Posted on 05/08/2005 11:07:19 AM PDT by sully777
If Frank Martin’s plan comes together, the engineer turned business consultant will be producing and distributing fine Belgian chocolates in a few years from Greenville.
Martin, 57, a native of Belgium who has lived in the United States for 25 years, is planning to move to Greenville in about a year.
He and his brother, Jean-Marie Martin, have an agreement with Belgian chocolatiere Jean-Philippe Darcis to distribute high quality pastry and Belgian chocolates under the Darcis brand.
They have set up JC Distribution USA to handle the Darcis venture. Frank Martin said he is talking with venture capitalists about financing the project.
Getting JC Distribution up and running is probably 18 months down the road, he said.
The business plan includes distribution and sales of merchandise to J-P Darcis Cafes and other clients worldwide — except in Europe — managing a string of Darcis cafes in major U.S. and international cities. It also involves operating a U.S. production facility in Greenville.
But Martin is beginning to distribute the chocolates, which are now shipped air freight from Belgium, in a few high-end specialty stores in the United States, he said. “Step by step we are building the business,” Martin said. He is working to secure some additional retail clients, he said.
He has not talked with economic developers in Greenville about the Darcis venture yet because of the early nature of the plan.
Jody Bryson, vice president for public relations for the Upstate Alliance, said the economic development agency would look at what assistance it could offer Martin once he has a more fully developed business plan.
Bryson said the alliance has had some discussions with Martin about his other business, CPQP International. Martin is also planning to relocate the business consulting firm to Greenville.
Darcis is a high-end chocolate produced in Verviers, Belgium. Jean Philippe Darcis is an award-winning chocolaterie and a member of Team Belgium, which won the award for Best Chocolate Showpiece at the 2002 World Pastry Team Championship in Las Vegas.
Darcis chocolates can be compared to Neuhaus and other fine Belgium chocolates, Martin said, and are priced similarly in the upper-end of high quality chocolates.
It isn’t dime-store chocolate. The Neuhaus Web site, for example, offers a 12.7-ounce package for $40. A 30-piece sampler runs nearly $70.
FROM TRADE TRIP
Buddy Bateman, chairman of the Columbia Export Consortium, and members of a Columbia trade delegation, toured the Darcis operation in Verviers this year. They were part of a Midlands International Trade Association trip.
Bateman, who met with Darcis and Jean-Marie Martin, said he believes the parties are committed to the venture.
While early in their business plan, “They are trying to make it go. The are putting a lot of effort into it,” said Bateman, director of economic development for BellSouth/South Carolina.
Martin does not have a site for a Greenville facility, he said. But he expects the plant would have 10 to 20 employees.
U.S. production would start with the Darcis chocolates and then add pastries, he said. A distribution system will be set up out of Greenville.
The chocolates and pastries would be available in the J-P Darcis Cafes.
To maintain the quality of the U.S. products, Martin said he is talking to one of the chocolateries at Darcis in Belgium about coming to Greenville for a few years.
But first up will be relocating to Greenville from Tarpon Springs, Fla., and bringing CPQP International with him.
“It is what you would call a virtual company. My laptop is my office,” Martin said. “The other folks are in the field.”
Martin works with network of global team leaders in the United States, Canada, South America, India, South East Asia, China and Europe.
CPQP provides assistance and consulting to manufacturing and distribution companies on plant and operation relocations and start-ups.
“What we do is set up factories and improve the productivity of factories all over the world,” Martin said.
CPQP has opened 18 factories for employers and clients.
Before founding CPQP in 2000, Martin managed manufacturing operations for Schlumbeger, Siemens, Emerson Electric, Viag and Fortune Brands.
Martin expects to move to Greenville by next March or April, he said.
Why Greenville? He said he has been flying in and out of Greenville for years while serving CPQP clients in North Carolina.
It was cheaper than flying into Charlotte and a way to save his clients some money. “I had to rent a car anyway,” he said.
One day he drove through some Greenville neighborhoods and liked what he saw.
He found a new subdivision on Lake Robinson and showed it to his wife. “She liked it. We bought a lot there, and we are going to build,” Martin said.
The decision to go into the Darcis venture was almost that simple.
A couple of years ago he went to see his parents and his brother. Jean-Marie, a marketing expert, is CPQP’s team leader for Europe and had been working for Darcis.
On a Saturday morning, the two brothers met at the Jean-Philippe Darcis cafe in Verviers.
They sat down, had a cup of coffee, some chocolates and a piece of pastry.
“Suddenly I said, ‘This is great. Why don't we do something?’” Martin said.
Being that my sister lives in the Greenville area, I'll make sure that she sends me some chocolates.
Gee. Just think of all the effort the State and the Feds made in tax breaks and incentives to get this low tech excuse for continued globalism?
We give the world our tech and engineering jobs and get this garbage in return.
hmmmmmmmmmchoclate!!!!
I'm not sure but I think Dasani bottled water comes from Michigan by way of a french company.
The world's best chocolate used to be sold at an elegant little shop on Madison Ave, a few blocks south of St. Patrick's. They were Belgian, too, and oddly enuff, the name was "De Granville." I think they got too expensive for Manhattan even, (a 1/2 in. diameter truffle was about $4) and moved on. But they sure were good, to the eye as well as the tummy.
Considering that I've seen more excessive pricing in the same neighborhood, I would bet that it was high rent that drove them out of business.
Dasani is a Coca-Cola product, and produced in the US. You're probably thinking of Perrier.
Probably the same way the French do, knowing most of their escargots are shipped out of California.
Maybe they need to bring it back to MEXICO. One of the few global words with an Aztec origin.
Probably like the Germans do, with their BMWs made there!
LOL Good one. Merecedes builds a few of their more popular brands here. As does Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Mitsubishi.
"Darcis chocolates can be compared to Neuhaus..."
Neuhaus is high quality, but I was forever turned off when I bought a piece (!) at the Galleria shop for $3 and it was stale. Lindt, above, can be found in your grocery store for about $2 a BAR. The Swiss know how to mass produced killer chocolate that rivals anything the Belgians can churn out, IMO.
Many European chocolatiers now have factories in the U,S.
For example, Lindt has factories in California and New Hampshire. Barry Callebaut has factories in Vermont and New Jersey that make big blocks of chocolate used by pastry chefs and boutique chocolatiers.
But I find that the factory-produced stuff, like Lindt and Godiva, is nowhere as good as chocolates made by hand in local shops. Maybe this guy will be able to keep the quality for a while, but as he scales up production, the quality will suffer.
The best chocolate in the world, IMHO is a brand called Divine sold by an American company. It is, however a fair-traded product with all sorts of PC sensitivity to the poor peasants who produce the cocoa etc. The cocoa comes from Ghana and the dark chocolate is the best I have ever tasted, better than French, Belgian, Swiss or German, again, IMHO
What do you mean moved ? I was there two years ago. Have they moved since then ?
The best chocolate in the world, IMHO is at the Food Court at Harrods.
Japan did it with autos in order to circumvent import laws but I don't know of larget scale efforts to use the US as a purely outrsourcing situation, where the goods are made here for shipment back to the host country. Would seem to make sense.
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