Gifts from the Florida Sunshine

One night in 1950, a truckload of grapefruit was late in arriving at Ed Cushman’s tiny fruit packing business in West Palm Beach, FL. Cushman was there supervising as the grower’s truck was being unloaded.

As the last 20 bushels came off the truck, Cushman asked the workers, “What the devil is this? These aren’t grapefruit!” Said the driver, “I don’t know. I just deliver what they give me.”

Turns out this particular grower had a few trees of Mineola tangelos, and they almost looked like orange bells. “My dad came up with the name ‘HoneyBell’,” says Allen Cushman, now president of the company. “The fruit is a cross between a Dancy tangerine and a Duncan grapefruit. It’s bigger than an orange and extremely juicy ... absolutely delicious,” he proclaims.

As Cushman tells the tale, the strange new fruit “went like hotcakes” in the company’s small retail and wholesale operation, and it became the seed that launched the family’s mail-order business.

Today, Cushman’s is an $11 million catalog, direct response and retail company. The catalog generates slightly more than half of the company’s revenues, or about $4.5 million; the remainder of its sales come primarily from its retail store and through space advertising.

Growing a Business from the Ground Up

It all started back in the 1940s when Ed Cushman decided to start his own mail-order business. Allen Cushman recalls, “My dad had managed a grocery store for what later became the Winn-Dixie chain, then opened his own small store selling fruit and fresh squeezed juice.”

Back then, the Palm Beach area was becoming a tourist destination. Cushman’s little packing house tapped into the tourism market and began shipping fresh oranges and grapefruit at the request of retail customers who wanted to send something home to loved ones.

Cushman started working in the business when he was only 12 years old. “I worked in the store and in the packaging house. Eventually, my area of specialty turned out to be sales. My brother, Mike, liked to ride in the groves with Dad; he learned to select good fruit and is now our citrus expert.” Another brother, John, manages transportation and delivery.

Cushman recalls that the company’s first direct mail brochure was mailed in 1948 or ‘49. “It was two-color: red and green. Since many of our customers were tourists, we sent the people who had come into our store a brochure so they could order from home.”

Ed Cushman died in 1972. “That was when Disney World opened,” recalls Allen Cushman. “I foresaw a huge shift in the tourist business in Florida—away from our area.”

He joined The Direct Marketing Association, partly to get ideas on how to grow his mail-order business, which at the time was mailing brochures; catalogs came a few years later. “I attended the last Direct Mail Basics course led by the legendary Ed Mayer. It was a week-long event in Chicago, and it was thrilling to be a part of it. I learned so much that week.”

Among the lessons from the course that Cushman still uses today: the “Rule of Two”—Don’t copy someone else’s idea if you’ve seen it used only once. Wait until you see it twice.

“I also learned about writing copy, in particular about staying away from ‘we-we’ letters. I know it sounds funny, but there’s a good technique that works for doing this that I still use today. Circles and squares: Put squares around all the words in your letter or copy that refer to we—including I, us, the company name, etc. Then circle all the words that talk about you—for example, the customer, or use the person’s name. The balance should be about one-third ‘we’ copy to two-thirds ‘you’ copy.”

Adds Cushman: “This style of writing really fits with our focus on being in a relationship with our customer. This focus on the customer is supported by Eileen Schlagenhaft, our brilliant marketing manager,” and by the company’s agency, J. Schmid & Associates.

Catalog Creative with a Folksy Appeal

The company produces one main catalog each year, which it mails four times. Cover changes are made with different copy to target specific customer and prospect audiences. Though it does not have a separate business-to-business catalog, Cushman’s addresses that market in its regular catalog through a banner that suggests HoneyBells as “A Great Business Gift,” along with reasons why.

According to Cushman, the catalog’s biggest challenge is presenting its core products in fresh ways. Its audience demographics—mostly customers age 50 and older, with a significant portion older than 65—generally don’t demand rapid, exciting changes. “Too much change could even be detrimental in marketing to this group, so we keep it fairly consistent,” Cushman says.

One thing the catalog does to help its repeat buyers is to send them a list each year of what they bought the previous holiday season. Says Cushman, “We even did renewal gift lists back in the days when we had to type them by hand.”

On the creative side, the company has been working with J. Schmid & Associates for several years, Cushman notes. “They do our catalog designs, and then our Vice President Barbara Timparo and Eileen Schlagenhaft choose which one to use. Eileen also does the pagination and squinchy [square-inch] analysis.”

Lois Boyle, president of J. Schmid & Associates, says Cushman’s does several things to differentiate the catalog. For example, she notes, it developed a mystique around the juicy hybrid fruit, the Cushman’s HoneyBell® (its trademarked name), and built a cult-like customer base of people who love the product. “And throughout the catalog and other marketing pieces, they let the customer tell the story of what a wonderful product this is—and it really is a great product,” says Boyle.

To demonstrate the brand, the catalog has a folksy voice and presentation that reflects the genuinely warm personality of Allen Cushman, Boyle says. She notes that the creative, which includes anecdotes, testimonials and actual pictures of people enjoying the fruit, focuses on the customer. The photos are whimsical and act as endorsements of the Cushman product line. And if the product can’t be explained with a single photo alone, Boyle says, the creative goes the rest of the way by including violators (banners) that draw attention to special features.

“For example, instead of just saying a grapefruit is jumbo-sized, an inset photo shows the grapefruit with a tape measure around it,” she says. “Another example is a product that includes three boxes full of three different kinds of citrus products. A violator is added that says ‘Three Gifts in One’ pointing out the benefit that you can purchase this product and give a different box to three different recipients. Benefits are pulled out throughout the catalog using captions, insets, testimonials and special icons.”

Good photographic reproduction also is key in any food product catalog, and Cushman’s is no exception. The printer is Berlin and, Boyle says, “They do a great job. Typically, fruit in and of itself is not hard to portray. ... What’s difficult is to get the exact color subtleties of the different kinds of fruit, such as Ruby Red or Royal Tandoras. We work very hard, along with Cushman and its pre-press house, to get these subtle color shifts accurate.”

Space Ads: Cushman’s Marketing Juice

Cushman’s supplements its catalog mailings with direct mail; about three mailings go out per year. Some incidental postcard mailings also are used, but the lion’s share of its non-catalog sales come from space advertising.

Several years ago, Cushman’s ran a full-page ad in the Palm Beach

Post, a local newspaper, to sell HoneyBells. Recalls Cushman: “We sent it to someone who had been in journalism all her life, and she said it was the worst ad she’d ever seen.”

Cushman’s ran it anyway. Afterwards, Vice President Timparo saw an offer from a creative consultant for a free critique. She sent the ad, and the consultant said, “That’s the best ad I’ve ever seen.”

Company executives then successfully tested the ad in Chicago-area newspapers. They rolled out with a full-scale space ad marketing campaign in the Midwest. “There are some results from the Midwest newspapers that we just can’t duplicate elsewhere,” Cushman says.

Another interesting thing the company discovered: Large newspapers work better than smaller ones. “We can’t really explain these things, but that’s what the numbers tell us,” he notes.

In the ads, Cushman’s doesn’t make a discount offer. Instead, it tries to draw in new customers with a lower-ticket product offering for 24 HoneyBells at $19.99 (plus $6.95 shipping and handling). Christopher Stagg wrote much of the copy for the company’s mailings back in the early 1980s, and that has been adapted during the years and used in ads.

Indeed, the ads have an incredible 35-percent conversion to buyers from tryers. “About 60 percent of new-to-file buyers come to us that way,” says Cushman. Though he declined to discuss cost per acquisition, Cushman did say that space advertising “has our lowest cost to acquire of any prospecting effort we use.”

In addition to newspapers, the company runs space ads in magazines with demographics that closely match those of its audience, including the AARP Bulletin shoppers section, The New Yorker and Southern Living. Cushman says the magazine space ads have “variable success.”

Product Pickings: Beyond HoneyBells

There’s no question HoneyBells are the company’s biggest seller. In fact, Cushman loves this product so much he even had an image of one tattooed on his wrist. “I brought a picture to the tattoo artist to show him what a HoneyBell looked like.”

But since HoneyBells only are available for a short time each year, Cushman’s sells other fruits throughout the year, including non-citrus products for summer delivery.

An interesting aside: Due to its products’ seasonality, a majority of orders are not fulfilled immediately when they come in. “Our orders are future orders,” Cushman explains. “That means if someone orders HoneyBells in October for Christmas gift delivery, a note will go out to the gift recipients telling them the gifts are coming from so-and-so as soon as they’re ripe and ready.”

The company works with about 50 growers whose fruit Mike Cushman carefully examines before purchasing. “We buy it right on the vine. Then we bring in our own harvesting contractors when the fruit’s ready,” explains Cushman. The company has its own fresh fruit processing plant in Fort Pierce, FL, where fruit goes once it’s picked. “We wash it, wax it, polish it, grade it and box it,” he adds.

Cushman’s continually tests new products; 10 percent to 15 percent of each fall catalog represents new product offerings. Experimenting with product offerings is one of the ways the company is looking to grow in the future. “We get product development ideas from several sources,” he explains, noting there are three people within the company who work on product development: the production manager, the retail manager and the marketing manager.

Cushman adds that the company is developing proprietary fruit products of its own. “We plan to trademark a citrus fruit from Jamaica. It’s a 75-year-old fruit that would be available (for shipment) in March.”

The trademarking issue brings up what Cushman calls “one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to deal with in my business career.” Although Cushman’s was the first to market with the HoneyBell, it missed the opportunity to trademark the fruit and name. “It never occurred to us until 1980 to trademark the HoneyBell, and by then it was too late—the product was already in wide use.” In print, the company refers to the fruit as Cushman’s HoneyBells®. Still, company officials didn’t let that deter them. They went on to make its U.S.P. (unique selling proposition) “limited edition fruit.”

Of course, Cushman admits the company has tried new products that didn’t work—among them, Christmas trees, turkeys and steaks. Still, that doesn’t stop Cushman from looking for new items to test in the future. “We look for things related to Florida and to the demographics of our buyers. For instance, we all know gardening products do well in catalogs and are seasonal in nature, so that’s a possibility,” he says.

Online & Offline Communications

At Cushman’s, while sales certainly are important, customer relationships are the focus of its marketing efforts, regardless of the medium. “We talk to people on a one-to-one basis,” says Cushman. For example, he says, in its 36-seat, in-house call center, “We encourage chatting between our reps and customers.”

E-mail is another marketing tool the company uses to build relationships. Of e-commerce, Cushman says, “This is found money.”

Still, Cushman says nothing beats sitting down face-to-face with a customer for a true sense of how the business is working. He recalls a trip to Columbia, SC, last year when he stopped by for a visit with a customer. Says Cushman: “The woman told me one of the reasons she keeps shopping from us is we make it so easy. At holiday time, she uses the renewal gift list in her catalog, attaches a check, and in her words, ‘I don’t have to think about it again.’ And that’s what it’s all about. Giving the customer what she wants.”

At a Glance
Year business founded: 1945
Headquarters: West Palm Beach, FL
Annual revenues: $11 million
Design agency: J. Schmid & Associates
Copywriting: In-house marketing staff
Printer: Berlin
Telemarketing: In-house call center
Housefile size: 63,000 12-month buyers
List manager: Estee List Services
List breakdown: 27 percent age 65 and older; 60 percent age 50 and older; 62 percent female