Las Vegas, Nevada – August 15, 1979 – December 31, 1989

At the time I started, Ethel M Chocolates consisted of six people. The owner, Forest Mars, who had retired as CEO of M&M Mars. At that time, it was the largest privately owned company in the world. He was then one of the wealthiest men in the world and got a lot of attention from the local political establishment. He had decided he wanted to build a gourmet chocolate factory in the desert named after his long deceased mother Ethel.

There were two men from upper management at M&M Mars that had worked for him in the past and the other was Mr. Mars personal assistant who kept the office running. Two other associates in the kitchen were a retired candy chef from the state of Washington and a young girl from M&M Mars factory in New Jersey with chocolate development experience. They and Forest Mars himself spent most of their time in a small kitchen in the back of a small strip mall location developing the new product line.

I spent the couple of years getting ready for the chocolate machinery to arrive and by helping to oversee the actual construction of the factory. We had an engineering firm from Chicago handling that aspect. My job was to prepare for setting the machinery and getting the factory set up and working. During this period, I made three trips to Italy and Germany with stops in Brussels and Amsterdam to coordinate planning and installation for the major production lines. I also had to manage two Italian installers for six months as we got the machinery online and running on site. I share another story on this site about hosting them on Thanksgiving, a holiday they knew nothing about.

My most intense memory of that period was the freedom I had in accomplishing what I needed to do. I had never experienced that before. There was no budget to follow, no corporate meetings to attend, no one looking over my shoulder. I just knew that only results mattered. Keeping my job meant getting my job finished on time.

During my first year working at Ethel M, I married Janet.

Early Days – 1979 to 1983

This period of time was the most fulfilling period of my work career. Our challenge was to make this business work from scratch. Forest Mars business philosophy was completely product driven. He believed to make a new business succeed you provide a superior product at a competitive price. Raw material costs did not matter. Providing the best possible taste in a chocolate did. Nothing gets in the way of that.

To that end, he decided that he needed exposure. At that time the selling price of a box of his gourmet chocolates was $10. During the holiday season, the busiest time of year for selling chocolates, he sold two boxes for the price of one. That more than quadrupled our normal production.

Our challenge was to accomplish that with existing staff. I learned a valuable lesson about motivation. Tell your people what results they need to accomplish, then make it clear you TRUST them to figure out the details on how they can accomplish their individual tasks. Avoid questioning their decisions as much as possible, just be available to get whatever they need. I was amazed how hard they were willing to work to reach the necessary results. We even gave it a name, “Done-age”, for getting it done. We quadrupled production within three days.

Middle Days – 1983 to 1988

We fell into a pattern of operation. Within the next few years, both of the managers from M&M Mars left over policy disagreements with Mr. Mars. I was promoted to plant manager with a decent raise. It was a constant challenge because the sales were not commensurate with Mr. Mars expectations. He believed success was measured in pounds sold, not dollars. We were constantly straining production capacity to accomplish his frequent two-for-one sales during holidays, regardless of cost.

Mr. Mars had hired a landscape designer named Gary Lyons from the Los Angeles area to create a large cactus garden in front of the factory. It took him many years to acquire an incredible variety of cacti and to get the landscaping put together in the best manner to display them.

This cactus garden has become quite a landmark in Las Vegas. Its primary purpose was to attract the many bus tours from the strip on their way to Hoover Dam. It accomplished that goal. We had a viewing aisle along one side of the factory with glass windows that allowed visitors to watch the chocolates being made. We also had video monitors in the viewing aisle running close-ups of the process.

During their tour visitors could walk the many paths in this cactus garden. This factory store ended up being a significant portion of our retail sales. Today it is decorated with a million dollar Christmas light display that locals and their children visit between Thanksgiving and Christmas each year.

It was during this period that we began expanding our retail stores. Since the factory had settled into a routine, I was tasked with finding new locations to expand our customer base. I spent a lot of time in California scouting mall locations for new retail stores. It proved to be more difficult than we had expected. Malls were reluctant to take on any company without a proven track record. We did find a few locations in southern California, in Phoenix and Reno. A funny story about Janet’s experience with Forrest Mars and me in San Francisco I posted under the story section.

It was also during this period of time that we adopted our children and became close friends with other transplants from upstate New York.

Later Days

Life at Ethel M changed significantly for me the last couple of years. Mr. Mars was getting older and could no longer keep up with the physical demands of the business. His family started the process of taking over Ethel M. As is common in this situation, they brought in their own people and my job responsibilities and authority were significantly reduced.

I had been spoiled with the freedom I had in running the factory’s day to day operations, so I had difficulty adjusting to the people in charge of the transition. They had no idea what we had been through to this point, the procedures to manage quick production increases and wanted to change everything. I felt like a big part of Ethel M was my own and they seemed intent on changing everything. It did not make for good working relationship. I should have dealt with that reality of the situation much better. I do not blame them when I think back. M & M Mars would have been a great company to stay with. Had I been more humble and more agreeable, I probably could have arranged a transfer to another Mars location and retired with a very comfortable pension today, but I did not.

It was during this time that the personal computer movement was just beginning to take off. I had always been fascinated by the capabilities of computers. I took to them like a fish to water. I developed spreadsheet macros on some original IBM personal computers to calculate production requirements for the many individual chocolates we made, since they had such a short shelf life. I even hired consultants to help in designing some of the routines and macros.

At the end of December 1979, it was a mutual agreement that I should move on. I was given a year’s salary and a very emotional going away party. With two small children and a wife very reluctant to move again, I decided to start my own computer consulting business. I believed I was as capable as the people I had hired for that kind of work.

So began Davalex Microsystems, a contraction of my kid’s names, David and Alexandra.