jerry so they started out as

Speaker A

50/50 partners and um in 1980 to uh you know Jerry was kind of burnt out you know from uh working seven days a week you know 100 hours a week literally 100 hours a week and uh his girlfriend now his wife Elizabeth was

Speaker A

moving out to Arizona for a doctoral program and um Jerry was said okay that's enough you know they weren't really making any money I mean they I think their salaries at that point might have been you know $155,000 and maybe a

Speaker A

little of what they skimmed out of the register at the retail store um so uh uh you know they actually considered selling the business at that point and they they listed it uh and uh it was actually a guy in Brattleboro Who

Speaker A

convinced Ben not to uh not to sell and he basically you know Ben said I'm selling the business and the guy Maurice the original owner of the Chelsea din he says to Ben well why are you selling it's your baby and he says

Speaker A

well um it's become a big business and Mory said well you can run it any way you want it's your company and uh so Ben uh thought about that and he decided not to sell it and that's when he said well

Speaker A

if if I'm going to keep it I got to find someone help me run it help me manage it and that's when I became the general manager and joined the company uh i b i I bought my ownership interest

Speaker A

in before the Vermont offering when there were friends and family raises I you know I sold my nightclub I put all my money into it and uh got my uh my mom and my stepfather to put you know a

Speaker A

sizable Chunk in and it all worked out very well so okay um I think I heard you say that Ben and Jerry's doubled within a year maybe you did that more than once what can you say about managing a company that keeps doubling

Speaker A

[Music] well it's a challenge and uh you know yeah at the same time that we're trying to raise all this money and we're trying to design and build a plant not knowing really a whole lot about anything to do

Speaker A

with construction the business is is doubling in sales We Grew From A Million To 1.8 to 4 to 10 to 20 to 32 and uh you know I'll give a quick plug I got six copies of my book Ben and Jerry Scoopa tells

Speaker A

the it tells all of the travails and the challenges of uh running a business and trying to manage a business through that kind of growth but it's uh it's incredibly challenging and Incredibly difficult some ways it's good because

Speaker A

you know it it it covers a lot of sins when you're growing really fast you know the growth you can't hire people fast enough and uh but eventually it catches up with you it caught up with us and you

Speaker A

know you go through these periods of having growing pains but uh we had you know we never really had a uh a deep a deep uh Swoon you know we we kind of plateaued for a while but uh you know

Speaker A

continued to grow and uh I'm very proud of how much the company grew after I left I left in 91 I think we're about 78 million uh but my successor Chuck Lacy uh cookie dough came out yogurt came out and I think the

Speaker A

business within 2 or 3 years was up to 130 million and very very proud of uh the Legacy not just of what Chuck did and other people since but also today as the business has evolved under Uno lever

Speaker A

still very very proud uh to have been a part of that business at the start and feel that you know what Rob said it really is true to its Mission uh under the the current management with yosin and his

Speaker A

team uh Chico I wonder if you could speak a little bit about the right brain left brain management team Dynamic that must work I think for most successful businesses believing that you probably were more the left brain with the

Speaker A

calculator and trying to keep things on track and whatnot so a lot of businesses think that a Ben can be all you need to make it work what about the balance to that and how did how was that a

Speaker A

challenge for you to be effective in that role well um you know my book you know really goes into that but you're exactly right I mean and the uh you know Ben and I had a had had a great working

Speaker A

relationship in in in our early years it got a little strained mostly when Ben decided he didn't want to work as actively in the business but he still wanted to have a lot of input into how the business was

Speaker A

run it was easier to Take Ben's advice when he was in the trenches with us and he was equally responsible for the results it was a little harder I used to describe it as uh Ben and the board

Speaker A

throwing hand grenades over the fence um but um you need that balance and Ben was smart enough to realize that you know when Jerry was leaving uh that they did need to kind of professionalize and and and get serious

Speaker A

about you know their finances and uh and Manufacturing you know they were all self-taught and they figured a lot of stuff out I knew nothing about making ice cream but I knew that you know you had to figure out okay here's everything

Speaker A

that went in in terms of ingredients and in labor and here's what came out out so here's what your cost of goods is and does that make sense or where our efficiencies um it's it's really I think the thing that really distinguishes uh

Speaker A

very successful entrepreneurial businesses uh are the ones that can make that transition and find that working relationship uh between the people the creativity you don't want to ever suppress the creativity uh that somebody like Ben brings to the business um but

Speaker A

you do need to filter that with the reality of how a business operates uh so it was kind of my job to sort through everything that Ben wanted to do and you know find the gems and kind of talk them

Speaker A

out of the ones that were uh you know maybe not great ideas and we had some very good go rounds I think that's it so thank you very much [Applause] [Music]

Topics:slow livingcommunity entrepreneurshipBen & Jerry'sdirect public offeringcrowdfundingfarm to tableapprenticeship programlocal food businesssustainable businessfundraising

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