“NETX—as in the Northeast Tech Expo?” Kelly’s eyebrows rose to her hair. “The second biggest in the country, after CES?”
“We’re headed to the top, baby, we need to walk the walk and talk the talk,” Brad said.
“It’s in less than two weeks,” Kelly said flatly. “You need to have booked exhibitor space almost a year ago.”
“I think my man Luke can help us out there,” Brad said smugly.
Luke was still gazing into the middle distance. Morgan prodded him with her elbow. “What? I’m sorry?”
“Booth. NETX.” Brad prompted. “Maybe a speaking slot, too. That would probably be best.”
“Yeah, sure,” Luke said vaguely. At Kelly’s snort of disbelief, he added, “I know a guy.”
Morgan swallowed, thinking about the list of tasks that had dropped in her lap. What did you need to have a boothat something that big? At least it was in the Javits Center, twentyish blocks away; she supposed he could have asked for a European conference or something.
Kelly’s eyes narrowed. Carter looked grim. Ronaldo pumped his fist. “Aww yeah, booth babes!”
“Big news requires a big stage. Isn’t that right, Marketing?” Brad grinned. “I want to make a big splash. The biggest. We’re going to need it, if we’re going to be in stores by Christmas.”
“Stores?” Kelly looked genuinely nonplussed. “We’re B2B. We sell to other businesses. Why do we need stores?”
“Ravenfell’s all about the health and wellness, and they love the subscription angle with all the recurring revenue, but they think we’re limiting ourselves. B2C, baby!”
Morgan took a big breath and let it out, and when that didn’t center her, tried another. “Business to consumers, selling what?”
“We’re pivoting,” Brad said, rolling his eyes. “Keep up. Health, wellness, I’m thinking kale. Kale’s big still, right? Kale smoothies. Like, a kale smoothie press.”
“I—What—That’s not even—” Morgan blinked.
Carter’s face was ashen.
“Kind of like Keurig, but you get a subscription of kale packets,” Brad continued while the rest of the gathered employees tried not to exchange glances too obviously. “We undercharge for the press, make all the money on replacement packets. Like razor companies with blades, or printers with ink cartridges. Just kale.”
“We’re a software company,” Carter managed to get himself under control enough to point out. “Not a consumer appliances company.”
“I have faith in the team to keep up. Or they won’t andwe’ll shed some dead weight.” Brad looked unconcerned about the hiss of half a dozen people suddenly taking a breath. Justin and Josh stopped elbowing each other in the ribs and started paying much closer attention.
“We don’t have any infrastructure for dealing with… with kale growers? Where do you even get kale?” Carter pointed out doggedly.
“Our intern has connections,” Brad said. “We’ll leverage them.”
Luke looked miserable but not surprised. Suddenly, she wondered if she should have been pushing for details from that drinks session after all. How could he keep a secret like this? Because Brad made him, that’s how.
Morgan swallowed and raised a hesitant hand. “All our market awareness is in corporate HR departments. We’ve got no consumer awareness at all.”
“Yeah, a rebrand is probably necessary. Or a spin-off. We start with the corporate HR departments, get in with the monthly coffee order. But we expand into the consumer market ASAP. Put together a go-to-market plan for me, we’ll want to at least be taking pre-orders for Black Friday.”
Kelly had gotten her face back under control. “What about the Walmart deal?”
“What about them? You’ve got the foot in the door with the hiring platform, convert that into shelf space for our machines. Oh, I’ve got it—Kaleo. For the name. It’s like paleo, see, that’s still hot, right?”
Morgan could have wept.
“Also, something Ronaldo said had me thinking—we need our own podcast. Marketing, get started on that. First episode, I’m thinking we keep it in-house.” Brad snapped.“I know—you can interview Carter on the Zabloom journey. How we got to where we are.”
“I’ll get right on that after NETX. And the rebrand,” Morgan said. Poor Carter. Did Brad actively enjoy humiliating people? Actually, she was pretty sure he did.
“No, no, I want this to go live next week, really set us up for the big announcement,” Brad said. “Grab the phone room, you can get this in the bag this afternoon.”
