Selling Mary’s Gone Crackers after thirteen years (2025)

The read was right; the making was not

The reading of the market — organic and gluten-free — was not wrong. At a 2020 briefing Kameda itself said organic was showing the strongest growth of any health-oriented segment, and explained the gap with TH FOODS, also in North America, by the difference in market growth rates. Precisely because the read was right, the place where things broke is clear. Raw materials could not be procured, the plant could not attract workers, and goods could not be shipped against orders — the blockage was on the supply side, not the demand side. What Kameda had bought, it seems fair to say, was an entrance into a market, not the ability to keep making the thing.

Even so, calling thirteen years a total failure catches on the fact that the business did reach profit at one point. There genuinely was a period when plants were consolidated, people were sent in, management was replaced, and it returned to a monthly profit. That it did not hold appears to be because Kameda’s support never reached far enough to stabilise local production. Some companies can be rebuilt by sending technology and people, and some cannot — in the same North American market, the firm that supplied TH FOODS with technology for more than thirty years did not carry on doing so at MGC. Where exactly that line is drawn is the core of this decision.