Race registration

Registering for an event signals the first, often irreversible, commitment. Training has to pick up. The date is set, fees are paid. You’re in. Doubts may linger, but you’re in. It’s pretty straightforward.

A business venture becomes official with registration, but this in itself can be a time consuming process. Names, domains and trade names. Federal and extra-territorial? Rights, trademarks, copyrights — as we move into a whole new world of rights-oriented and regulated commerce, its hard to tell who’s right or what’s the right thing to do. Especially at the beginning.

When we started we knew BoldRush was a great name. And we knew that as a new business that it was important to protect our name (and our recipes). We registered the .com and the .ca right away. Compared to trademarks, domain name registration was a piece of cake — no capitals, no spaces, no pictures or special fonts. No lawyers.

We also incorporated federally rather than territorially to protect the BoldRush name across Canada while our trademark application was in process. (New corporations have to undergo a NUANS search to ensure that the name is not being used elsewhere.)

There appears to be little other benefit to federal incorporation since corporations still have to register in each province or territory where they conduct any type of business activity. (I wonder how many are sliding under the bar on this one). It adds up to another expense for Yukon companies who rely on outside markets and adds another level into the interwoven layers of regulatory compliance. These extra-provincial or extra-territorial fees are higher than federal fees and vary by jurisdiction. This is just the edge of a sludge-filled marsh of red tape through which companies tread daily.

It can be a really slow slog. Two weeks ago an envelope from an Edmonton law firm arrived. It contained the official registration of our BoldRush trademark — completed after 19 months of legal and government processing. It had a splash of colour on three artfully arranged maple leaves. The paper was a little sturdier than normal, since it’s meant to last 15 years.

Take a look at the evolution of BoldRush over the same 19 months.

We discovered that any small or large changes require another full application–same full cost, same timing. Just to change an address will cost fifty dollars. One hundred and fifty if you go through a lawyer.

In business, registration is an endurance event. Cross-training with law is recommended.

Best day ever

I’m a bit of a stats junkie. And though it’s important to analyze patterns, labeling is critical. For example, DataPath recently reported that 40% of decided women voters supported Dennis Fentie’s Yukon Party. Another label on exactly the same data would say that only 25% of Yukon women polled supported Dennis Fentie.

WordPress generates data on “top posts”, “top searches” and “most active” by day, month or year. Obviously “snow load” searches have nothing to do with selling BoldRush PowerFoods. “Snow load” generates a light flurry of visitors; on September 17, 2007 we experienced an avalanche.

September 17th was the day John Reese launched BlogRush.com. I suspected something was coming; John had contacted me in advance (although all references cited a mysterious and revolutionary BR). My little blogrush site on wordpress experienced hundreds of hits for days on end. Then things trickled off. I wasn’t posting, so I didn’t expect many hits.

I followed him from a distance. BlogRush.com arrived online with a lot of fanfare and discussion on technorati and other talk sites. My understanding (hey, but I’m not terribly tech savvy) is that BlogRush is some sort of electronic pyramiding system using widgets on blogs to generate web traffic. A few months later, technological glitches had significantly slowed the buzz and users sounded exasperated. I watched, as John Reese’s blog posts slowed (Thanks for your patience) and came to a halt (Taking a break). I knew the feeling. The overpowering working-your-ass off so the whole thing doesn’t fall apart. I felt I could relate to why he wasn’t there.

I also sensed he had more in mind. His other sites are www.income.com (bet he paid a hefty price for that one!) and www.trafficjam.com. Checking in two months ago, he was sick and not blogging. I thought that might be the end. But this month he’s back at it throwing out tons of optimism and enthusiasm in his attempt to build what he calls a social network and media company for entrepreneurs.

What’s it all mean for me? I’m buried. What used to be a relatively easy search to find my blog, is now impossible. Page after page of google searches are full of rants or raves about John Resse’s widgets. My little site has virtually disappeared.

Once again it comes down to that critical business concept — volume. (Likely manifest in why he’s got the big fancy house, and we’re still fixing up the cabin.)

So although September 17 showed up in my wordpress stats as the best day ever, it was really the worst. The same event with a misleading label.

Construction detour

This past year, with virtually no fresh posts, blogrush continued to rack up the hits. BoldRush’s blog stayed number one on Google images for “snow load” snapping to the photo attached to our post “Energy wanes under snow load“. Searchers also came to the blogrush site via assorted combinations of snow, cabin, lake, Canada, mountains and the odd person looking for the elusive Cowboy Larry Smith.  Knowing that most of these viewers have little connection to our struggling business venture, I’d still like to pull them in.

In business, construction metaphors abound. There is a consequence of having too much weight and insufficient support. Or, as often said, you can’t build a structure that lasts without a good foundation. So, having absolutely no idea what the interest of these fearless, yet persistent, searchers might be, I’ve erected a slight construction detour within a business recap.

That winter of 2006-2007 marked one of the highest snowfall records in the southwest Yukon. A month after our blogrush snow load post, James and I knew what we had to do. We hunkered down and James maxed out on BoldRush bar production as the lease on our commercial kitchen space expired. We labeled and piled bar upon bar, in box after box. We sold our suburban home to cover business losses. We hosted garage sales at the Bistro, hauled the remaining kitchen equipment into storage and moved out to the cabin.

The cabin looks quaint under snow, but underneath all that snow was torn and shredded 30-year old rolled roofing spread over thin and rotting plywood. The cabin’s foundation posts were slipping towards the lake, but the floor was solid (albeit in a peculiarly wonky fashion). And, most challenging of all was the lack of a water and septic system. The lake was frozen solid and summer water buckets were not an option. The ice finally went out at the end of May and the construction season began soon after.

All this time, the cheques rolled in from our retailers. We had our distribution methods down and a steady consumer following. Ah! The joy of business when the heavy work’s been done and it’s all just a trip to the bank!

But we knew it would end eventually. Our stockpile of bars sold out sooner than expected (sales exceeding expectations is usually a good thing, exceeding production is not). By September the house was still barely livable (lighting by extension cords, heating by the oven, and the insulation was still non-existent).

In business, as in life, choices have to be made. Winter was inevitable. Children have to be fed, houses need heat, and light needs to be available to stave off the Yukon’s long dark nights. BoldRush powerfood bars required commercial production space. Time, energy and money were in short supply.

BoldRush bar production would have to wait; our lives were under construction.

BoldRush bars reach new heights

This news just in from Africa — BoldRush bars help climbers reach summit of the highest mountain in Africa! BoldRush powerfood bars were devoured at 7,000 feet, and again near the top of Mount Kilimanjaro at 17,500 feet, making them the highest BoldRush bars to be consumed in the world.

Jenny Trapnell reports, “Your BoldRush bars were a hit!”

Border crossing violation

It’s enough to pull our slumbering BoldRush bear out of hibernation! The U.S. government has disregarded the border and is appropriating northern cranberries as their own!

Now most people know that northern cranberries, officially referred to as vaccinium oxycoccus, are the magical ingredient in BoldRush power drinks, injecting strength and endurance into its loyal following. The BoldRush website tells the story of how the little northern cranberries’ powers couldn’t be mentioned in Canada because of Canadian labeling laws. So while we’ve been whispering about magical photonutrients and powerful anthocyanins, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been cross-breeding the powerful little vaccinium oxycoccus with what it calls a typical American cranberry.

BoldRush was born in Canada’s Yukon, so it seems more than a little bit rash that the American government has renamed this little nordic berry, which is indigenous to all circumpolar countries — the Alaskan Cranberry.

American researchers discovered what James stumbled upon in the Yukon wilderness — the amazing ability of the berries to regenerate, preserve and enhance the body’s ability to withstand, bear (pardon the pun) and prevail when facing adversity and challenge. (And, to maintain an honest line of attribution, James also stumbled upon what indigenous northern peoples have always known.)

However, the United States government and their government scientists put the berry under a microscope and discovered that the little northern berry’s glucose-linked anthocyanins are found in the wild northern berries at a rate of 50% compared to just 5% in the southern berry. They suspect that this difference is one of the characteristics holding the key to the cherished benefits of cranberries in general — protection against aging, cancer, and heart disease.

My first hit was one of envy — American corporations incurring huge cost savings by having the government do their research and development for them. But then, pondering government involvement and the appropriation of a northern berry to an American state (another government), more questions arose. There may be a deeper and more insidious side to this. It is the stuff that United Nation committees work on year after year. It pertains to the Convention on Biodiversity and their deliberations on intellectual property, plant genetics, patents, traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples.

The intent of the Convention on Biodiversity is to achieve the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. That means that northern people should somehow benefit from the genetic code provided to the American government scientists which they may turn over to American multi-national corporations. It’s likely easier for scientists to manipulate genetic patents if the cranberry is American or Alaskan.

What a world! Genetically enhanced cranberries for more people through corporate distribution (Ocean Spray controls two-thirds of the cranberry market), or higher prices for the lovely First Nation women we bought our cranberries from. In the fall, when the berries were ripe, one of them couldn’t sleep if there were still berries out there waiting to be picked.

These food science newsletters I still subscribe to, make me lose sleep as well.

Hitting the wall

BoldRush protein juice was a remarkable discovery. It was shelf-stable and made from real fruit and vegetables. It contained 10 grams of protein and worked extremely well to support endurance and recovery before, during and after grueling athletic events. It substituted for food, tasted good, and was not-too-sweet. Kids weren’t crazy about it, but there are some definitely hooked adults in the Yukon.

It was tricky to make. It required a delicate balance of time, temperature and pH. We used a special “heat stable” whey protein isolate that was made in the United Kingdom. The food scientists at Vitalus in Abbotsford helped us understand the tolerable ranges for this specialty product that was in late stage R&D. The protein could only take a high temperature for a short time prior to bottling, otherwise it would “take off” and turn to jelly. The pH also had to be closely monitored in the product formulation stages.

The Food Development Agency in Manitoba was helping us scale up production from 50 to 1000 units per batch (see post “Powering Up”). There were challenges with foaming while mixing and a slight burning while heating, but most importantly, they couldn’t fill the bottles fast enough at the right temperature without exceeding the time limits imposed by the nature of the protein powder. Of course, money and better equipment could have alleviated this problem.

However, the problems of money, equipment and batch sizes paled beside the risk factor of only having one supplier of our key ingredient. For a while last year, it was only being shipped by container to North America every four months, and once we had to air freight bags from the UK for our continued production and scale-up requirements.

Unbeknownst to us, global forces were at play in the dairy and whey business (it’s not all honey and fun). Vitalus announced a “joint venture” with DNV, a division of the Dutch food giant, Campina last October.

Now I’m not sure of the nuanced differences between a takeover and a joint venture, but the small division of Campina that partnered with Vitalus boasted 583 employees to Vitalus’s 40, and turnover of $518 million compared to Vitalus’s $35 million. Campina, the mothership, counts in many billions. Not exactly partners on equal footing. Campina had obviously been making moves in the dairy and whey industries from Argentina to NewZealand, and then with Vitalus, North America (see acquisition history).

We were informed that the supply of our ingredient would be halted for a while since the UK plant would be producing pig food instead of our whey protein product. Later we learned that sales of the heat stable product were not significant enough and they felt the product was too expensive for most players in the beverage industry. Of course, they were in business and just following the profits. We had enough protein on hand to see us through until spring.

We pursued alternatives and experimented with other protein products all winter, but to no avail. Still we kept our fingers crossed regarding DNV’s promise of new plant construction and that the heat stable product would be produced again in March 07. However, last month we learned that the ingredient BoldRush depended on would not be produced — not for the North American market, nor in Europe. We have been unable to find a clear, heat stable protein James can get to taste good. In short — we are hooped.

It’s been hard. This would have been our third Yukon River Quest with BoldRush paddlers (we are giving our remaining bottles to Pauline Frost-Hanberg as she goes out to break the mixed record this year). We have withdrawn our sponsorship on all other levels. So sad. Sponsoring people and events with such a great product has been the best of fun.

This is where it started two years ago — Jenny and Su finishing the River Quest in Dawson City — endurized by BoldRush!

It’s been quite a trip !

Exploring the margins

Now don’t get me wrong, we are down, but we are NOT out.

It’s just that I’m introspecting….

Inventory, project reporting, year-end, spring-cleaning, ruthless assessments and evaluation — various forms of self-examination further just about everything.  An objective eye is required and hard questions need answers.

The glorious vision of BoldRush isn’t the hard part … I looked down the frozen lake this morning to the Bennett mountains and realized the vision wasn’t going away.  But there are only a few more weeks that we can walk on water.

I’m working on a presentation for the Yukon Agricultural Association’s AGM (April 28th) on “Barriers to Food Processing in the Yukon.” It’s a chance to articulate my belief in the importance of local food processing, manufacturing in the Yukon (where multipliers mean more than mining), and food security.

It’s an opportunity to address the challenges of competitiveness, capitalization, transportation, market, packaging, industry conglomeration, labour and regulatory compliance that face the industry. And how that relates to production, capacity and margins.

Our BoldRush business story is a case in point.