To take a little mystery out of marketing.
I met Denton Sherry in Corvallis, Oregon where a bunch of us from Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods had gathered for a FDA sponsored certification course in Closed Retort Canning in Metal and Glass Containers. It was a little comical that us youngsters got better grades than the old-timers who had been running canneries their whole lives. We just knew how to study and take tests better from more recent experience. But now the FDA was requiring canneries to have someone in-house with a certificate in training.
Denton was the new President of the Kyokyo Trading Company owned cannery chain in Alaska, with headquarters on Lake Union in Seattle. He spoke Japanese and had in a former position, traveled to Japan and sold the Japanese on buying salmon eggs from Alaska. We all know how valuable that piece of prospecting has been to the Alaskan fisherman and cannery owner. Now much of the run back to the Valdez hatchery is ONLY being harvested for the roe. Same with a lot of chums in Southeastern.
He had a charisma that I imagine the Japanese found refreshing, and he got the respect due someone that spoke their language. But I imagine it didn't take much convincing by the way they started to flock over here to finance egg operations, then whole packs and then canneries and then companies with multiple canneries. Of course, this was just after they couldn't come within 200 miles of our coast to scoop up our salmon. And then they couldn't even catch our salmon ANYWHERE.
The point is, is that he wasn't afraid to hop on a plane and go give it a whirl. Another case in point was the way Alaska started selling bright frozen coho and chum into Europe. The smokers were running out of wild run atlantic salmon from overfishing.
Dean Kayler was the one who hopped on a plane this time and cold storages in Alaska were off and running. Dean was the son of one of the founders of Kayler-Dahl Fish Company in Petersburg. My father ran the plant for Chris and the elder Dean from the late fourties until Whitney bought Chris Dahl out in 1969. Young Dean wanted a place in the company after his father died, but the company was just too small for another executive.
He started a brokerage company and landed the Petersburg Fisheries frozen account. So Dean took off for Europe one fine day, probably a rainy day in Seattle, and started selling frozen coho and chum like hotcakes. Everyone benefitted from that little excursion.
The bottom line is that it hasn't been rocket science traditionally. And a lot of it still isn't. I remember meeting with the Alaska correspondent for a big Japanese newspaper about the differential in prices for a whole sockeye in a Tokyo department store and on a tender in Bristol Bay. He told me a story of a bunch of Hokkaido apple growers who were frustrated with the distribution system too. They ended up setting up a fruit stall at the big train station in Tokyo and selling their apples themselves. So the advice was, "Why don't fishermen go over to Tokyo and set up a fish stall and sell sockeye?" "Two million people a day go through that station."
I can just see it, ALASKA NATIVE POTLATCH SALMON, or ALASKA STYLE BARBECUED SALMON, or GET YOUR ALASKA SALMON FROM AN ALASKAN FISHERMAN HERE, right next to the apple stall.
Denton was the new President of the Kyokyo Trading Company owned cannery chain in Alaska, with headquarters on Lake Union in Seattle. He spoke Japanese and had in a former position, traveled to Japan and sold the Japanese on buying salmon eggs from Alaska. We all know how valuable that piece of prospecting has been to the Alaskan fisherman and cannery owner. Now much of the run back to the Valdez hatchery is ONLY being harvested for the roe. Same with a lot of chums in Southeastern.
He had a charisma that I imagine the Japanese found refreshing, and he got the respect due someone that spoke their language. But I imagine it didn't take much convincing by the way they started to flock over here to finance egg operations, then whole packs and then canneries and then companies with multiple canneries. Of course, this was just after they couldn't come within 200 miles of our coast to scoop up our salmon. And then they couldn't even catch our salmon ANYWHERE.
The point is, is that he wasn't afraid to hop on a plane and go give it a whirl. Another case in point was the way Alaska started selling bright frozen coho and chum into Europe. The smokers were running out of wild run atlantic salmon from overfishing.
Dean Kayler was the one who hopped on a plane this time and cold storages in Alaska were off and running. Dean was the son of one of the founders of Kayler-Dahl Fish Company in Petersburg. My father ran the plant for Chris and the elder Dean from the late fourties until Whitney bought Chris Dahl out in 1969. Young Dean wanted a place in the company after his father died, but the company was just too small for another executive.
He started a brokerage company and landed the Petersburg Fisheries frozen account. So Dean took off for Europe one fine day, probably a rainy day in Seattle, and started selling frozen coho and chum like hotcakes. Everyone benefitted from that little excursion.
The bottom line is that it hasn't been rocket science traditionally. And a lot of it still isn't. I remember meeting with the Alaska correspondent for a big Japanese newspaper about the differential in prices for a whole sockeye in a Tokyo department store and on a tender in Bristol Bay. He told me a story of a bunch of Hokkaido apple growers who were frustrated with the distribution system too. They ended up setting up a fruit stall at the big train station in Tokyo and selling their apples themselves. So the advice was, "Why don't fishermen go over to Tokyo and set up a fish stall and sell sockeye?" "Two million people a day go through that station."
I can just see it, ALASKA NATIVE POTLATCH SALMON, or ALASKA STYLE BARBECUED SALMON, or GET YOUR ALASKA SALMON FROM AN ALASKAN FISHERMAN HERE, right next to the apple stall.
posted by Alaskacafe at 5:20 PM
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