When you visit the Harry & David website, you immediately notice three things.
One: You’re suddenly hungry for rosy-golden pears, chocolate truffles and Moose Munch®, the gourmet flavored popcorn that goes where Cracker Jack never dared to venture.
Two: You notice the website offers customer-friendly ways to shop – by product, by category or by price, even by special occasion – and it’s all so appealing that you want to send yourself a gift basket.
Three: You notice that for product after product – across all categories – user reviews average five stars out of five, or pretty darn close.
Not bad for a company that grew from a 240-acre orchard in southwestern Oregon in the early 1900s.Sam Rosenberg’s sons Harry and David, both trained in agriculture at Cornell University, took over the fruit business in 1914.They chose to specialize in a pear variety that grows well in the Rogue River Valley.Innovative marketers, they convinced business partners in Seattle, San Francisco and New York that their “Royal Riviera” pears made excellent corporate gifts.In the process, they pioneered the concepts of selling fruit by mail order and by “Fruit of the Month Club” subscriptions.