I grew up in a Pillsbury Gold Medal home, but the flour in my cannister is King Arthur. And I can’t remember when that wasn’t the case.
I have no idea why I made the switch – maybe because it’s a local-ish (Vermont) brand? But there are other products of my childhood that I’ve stayed “brand loyal” to. I wouldn’t think of using anything other than Scott toilet paper. Why not Gold Medal? Maybe because it’s just plain better.
Anyway, I was interested to read an article I saw on Forbes on King Arthur Flour.
Why, you might ask yourself, would Forbes bother to use up ink on a story about a boring, low-margin commodity like flour?
They did so because King Arthur doesn’t just have one CEO. It has three: Ralph Carlton, Karen Colberg, and Suzanne McDowell.
The trio have been jointly running the outfit for five years now, and each brings their own specialty to the mix.
Carlton is also the CFO. McDowell serves as the CHRO. Colberg is CBO. I’m not quite sure what a CBO is. LinkedIn is silent here. But McDowell was the Chief Marketing Officer, so I’m guessing Chief Brand Officer. It’s that or Chief Baking Officer, a title I much prefer.
The three co-CEO’s speak glowingly of their ability to collaborate at the top. They’re together. The help their colleagues be “better versions” of themselves. They’re completely open. They’re transparent. A partnership.
Backstabbing and jockeying for power isn’t their thing.
Having worked in several companies where backstabbing and jockeying for power were pretty much foundational to the corporate culture, all I can say is ‘how refreshing.’ (The last place where I worked full-time was a poster child for backstabbing and jockeying. There were two factions: the tall guys (the most senior person in this crew was the COO, but he punched above his weight because his brother was a major stakeholder) and the short guys (headed up by the CEO). I was a step removed from this fray, but was in a catbird seat to watch it all play out. What a waste of energy that could have been used improving the business.)
Anyway, I suspect that the King Arthur triple header works because two-out-of-three are women. (Just saying.) And because they’re in Norwich, Vermont, which is just not as cut-throat an environment as, say, Manhattan. Being in a lower-key setting likely makes it easier to keep the old ego in check, and resist the urge to be the lone person at the top.
Plus it’s an employee-owned business, so there’s no Wall Street or rapacious investor pressure.
And it probably helps that the business is relatively small and pretty straightforward. Still, it’s a competitive and challenging one:
Global wheat prices have fallen nearly 7% a year for the past five years, while American tastes have shifted away from wheat to alternative flours and grain-free diets. And competition is tough in the roughly $10 billion domestic flour market, where King Arthur is up against giants like General Mills and artisan peers like Bob’s Red Mill. A company King Arthur’s size has to engage in a difficult balancing act: Keep doing what you’ve been doing and risk going by the wayside, or diversify through acquisitions—as King Arthur did many years ago—and risk losing it all.
King Arthur is holding it own, posting respectable growth rates and operating profitably, running a $150M business that’s committed to high quality.
Interestingly, when King Arthur decided to deploy the co-CEO model, they had a foursome. But one of them (the one who worked remotely, by the way) bowed out after a few months. And that was that.
The company has been around for more than 200 years, and here’s wishing them 200 more.
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