Oser Communications Group

2 1 June 2018 SNACKING NEWS After Lotfi's death from lung cancer in 2002, Doug had some decisions to make. The studio didn't close while he grieved the loss of his friend, but he had to recon- stitute the studio in a different way. After a couple of rough years with an unscrupulous manager, Doug found a so- lution in an unlikely person: Wassim Charada, the owner of the Nabeul's first internet café. Again, a business decision based in friendship and trust spelled suc- cess for Le Souk. "When I hired him in 2007, he didn't know the difference between clay and glaze," Doug says. "But he's fantastic! He's a fast learner, and he helped our qual- ity get better and better. He's now consid- ered the foremost authority on ceramics in Nabeul. Self-taught, with no ceramics background; now, he's an outstanding ex- pert." Wassim, says Doug, saved the studio and the business. "Wassim is so smart and so honest and so honorable. We had to re- structure the company after the revolution, and we re-incorporated with him as co- Owner in 2011. He deserves it for all he's done, including being such a good coach for the employees. We are absolute equals." Wassim and Doug knew that Nabeul's red clay lacked the quality they wanted for their products. Earthenware, fired at low temperatures, chips easily. "In earthen- ware, the glaze sits atop the clay, like a glove fits on a hand," Doug says. "For 18 years, I saw the writing on the wall that earthenware was going to die," Doug says. So in 2016, working with a Portuguese company, Le Souk switched to the more durable stoneware. "In stoneware, the glaze actually bonds chem- ically with the clay," he says. "The glaze and the clay become one, in the process called vitrification." It was a massive investment, with a steep learning curve for the potters and painters who make Le Souk's products. "For the first few months, we'd go through all the work to make a kiln load of bisques, and 90 percent of them would break dur- ing firing," Doug says. "So we were going through raw material and labor with al- most nothing to show. We kept all the painters on staff even when there were lit- erally no bisques to paint." The headaches — and heartbreaking losses — weren't over even when the team mastered bisque firing with the new clay. "When we finally had bisques, we had months where we went through the labor to paint them all, only to have half or two- thirds misfire," Doug says. The company's losses in 2016 while making this switch "vastly surpassed all the small profits we'd posted in the 18 years prior," Doug says. "2017 was better, and in 2018, we're almost back to pre- switch inventory levels. Now we're ready to raise our production." That will mean hiring more artisans who can grow in use- ful work in the Nabeul studio, and expand- ing Le Souk Olivique's sales so more workers can be hired there, he says. Even before the switch from earthenware to stoneware, Le Souk weathered difficul- ties related to world events and to Tunisia's turbulent political climate. When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the immediate rise in anti-Mus- lim, anti-Arab sentiment in the U.S. threat- ened Le Souk. "I thought we were done," Doug says. "I didn't think we were going to be able to bridge that anti-Arab gap. We had a big expansion planned at that time, and we just shelved it." A decade later, Doug and Le Souk sup- ported the democratic revolution and its new beginnings. But problems remain. "It's the economy and overall governance that have made things so hard since 2011," Doug says. Tunisia is in crisis, he says, with widespread micro-corruption, huge public debt and budget deficits, a failing banking system, bloated and inefficient bureaucracy, crippling unemployment, and more symptoms of a failing governance. "The nationwide morale has plummeted," he says, "and after the three big terrorist attacks in Tunisia in 2015, tourism plum- meted as well. Tunisia feels like no one cares much about it now." High above the Atlantic, Doug is flying back to Clinton from Nabeul. He's gained a few pounds from indulging in impecca- bly fresh grilled octopus and fruity cold- pressed unfiltered Tunisian olive oil, but a couple of weeks of his morning and nightly one- to two-hour walks will soon take care of that snug waistband. He misses his hiking companions, Boussi and Jibni, the lab-boxer mixes that share his life. Clinton doesn't fully feel like home, though. Raised abroad for much of his childhood, he feels like a foreigner in American culture. Yet Nabeul isn't home either. It's hard for a Westerner, even someone like Doug who is fluent in French and semi-proficient in Arabic, who lived there for years, to fully understand the ancient and complex Arabic culture of North Africa. Like a turtle, Doug carries his home with him wherever he goes. In fact, he says, "being in the air is prob- ably where I feel I fit in most, in that I'm not really anywhere." His body may be at 35,000 feet, but his heart and mind are split be- tween the two places far below him. "My one and only drive is to create and sta- bilize a good, fair, proper business in which everyone in Nabeul and Clinton can feel like they are part of a durable team that can stay around and succeed long after I'm gone," he says. Back in Maine, Mike Fear of Now You're Cooking is also thinking about Le Souk, and its value to retailers. "If you're a retailer, Le Souk is a prod- uct that you need to have in your store," he says. "It's colorful, attractive and use- ful. And, for your customer, it's very af- fordable — you can sell it at a very reasonable price." His customers really respond to Le Souk's products, he says. "They'll buy it for themselves, and we get a lot people who buy it for gifts, for wedding presents and the like. It appeals to a wide spectrum of people. If you're a retailer, you need steady movers. And Le Souk is a product that's a steady mover. People come in to buy it, and then they come back and buy more, again and again." For more information about Le Souk Ceramique and Le Souk Olivique, call 360.579.1227 or email info@lesouk ceramique.com. Or call its North Ameri- can Fair Trade partner, Sobremesa by Greenheart, at 312.235.6324 or email info@sobremesasales.org. n Le Souk Ceramique's variety of patterns was showcased at the Maison et Objets houseware show in Paris in January. Cristiano Calvi (gray sweater) and Wassim Charada look over new stoneware molds at the studio in Tunisia. Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up. — Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist Storms make the oak grow deeper roots. — George Herbert, Welsh poet (1593-1633) How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. — Anne Frank

• Cover