RIDGE SPRING, S.C. - Chalmers Carr has a peach-colored dream that depends on a pricey piece of technology to turn it into reality.
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He sees his sweetest fruit swaddled in small packages like an expensive delicacy, bearing his personal guarantee that each fuzzy orb will be a sugary delight.
He envisions his ugly but tasty South Carolina peaches blowing away the pretty but bland fruit of California and creating a clamor in grocery stores from coast to coast.
He also sees a premium price tag on each box, dropping the same ultrahigh profit margin into his pocket as the growers of the famous Vidalia onion.
In Japan, people will pay $6 for a single peach. At that price, it had better be sweet, he said.
"The consumer will pay for quality, but it's got to be real quality, not perceived," said Mr. Carr, the young and aggressive owner of Titan Peach Farms Inc., in the heart of Edgefield County's peach belt. "This is the next generation of where you're going with fruit packing. You can't sit idly by."
Mr. Carr's marketing fantasy is fueled by a $500,000 machine that uses pulses of light to measure the sugar content of 600 peaches a minute and instantly flashes the results to a computer in the control room of his packing shed.
This high-tech marvel, which is the first one used on peaches in South Carolina, Georgia or elsewhere, replaces hand-held sweetness detectors that can handle only a single peach at a time. That's too slow to test every piece of fruit rolling along a mechanized packing line and too random to fulfill Mr. Carr's premium-price dreams.
Delbert Bland, who turned the super-sweet Vidalia onion from a little-known Georgia secret into a nationwide object of culinary desire, urges Mr. Carr to steal a page from his marketing playbook. Direct marketing and developing a money-making mystique are the keys to survival.
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Hap Carr, of Titan Farms checks the sweetness of peaches on a computer at the packiing house in Ridge Spring .
RON COCKERILLE/STAFF
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"If you've got a good product, go for it and don't look back," said Mr. Bland, also known as Bland the Onion Man. "Anybody can sell a peach, but somebody selling a premium peach that's sweeter than anything else is something to be desired by a lot of people. I'd love to take a year off and help him do this."
The keys to success, said Mr. Bland, are a sure-fire product that delivers what it promises and the creation of a single-minded demand for it from grocery store chains and shoppers.
A catchy jingle or slogan also helps. Years ago, Mr. Bland penned this one for his Vidalias: "You'll only cry when they're gone."
Packaging and a brand name that makes the fruit stand above the rest of the peach pack is crucial. Mr. Bland suggests that Mr. Carr try Sweetie Peaches.
"Sometimes you sell the sizzle rather than the steak," he said. "It don't do no good to have the best-built car in the world if nobody knows about it."
While the road to riches might run through the land of technology, investment in high-dollar gadgetry can also bankrupt a farmer, said Martin Eubanks, a marketing official for the South Carolina Department of Agriculture.
"You've got to make sure you can cover the cost of that capital investment with the extra money you plan on making," he said.
Mr. Carr agrees.
"There's been many a packing shed that went out and bought the latest and greatest and can't get the premium back out of the fruit," he said.
That's why he's still dreaming and moving cautiously. He has struck a deal with the Australian company ColorVision to test its high-speed sweetness detector on his packing line. So far, he's renting the machine and running it on only half of the dozen chutes on his line.
It would cost him $1 million to install two ColorVision machines.
Joe Watson, South Carolina's largest pecan grower, is an evangelist of the profitable virtues of direct marketing. The Ridge Spring pecan man said 10 percent of his crop goes to direct sales. But that accounts for 20 percent of the money he puts in his pocket - change from pecan brittle, pralines and orange-glazed nuts. He grows only the Gloria Grande, the sole pecan variety originated in South Carolina.
"People drive 100 miles to come and buy them," said Mr. Watson, who also runs a Ridge Spring shack known as The Nut House.
It's obvious Mr. Carr's dream has a hard edge. Its target - the peaches of California. They're prettier than South Carolina peaches and look perfect on the grocery store shelf, but they're grown in an arid climate and lack the moisture and sweetness of the Southern peach.
Mr. Bland appreciates Mr. Carr's vision and aggressiveness. Modern markets demand modern methods, he said.
The Onion Man also notes that Bland Farms sells a peach salsa, which a blend of Vidalias and Southern peaches. He gave Mr. Carr an open invitation to join forces.
"Tell him we'll hook him up with our onions and his Sweetie Peaches," he said.
Reach Jim Nesbitt at (803) 648-1395 or jim.nesbitt@augustachronicle.com.
