D.J. Forry sales team folds into Fruit Patch
D.J. Forry sales team folds into Fruit Patch
DINUBA, CA -- Fruit Patch Inc., here, a major shipper of California stone fruit as well as grapes, citrus and specialty fruit, has recently undergone a major reorganization of its sales operation.
Several members of Fruit Patch's previous sales team have moved on to pursue other opportunities, and the company's newly named president, Glen McClaran, has brought in Dewey Forry Jr. and John Forry, owners of D.J. Forry Co. Inc., to head the new Fruit Patch sales organization.
"We took our entire sales force" to Fruit Patch, including Tom Wolfe, Bill Shene, John Forry's son Mike Forry and "our support people," John Forry told The Produce News Jan. 4. Also, "We brought Jerry Huerta, our grape field man. So we really brought our core Reedley [CA] group over with us."
Remaining on sales at Fruit Patch from last season are Tina Haga, Brian Haley and Mike Crookshanks, he said.
D.J. Forry Inc. "is basically closing as far as a marketing company," he said. "We still have [a 50 percent interest in] F&H Cold storage. It will be a separate business that has nothing to do with this." F&H will now operate basically as a commercial cold storage, he said. "And then we have our farming entities," which will continue to operate under the D.J. Forry name but will now bring their fruit through Fruit Patch.
The Forrys have also brought "most all of our growers" to Fruit Patch, he said. "We are going to bring probably somewhere in the neighborhood of [1.7 million boxes of California] grapes" to add to a similar volume of grapes Fruit Patch already has. Also, "we are going to bring ... probably 300,000 [boxes of] stone fruit," giving Fruit Patch an expected total volume of around 5 million boxes of stone fruit for the 2008 season, "down by 20 percent" from last season.
In addition, the Forrys will be bringing about 300,000 boxes of specialty fruit and "probably" 100,000 boxes of citrus into the Fruit Patch program, he said. "Plus we are bringing our Mexican grape deal."
D.J. Forry and Fruit Patch have been partners over the last three years in the Grape Connection, which represented about eight different Mexican grape growers. "There will no longer be a Grape Connection," Mr. Forry said. "It will now be Fruit Patch. We will have 60,000 boxes of Mexican table grapes."
Mr. Forry stressed that his motivation for closing the marketing side of the 35-year-old company, which was founded by his father, Dewey Forry, was not because D.J. Forry was hurting in any way.
In fact, in 2007, "we had the most profitable year we ever had" as well as the biggest volume year, he said. "We wound up doing $60 million," a 28 percent increase over the prior year, "so I didn't come over here leaking."
Mr. Forry grew up around the family business, and his brother has been involved in D.J. Forry Inc. since 1978. "I came on in 1996" after having worked in an entirely different industry, he said.
Prior to 1997, American Produce in Los Angeles had handled Fruit Patch's sales. Then, in 1997, Fruit Patch started its own marketing company, Fruit Patch Sales LLC.
Mr. Forry told The Produce News that during his first year with D.J. Forry, he met with Leo Balakian and his sons Anthony and Vincent, owners of Fruit Patch, and put a deal together with them to handle Fruit Patch's export sales. That arrangement continued for four years.
During that time and subsequently, there were conversations about merging D.J. Forry into Fruit Patch, but at the time, the Forrys were focused on building their own family business. Still, the two companies continued a close relationship over the years, so when the decision was made to fold the D.J. Forry sales operation into Fruit Patch, the Forrys were well acquainted with the company and the people at Fruit Patch. "We had a pretty clear idea of what we were getting ourselves into by coming over to Fruit Patch by closing our business and merging it into their business," Mr. Forry said.
The Balakians had sold an 80 percent interest in Fruit Patch to American Capital in 2005. Through 2006, they remained "pretty much actively involved," Mr. Forry said. In late 2006, American Capital brought in Randy Clark as president of the company, and for the next year, the Balakians had less involvement in the company's operation. But after Mr. Clark resigned a year later, three months after hiring Glen McClaran as chief operating officer, American Capital selected Mr. McClaran as the new president, and Mr. McClaran brought the Balakians "back into an active role going forward," he said.
Mr. McClaran told The Produce News he grew up in nearby Visalia, CA, attended college at San Jose State, and then came back to the San Joaquin Valley to take a position in public accounting with Ernst & Young in Fresno, CA. After seven years, he said, "I was hired away by one of our clients: River Bend International," a produce company in Sanger, CA. He later worked for other food companies such as Wawona Frozen Foods, Yorkshire Dried Fruit and Ruiz Foods. After seven years at Ruiz, he joined Fruit Patch in late August and was named president Dec. 1.
"We really feel like the foundation of our future" at Fruit Patch "is going to be the quality of the product," Mr. McClaran said. "We have to be in the forefront of the consumers' minds when they are going to make a fruit purchase. [The product must] be what they want to have when they make the decision to buy fruit, so we are going to build our future on that."
That goal cannot be accomplished "without good people," from growers to employees and "all the way through the supply chain," he said. "So it is going to be important that we are doing it with the right group of folks." That is one reason for bringing the Forry team into the Fruit Patch organization, he continued. "We felt [they] were the right people for us moving forward."
The "quality initiative" at Fruit Patch will involve a number of changes, he said. "We are doing things in coordination with our growers in the field. We are also doing things in our production facility" including installing some new optical digital color-sorting equipment. "In the off seasons, we will be doing ... a number of things to make sure that we have the quality that our consumers are demanding."
Software upgrades in the company's cold storage facility will also enable Fruit Patch to improve customer service and delivery, he added.
Several members of Fruit Patch's previous sales team have moved on to pursue other opportunities, and the company's newly named president, Glen McClaran, has brought in Dewey Forry Jr. and John Forry, owners of D.J. Forry Co. Inc., to head the new Fruit Patch sales organization.
"We took our entire sales force" to Fruit Patch, including Tom Wolfe, Bill Shene, John Forry's son Mike Forry and "our support people," John Forry told The Produce News Jan. 4. Also, "We brought Jerry Huerta, our grape field man. So we really brought our core Reedley [CA] group over with us."
Remaining on sales at Fruit Patch from last season are Tina Haga, Brian Haley and Mike Crookshanks, he said.
D.J. Forry Inc. "is basically closing as far as a marketing company," he said. "We still have [a 50 percent interest in] F&H Cold storage. It will be a separate business that has nothing to do with this." F&H will now operate basically as a commercial cold storage, he said. "And then we have our farming entities," which will continue to operate under the D.J. Forry name but will now bring their fruit through Fruit Patch.
The Forrys have also brought "most all of our growers" to Fruit Patch, he said. "We are going to bring probably somewhere in the neighborhood of [1.7 million boxes of California] grapes" to add to a similar volume of grapes Fruit Patch already has. Also, "we are going to bring ... probably 300,000 [boxes of] stone fruit," giving Fruit Patch an expected total volume of around 5 million boxes of stone fruit for the 2008 season, "down by 20 percent" from last season.
In addition, the Forrys will be bringing about 300,000 boxes of specialty fruit and "probably" 100,000 boxes of citrus into the Fruit Patch program, he said. "Plus we are bringing our Mexican grape deal."
D.J. Forry and Fruit Patch have been partners over the last three years in the Grape Connection, which represented about eight different Mexican grape growers. "There will no longer be a Grape Connection," Mr. Forry said. "It will now be Fruit Patch. We will have 60,000 boxes of Mexican table grapes."
Mr. Forry stressed that his motivation for closing the marketing side of the 35-year-old company, which was founded by his father, Dewey Forry, was not because D.J. Forry was hurting in any way.
In fact, in 2007, "we had the most profitable year we ever had" as well as the biggest volume year, he said. "We wound up doing $60 million," a 28 percent increase over the prior year, "so I didn't come over here leaking."
Mr. Forry grew up around the family business, and his brother has been involved in D.J. Forry Inc. since 1978. "I came on in 1996" after having worked in an entirely different industry, he said.
Prior to 1997, American Produce in Los Angeles had handled Fruit Patch's sales. Then, in 1997, Fruit Patch started its own marketing company, Fruit Patch Sales LLC.
Mr. Forry told The Produce News that during his first year with D.J. Forry, he met with Leo Balakian and his sons Anthony and Vincent, owners of Fruit Patch, and put a deal together with them to handle Fruit Patch's export sales. That arrangement continued for four years.
During that time and subsequently, there were conversations about merging D.J. Forry into Fruit Patch, but at the time, the Forrys were focused on building their own family business. Still, the two companies continued a close relationship over the years, so when the decision was made to fold the D.J. Forry sales operation into Fruit Patch, the Forrys were well acquainted with the company and the people at Fruit Patch. "We had a pretty clear idea of what we were getting ourselves into by coming over to Fruit Patch by closing our business and merging it into their business," Mr. Forry said.
The Balakians had sold an 80 percent interest in Fruit Patch to American Capital in 2005. Through 2006, they remained "pretty much actively involved," Mr. Forry said. In late 2006, American Capital brought in Randy Clark as president of the company, and for the next year, the Balakians had less involvement in the company's operation. But after Mr. Clark resigned a year later, three months after hiring Glen McClaran as chief operating officer, American Capital selected Mr. McClaran as the new president, and Mr. McClaran brought the Balakians "back into an active role going forward," he said.
Mr. McClaran told The Produce News he grew up in nearby Visalia, CA, attended college at San Jose State, and then came back to the San Joaquin Valley to take a position in public accounting with Ernst & Young in Fresno, CA. After seven years, he said, "I was hired away by one of our clients: River Bend International," a produce company in Sanger, CA. He later worked for other food companies such as Wawona Frozen Foods, Yorkshire Dried Fruit and Ruiz Foods. After seven years at Ruiz, he joined Fruit Patch in late August and was named president Dec. 1.
"We really feel like the foundation of our future" at Fruit Patch "is going to be the quality of the product," Mr. McClaran said. "We have to be in the forefront of the consumers' minds when they are going to make a fruit purchase. [The product must] be what they want to have when they make the decision to buy fruit, so we are going to build our future on that."
That goal cannot be accomplished "without good people," from growers to employees and "all the way through the supply chain," he said. "So it is going to be important that we are doing it with the right group of folks." That is one reason for bringing the Forry team into the Fruit Patch organization, he continued. "We felt [they] were the right people for us moving forward."
The "quality initiative" at Fruit Patch will involve a number of changes, he said. "We are doing things in coordination with our growers in the field. We are also doing things in our production facility" including installing some new optical digital color-sorting equipment. "In the off seasons, we will be doing ... a number of things to make sure that we have the quality that our consumers are demanding."
Software upgrades in the company's cold storage facility will also enable Fruit Patch to improve customer service and delivery, he added.
