For most small direct marketers the problem is getting customers for their products.
La Tienda has the customers and the product. Some 200 of them have paid $199 deposit for a chance to buy a prime cut of a premium Spanish cured ham known as jamón Ibérico. The ham, with bone, will cost more than $1,500.
However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will not permit food stuffs to be imported for sale in this country unless the processing plants meet federal standards for cleanliness, even if the plant is in another country.
But that is not the only obstacle facing La Tienda’s founder and owner Bob Harris. The prized ham in question comes from the black-foot pigs (patas negras), which are raised in western and southern Spain. The pig ranchers had been reluctant to increase production for the export market.
“The hams of the top producers are pre-sold for years,” Harris explained. “And the producers are a national treasure. They have a beautiful product and are living a nice life.” They didn’t feel the need or have the desire to expand.
Harris claimed that the Spaniards raising the pigs were busy enough filling the demand in Spain. He added that the pig ranchers felt that increasing production would create problems. For example, more pigs raised means more acorns, upon which the pigs feed, are needed. To fulfill the demand for more acorns, then more oak trees need to be planted.
“Some of their reluctance to enter the North American market came from what it would do to the supply chain,” Harris said. “The Japanese also love [jamón Ibérico].”
Nevertheless, some companies have increased the number of pigs produced to expand the export market. And a couple of slaughterhouses have been built to U.S. government specifications.
And in September, the first one was approved. Harris said, “It’s some small guy in the mountains.”
Working with a small guy was no accident. Harris has found that working with the larger companies frustrating, leaving him feeling he had been lost in some sort of bureaucracy. Instead he went to “fathers and sons and nephews, the people actually producing the hams.”
Harris explained, “That’s the story of my success in Spain: avoid the big boys and deal with the artisans.” Deals are handshakes and are usually honored in both the spirit and the letter of the agreement.
The hams however will not be arriving for Christmas. “There’s the whole issue of labeling,” he explained, adding that the regulations even specify such minutiae as font size. “They think it’s foolish, but it has to be done.”
When that is done and jamón Ibérico makes its way to these shores, it will be the culmination of almost 10 years of effort, almost as long as Harris’s company has been in existence. Harris, a retired Navy chaplain wanted to start a business he could share with his sons.
Having fallen in love with Spain, its people and its culture, he came up with the idea of an Internet company importing Spanish products. La Tienda started importing Spanish tiles, but quickly expanded into food and other products.
Harris found that there was a ready-made market for his products. From Spanish ex-pats to Americans who has spent summers or military service in Spain. There are, he pointed out, more than one million Americans visiting Spain each year.
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