The e-commerce sites, of course, have been hosted on top-of-the-line secure servers throughout the world since the earliest days, some in partnership with Yahoo’s merchant solutions business and others with competitors depending upon the technology needs of the particular site (Kennon Home Accessories, for instance, uses a PHP-driven database platform built on a Network Solutions backbone with most of the inventory management handled through regular CSV uploads, whereas the Mount Olympus Awards site is built on hand coded Dreamweaver html pages with call tags that reference a product inventory sheet in Yahoo’s catalog).  The digital content distribution business is built on secure web hosting packages with redundant backups managed by third-party server farms.  What I’m talking about here is the system that we use at headquarters so when I want to drop an SEC filing on Aaron’s desktop with my annotations and have him get back to me on a particular investment idea – the actual machine that I pass each morning when I go get my Douwe Egberts coffee.

I’m beginning to wonder – at what point does it make sense to switch to a Mac OS server configuration? I’ve never been exposed to one and, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure how they work.  The research is going to begin this week.  We’re probably not going to do anything this year, but as we grow, the idea of having rows of 24″ iMacs tied into a server we control (and can use to restrict certain activities) is highly appealing, especially when we begin hiring CSV product coders who will be sitting in front of the screen all day before shipping product feeds and search marketing bids up to our administrative accounts.

I know our manufacturing company, Chenille Appeal, LLC has a Microsoft-based server that sits in a room in the middle of its production factory and that it’s used to control the individual terminals throughout the building.  Maybe I’ll try to make my way over there and start asking questions.  Better yet, I’ll just find some firm that specializes in this.  I want to stick to the investments, launching new businesses, and enjoying my system (both Aaron and I work on Mac Pros with two (2) High Definition 30″ Apple Cinema monitors and at home, use a 17″ MacBook Pro).

This whole conversation does make me question one thing: At what point do we pull our ecommerce activities in-house, spend a couple million dollars, and build our own secure server farm with a custom-designed platform?  I don’t know if I’ll ever see the need for that until we go public because the companies exist to generate investment cash for me to deploy and anything requiring a project that large would a distraction from doing what we do best – outselling our competitors and keeping our cost structure ruthlessly low.

I’ve been reading all I can about a firm called the Storyville Coffee Company. The quality of graphics, the seamlessness of the design, the production value of their on-site commercials and informational videos, the aesthetic that went into creating their headquarters, and the obvious passion for the product are infectious. When we talk about quality businesses and management teams, this is exactly what we mean. You cannot teach someone to have an eye for detail this meticulous or caring. From the doormats to the coffee roaster itself, the company’s simple, yet brilliant, logo is displayed. It is one of the few cases where mere marketing has been elevated to art.

One of the things that has been in development here at Kennon Green Enterprises for the past six months is a luxury fragrance division that will create and distribute bath, body, and home scented products to high-end stores in the United States. Right now, we are still in the formulation phase when various ingredients are being tested and the product lines discussed. When I see the purity of design that went into the Storyville brand, I’m reminded why I love business. When we take this product to market in two years, our standards must be as high. Otherwise, I don’t want to be in the industry. This isn’t just about money – we have plenty of that (although we’re always working to generate more). It’s about creating something that is beautiful in its own right.

When that ideal is achieved, it goes beyond a rational response. A great brand makes you feel something. It makes you instinctively want to protect it if you feel that it is being threatened. Instead of becoming a customer, you become an advocate; a “protector” of the brand. (This, by the way, was the phenomenon that was behind the New Coke debacle several decades ago. The Coca-Cola management team failed to realize that they were entrusted with a global institution, not just a brand.) Very few companies or managers achieve it and, yet, Storyville made me feel that way within two minutes of visiting the site.

The company’s niche is fresh coffee, blended in a private reserve with beans from three continents, delivered on a subscription model to ensure that you get the absolute best quality humanly possible when brewing the perfect cup.  The company offers only two blends, prologue and epilogue, the former being the regular coffee and the latter, a Swiss Water Process decaffeinated version.

Storyville Coffee Photo Gallery

[nggallery id=1]