Q&A: FROM KITCHEN TO BOARDROOM TABLE, HARPER CULTIVATES AUTUMN HARP

Vermont Business Magazine, Oct 01, 1995 by ANONYMOUS

As co-founder and chief executive officer of Autumn Harp in Bristol, Kevin Harper has since 1977 brought the skin care products company from a tiny group meeting the needs of its immediate community to a $5.5 million business employing about 95 people and selling to more than 15,000 retail markets in the US and abroad. With a new 11,000-square-foot manufacturing facility capable of producing 30 million "Un-Petroleum(R)" lip balms annually, and with its close relationship to The Body Shop, International expanding their marketing opportunities, Autumn Harp won Connecticut Mutual's Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative award for Vermont in 1995. Harper himself was named Vermont's Small Business Person of the Year in 1993 by the Small Business Administration, and has participated in several national conferences on small business issues.

Vermont Business Magazine talked with Harper recently about the philosophy and strategy that has put Autumn Harp in the Vermont Business Magazine list of 100 top Vermont companies, and about the problems and needs of small business generally.

VBM: For those who are unfamiliar with Autumn Harp, I wonder if you could describe the origins of the company,

HARPER: Autumn Harp began as an extension of the lifestyle that my founding partner, Cheyenne Autumn, my first wife, and myself were living. By lifestyle, I mean it was our love of plants, alternative healing, natural living, hippie culture, that had us involved in medicinal plants, medicinal preparations. The notion of being in business came much later, years later, after we were doing most of this work for family and friends and neighbors and the community.

VBM: Did you have any background or training in business prior to taking your step into the commercial sector?

Harper: No. My experience that contributed most to my business experience was growing up in a family where work was part of the ethic, where if you wanted something, well, you went out and earned the money to buy it.

VBM: There are a great many small business people who probably feel very lonely and wish they could get more sources of help, What helped?

HARPER: I think the most important element is the people who one chooses to work with, or the people that one attracts, for whatever reason. People outside the company we work with, be it from customers to vendors to suppliers, learn that doing business with Autumn Harp is satisfying, it's enjoyable. It becomes sort of a partnership, as it were: "Well, gee, it would be great to see you successful, here' s the name of a guy who's such-and-such to help you with whatever." I think there are smart, capable people everywhere, and one needs only to reach out and ask.

VBM: How many people did you start with? Was this a home operation?

HARPER: It was my wife and I for a year or so. For a few years it was volunteers, actually. We didn't pay people, they came because they enjoyed the work, they enjoyed the goals we set out in terms of making natural healing products that were going to benefit people.

There was a time when we'd get in the car and fill it full of product and start down South and sell to stores along the way, and when we got to Miami we had enough money to get on a plane and go to Jamaica and spend a few weeks, run out of money, get back on a round-trip ticket and sell our way back up the coast, back to Vermont -- and two months went by.

VBM: That must have been good market research, in its way. I imagine you hit all different kinds of shops and people in those peregrinations.

HARPER: I think you've hit it right on, because not having a business background, I found in the marketplace, as it were, calling on shops, what people needed and what motivated people to buy our products and what discouraged people from buying our products and what the objections might be.

VBM: There must have been some moment in which the idea of making lip balm at all came about. Was this your brainstorm, or did you see somebody else's efforts in this regard?

HARPER: No. The way it happened was our first product had been a Comfrey salve, an ointment, a first aid ointment. I was making a presentation to a distributing company in Brattleboro, Vermont. It was a natural foods distributing company at the time, called Llama, Toucan and Crow. They had never carried any skin care products, medicinal products of any kind. They were intrigued by the idea of broadening their product line. The day before I had been playing in the kitchen with raw materials and I had put too much beeswax in this cream. And it became quite stiff -- but it was a pleasant lip balm.

VBM: So it really started in Addison County, "the land of milk and honey," with one of the by-products of the bees.

HARPER: That's right. The original lip balm was made as I recall with olive oil and coconut oil and beeswax, and some medicinal herbs. Even as far back as 15 years ago, 16 years ago, we stayed entirely away from petroleum-based ingredients and favored the plant oils because of the feel and the absorption on the skin.