Tis the season for home-delivered staples.
Names: Kristen Gasior (CMO) & Jennifer Couch (Director of Organic Marketing)
Company: Balsam Brands
Industry: Retail Trade
Vistage Chairs: David Spann & Julie Reiganaum
Locations: Boise, Idaho & Redwood City, CA
Known for its high-end holiday décor items, Balsam Hill delivers tens of thousands of its meticulously crafted, signature, faux Christmas trees all over the country. Balsam trees are regularly used by Hollywood set designers and are featured in the pages of design magazines, celebrity homes and five-star hotels. The company does a robust business, predominantly in fall and winter.
Challenge: Looking for a way to be of use in a time of great need, Balsam Hill took stock of their assets: A humming e-commerce infrastructure, delivery service and warehouse connections, and a relatively slow spring and summer season. The company also assessed the areas of greatest demand: An overburdened grocery supply chain and the need to get food and other household items to homebound or compromised people.
Leadership Solution: Thus, Balsam Provisions was born. Already set up for online ordering, Balsam transformed part of its website into a grocery outlet. Partnering with restaurants, which had mostly closed due to COVID, FedEx and warehouse companies, Balsam Provisions made food-service packs of staples such as flour, pasta, juice and other prepared foods, as well as household goods such as paper towels available for timely delivery all over the country.
"Shopping at Balsam Provisions puts food that was supposed to go to now-closed restaurants to good use while taking the pressure off strained grocery stores," says Balsam Hill CEO Mac Harman. "It's also another option to get food into the homes of people who, due to age or health conditions, should not go out."
Any profits from Balsam Provisions sales are donated to food banks, including Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.
