COVER STORY

Laurie, left, and Natalie King from Stonewall Kitchen. Amy Root-Donle

When someone asks Natalie King about the company she works for, she usually tells them it's "a small homemade jam and specialty foods company in Maine with the handwritten label."

Certainly, King's approach seems particularly modest now that the reach of the Stonewall Kitchen specialty foods company -- with $40 million in annual sales -- extends from 6,000 wholesale accounts nationwide to thriving catalog and Web divisions, as well as eight company stores.

But as the slightly younger sister of Jonathan King -- who co-founded Stonewall Kitchen 15 years ago with James Stott -- and the woman who was the company's 12th employee 11 years ago, King has never lost sight of the business's simple beginnings.

Begun in 1991 on a three-foot card table at a local farmer's market with a few dozen vinegars and jams, Stonewall Kitchen now sells everything from pancake mixes to grill sauces, dessert sauces to relishes.

Yet, even today, sitting in her modern, spare but oversized office at company headquarters in York, Maine, Natalie King, who is now vice president of sales and marketing, seems modest about nearly everything except the certainty that Stonewall Kitchen is headed on the track to still more growth.

"We are trending very close to what we had planned," King said. "And we expect sales to continue to increase."

Her sister-in-law, Lori King, who is Stonewall Kitchen's chief operating officer, couldn't agree more.

"Our goal is $100 million in sales in 2010 or 2011," she said. "We have a strategic plan, a business plan, and that is what we expect."

The King women, Natalie and Lori, were both brought into the company at an early stage when the founders just happened to be looking for someone with their skills and acumen.

Both were thriving businesswomen. Natalie had a background in sales and management, Lori had the finance experience and degrees.

It is almost coincidental that they are related to one of the founders. Natalie, 40, is three months shy of being two years younger than brother Jonathan, 41, and Lori, 40, is married to Jonathan and Natalie's brother, Danny, who is a year older than Jonathan and has his own business.

For Jonathan King and Stott, both women were just simply at the right juncture in their careers to be considered to fill niches in the company.

When Natalie King was hired, the company founders were looking for someone to focus on growing sales and fine-tuning customer service. King, who had been working for 10 years in sales and hotel management, was a perfect fit, once a few issues were ironed out.

She remembered when Jonathan first called her about the position with Stonewall Kitchen, she asked about the company's vacation policy.

"He said, 'What do you mean?' You take a vacation you don't get paid, that's the policy,' " she said. (She admitted the policy has been improved over the years.)

Once on board, King immediately jettisoned the other job title King and Stott had given her of director of human resources and capitalized on customer service and sales.

She has helped take the company from being a wholesale business with one store to a business with four retail channels -- wholesale, company stores, the Internet and catalog sales.

Along the way, King said she has founded the customer-service department, initiated catalog sales, opened more company stores, developed a merchandising department and created the Internet division.

"I'm responsible for growing all of the retail channels," King said. "Anything that has to do with top-line sales being generated is my responsibility."

Lori King began with the company nine years ago.

"I had been at a utility company six years and I was considering a couple of job offers in corporate finance," she said. "Jonathan happened to be at my house and he heard me talking about them. He said, 'My banker said I need someone like you.'"

After all, in addition to the finance experience, King had just finished overseeing a building project and Stonewall Kitchen was considering a new corporate headquarters.

"I said, 'Throw me an offer,'" King said. "We dickered back and forth and we came to an agreement."

Now the two women "are primarily the only people who report to the boys," Natalie King said. "Lori and I have primarily built a lot of the infrastructure to support the growth and finding the right people to help the company grow."

Certainly, the growth has, at times, meant King has had to make changes that initially didn't seem comfortable.

"When we first outsourced the call center I felt as if I was giving up a baby, because I was in a way," said the mother of two. "Literally that's how much the growth is personal, like part of a family."

Still the $40 million in sales this year was not a surprise.

"A few years ago, Lori, Jonathan, Jim and I predicted we'd be here," King said. "Although the way we have gotten to our goal wasn't exactly as we had thought, we did actually forecast that we would be here."

For example, the strategic team is surprised at the success of the grill sauces and their corresponding sales, she said.

"It doesn't feel big to us," King said of the company's size. "It feels natural."

She said that is owed partly to the organizational structure.

"We don't have a million layers in the company," King said. "People have the authority to make decisions. People feel like they are a part of the growth and they are."

In fact, many of the manager- and director-level employees have worked their way up through the ranks.

For instance, today's direct merchandising manager was hired two years ago as the catalog manager, she said.

Interestingly, of the 268 employees -- the number swells to about 400 during the holiday season -- recent research done by the company discovered women make up 73 percent of the management and 80 percent of the strategic managers.

"It's not very conscious," Natalie King said. "But it is a women-driven industry."

A survey done last year found that "if we were to describe Stonewall Kitchen, we would say she is a female who is about 38 years old," she said.

What is very conscious, though, is Stonewall Kitchen's effort to keep a growing company from feeling "big."

One way is to call each person to the front line for crunch times.

"If you come in on a Saturday during the holidays, you might find me at a register, Lori placing sales orders and Jonathan helping bag customers' gifts," Natalie King said. "It's a good example for the employees to see at a company that was founded on the quality of its products and service."

Another means to keep that homespun feel is the handwritten labels that are recognized everywhere.

"Jonathan still handwrites the initial label for each product," King said. The difference now, though, is that the writing then is scanned by the designers into a computer program that processes the subsequent labels.

"It is a conscious decision," she said. "It's very much part of our brand awareness."

Lori King agreed.

"We are very brand driven," she said. "So we are careful not to change things."

In fact, Natalie King said the goal is for the "guests" -- that is what Stonewall Kitchen calls its customers -- to have the same "feeling" whether they're shopping in a store, online or through the catalog.

As she put it, "We're trying to give our guests the same feeling, whenever and wherever they choose to shop Stonewall Kitchen."