Today's story about Robert Irvine in the paper didn't have space for a couple interesting conversations I had yesterday. I talked to Steve Fraser, CEO of Wilton Products Inc. based in Woodridge, Ill., who manufactured pans for Irvine:

"We put Robert on HSN TV about a year ago with a line of Royal Titanium cookware. He was promoting something called the "Possible Pan." He was on maybe three or four times, and just wasn't good on live TV. We decided not to pursue the relationship in late November. He wasn't a successful pitch man. Maybe he sold several thousand pans. We make the product and Reliant Interactive (Kevin Harrington) is the middleman with HSN. Personally, all of this [recent developments] makes me feel sad. We never made any money off of him, but he's a gregarious guy and a tremendous chef. It sounds like some of this started as a white lie with individuals...."

Late in the day I spoke with Kevin Harrington, CEO of Reliant Interactive, which produces infomercials for Home Shopping Network. He met Irvine a little more than a year ago at a Museum of Fine Arts fundraiser, at which they started business dialogue:

"We started hearing rumblings recently, but we were surprised by a lot of the facts that came out. I was out of town Sunday when this broke, and I tried calling him and Randall repeatedly. In all honesty, I’m not getting my calls returned. I just get voicemail.

Robert hasn’t been on HSN for a while. He’s been missing in action for scheduled appearances for the past few months. He lost interest in this side of the business and wasn’t showing up. Robert had gotten too busy with his Food Network show. My understanding is he’s done well with his TV show on the Food Network.”

We are a vendor to HSN, Robert is a talent who sells the product. In some cases we [Reliant] owns the product, and in some case he owns the product. His book and his spices, he owns. The mandoline and the cookware, we own. We don’t have a lot of inventory, maybe 150 sets of cookware sitting idle. For us it’s pennies, not big money. We have 100 products—you move on. Not everything is a success. Months back we decided this wasn’t something that was working for him or for us, we hadn’t shipped product in quite a while.

My understanding is HSN doesn’t want Robert on air. The products we own aren’t branded with his name. We can sell them under another name. He was an on-air talent. HSN likes to develop talent, but when the talent isn’t into it, that’s not a good thing. In the last 5-6 months, I haven’t talked to Robert, ever.”