Great little companies are launched in Northern Nevada every day, and I’m proud to have helped many of them over the last 25 years. Some have taken off to wild success, while others have crashed and burned. Things happen. Statistics show that half of businesses don’t last five years, and those that do are likely to remain in business for as long as the leaders lead and roll with economic, financial and market fluctuations.
Remember that every big company starts with a risk-taking neighbor who eschews the common sense of getting a “jobby-job.” It often starts with an idea or vision for the future, and they go undeterred into the unknown company-building and ownership abyss. There are many reasons that roughly only 10% of folks build their own futures instead of someone else’s. They tend see a better way, a better solution—or it may be an undeterred nagging. They don’t easily follow others and tend to question the status quo.
Recently, I caught up with one of folks in that 10%. I took my House of Estrogen down to Idlewild Park for the farmers’ market on a recent Sunday morn, as we do occasionally, to get hooked up with real Nevada-made products like local honey and wonderful fresh bread from the likes of Beloved’s Bakery and Wheatberry Baking Company. Mmmmmmm, good! My girls also love exploring the jewelry, woodworking, ceramics and photography artists. We have so many fantastic small-business owners here in Northern Nevada.
As we strolled the park walkways on this particular fall trip, we saw our old friend Krysta Bea Jackson. Krysta is the founder and owner of Sugar Love Candies. She started by working for a chocolatier and fell in love with the craft. In 2019, 95% of her product was chocolate-based. Then, the pandemic hit—and everything changed. Chocolate prices went through the roof; markets were in flux; and business fell off. She had to lay off her four employees and pivot. It was really tough on her.
She started experimenting with brittle and other non-chocolate recipes. In 2020, she was having a bourbon libation—and an epiphany overtook her along with the sweet taste of the whiskey. She wondered how a bourbon-pecan brittle might taste. With some testing, it was a hit—plus it was cheaper and easier to produce. So she began increasing non-chocolate products. It took almost two years for her to cull the chocolate products back to holiday offerings only, and it was emotionally taxing. After all, chocolate was her vision—sexy, cool, fun, delicious. But the market change had deep ramifications for her vision and the reality of the retail business after the pandemic.
She was now back to being a solopreneur, missing her team, with the present and future not resembling her original vision. Her retail shop closed, and she was at another crossroads. Instead of selling one box at a time to customers, she developed a channel strategy to sell wholesale in bigger quantities. The non-chocolate confections were also easier to ship (they didn’t melt) and had a much longer shelf life. Cha-ching!
Those of you who’ve read this column know that I espouse what I call the “One to Many” strategy. Question your market and ask, “Who is the one who can get me the many?” Instead of selling one at a time and chasing the next sale, how do I get steady, repeatable orders on which I can count? Krysta figured this out. Now she makes a lot less per sale—but sells a whole lot more each time she gets an order.
This is a great way to grow the biz, as she can focus on the security of repeat customers. Pivoting from business-to-customer to business-to-business requires new pricing schemas, and it also requires new marketing messages to appeal to retail distributors. The forecasts can become more consistent, which really changes cashflows and timelines. We’re now focused on 10 customers who buy 100 units as opposed to 100 customers who buy 10 units. When implemented properly, it simplifies and streamlines our operations. It also creates wonderful volume profits, compared to selling one box to one customer once a year in Omaha.
Krysta and I met back in 2013 during the second year of the $50,000 Sontag Business Plan competition, with which I’ve been involved since Day 1. My buddy Dr. Dave was the Sontag director at the time, and Krysta was hired to do all of the stuff needed for six months of marketing—public relations, budgeting, recruiting, workshopping, vetting and venue scheduling. Basically, Krysta was key to setting the Sontag benchmarks for excellence that we still use today.
Krysta is now comfortable with Sugar Love being a candy confectioner, as opposed to a chocolatier. She is growing the company, organically focusing on the wholesale market and repeat orders to keep the company rolling along. She is ever-optimistic and resolute about the trials and tribulations of the biz. We entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic, because pessimists don’t often get past the setbacks as the future gets cloudy and precarious.
Krysta is ramping up her holiday offerings now—yes, including her chocolate products.
Get an early order in, and tell Krysta that I sent you. It’ll be so worth it to you, her and the other small businesses in Northern Nevada that continue to need all of our support. (Don’t forget the RN&R is included in this, too!) Please support local businesses and journalism, today and in the future.
Happy holidays!
Visit sugarlovecandies.com.