Chapter 21
Morgan and Luke joined the rest of the Zabloomers.
“Let’s get excited, folks,” Brad said, clapping his hands once. “I want a booth at NETX. Marketing, what can you rustle up?”
“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 booth at 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 and we’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.”
“Right,” Morgan said, wondering how fast she could search ‘how to record a podcast.’
“And I have some great news, folks,” Brad continued. “A few minutes ago, GreenField UnLtd. issued a press release announcing their entrance into the wellness space.”
“Our biggest rival followed our previous pivot?” Carter said, clearly dubious that this news was good.
Morgan had grabbed her phone. Of course, Hawk had a post up. It included a subtle-not-subtle dig at Zabloom. Classy. No wonder they’d stolen her hashtag. “Looks like they’re already being smug about it on social media.”
“It’s a clear indicator to the market that Zabloom is a trendsetter,” Brad declared. “And we’ve got first mover advantage, since we’re already into wellness and nutrition.”
Morgan wasn’t sure it counted as trendsetting if they’d already abandoned the field before the followers moved there, or a first mover advantage if they’d barely been in either field for a week and were planning on abandoning the business market for consumers immediately after.
“Make sure you cover that in the podcast,” Brad instructed.
“I’ve got a call I need to jump on,” Kelly announced, conveniently before Brad could come up with any more ideas.
The Zabloomers drifted off to their desks as Brad went back to his office to brainstorm new ways to ruin their lives. Brad crooked a finger at Luke. She slipped into the office behind him.
“… and swap around the Walmart thing. Got all that, intern?” Brad was saying. He caught Morgan’s eye. “We’ll want to rework the brand book, of course. Get me that, too.”
Morgan looked at Luke, her blood roaring in her ears. “We can’t rebuild the entire company from scratch in time for Christmas.”
“Then why do I even have a demon?” He flicked his fingers at her, dismissing her. Luke stumbled out behind her, looking like he was in shock.
Overwhelmed, she picked not the most important thing but the one that seemed most easily accomplished.
Morgan sidled up to Carter, feeling awkward.
She didn’t know the first thing about producing a podcast, although her phone assured her the audio from a video conference platform could suffice.
But it was the perfect opportunity. Maybe Carter’s heart’s desire was a demo that actually worked.
Or maybe it was a swimming pool of disinfectant.
She couldn’t save Zabloom. It was about staying focused on her goals and who she wanted to protect, she reminded herself.
“Want to get this over with?” she said, trying for a smile, which came out a little shakier than she’d intended.
Carter looked about as shell-shocked. Maybe he also wanted to check the most straightforward of the ridiculous things off the list. He grabbed a canister of antibacterial wipes off his desk. “Might as well.”
“Luke, come help me with the equipment.” She tugged his elbow.
“You’ve been here from the beginning,” Morgan started, after Carter had finished mopping down the desk in the phone room and Luke had set up the recording. Rix wandered in behind them.
“Second employee,” Carter confirmed. He scooted his chair a little farther from the dog, and gave the door an extra swipe with a wipe where Rix’s fur had brushed against it.
Rix’s fur was perfectly clean and not at all caustic; she tried to use her irritation to harden her heart a little.
She couldn’t save him either. But he could save Luke.
“You must really believe in Zabloom’s mission,” Morgan prompted.
Carter paused for a moment. “I believe in our developers’ dedication.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer to the question. She tried again. “So were you Brad’s first hire, then?”
“Brad wasn’t the original CEO,” Carter said, to her surprise. “He came in later.”
He looked like he regretted saying that. She paused the recording. “Hold up. I thought Brad was the founder.”
Carter seemed to relax slightly with the recording paused.
She realized his shoulders were always riding high, but they varied on exactly how close they were to his ears.
“No, the founder was a guy named Hwon. The investors at the time liked the concept, but wanted someone with more… vision to lead the company. Hwon was bought out. Last I heard, he was off starting another company.”
“He didn’t take you with him?”
Carter tried to shrug casually, but was too tense to pull it off. “Apparently the deal included clauses about not poaching Zabloom employees.”
“I see.” So Carter had been stuck at Zabloom. She pushed her feelings down—she couldn’t afford to feel bad. It was him or Luke. “Thanks for the background. Keep going?”
Carter nodded. Rix tried to move toward him, probably to lay his head on Carter’s knee. The hellhound seemed to have a good sense of when someone was distressed. Carter winced. Luke grabbed the dog’s collar and redirected him to lay on his own feet instead.
“We were originally supposed to be a benefits platform,” Carter continued when Luke signaled the recording was on again. “We’d gotten a couple of early customers, but the investors at the time were concerned there weren’t enough multipliers with the business model.”
“But the product worked.”
“Oh, it worked great!” For a moment, some of his tension eased. It was the first time she’d ever seen him look happy, she realized. “It was really helpful to employees, companies loved it. We were even net-positive on revenue that last year Hwon was around.”
“Just not enough revenue,” Morgan filled in.