Build it & They Will Come
5th September, 2006
by Moni Schilller
It’s strange, but every store that has said yes to receiving a sample of my fruit cakes, has said they love them and wants to order! To say I’m scared is a bit of an understatement. Two years ago I was at a two-day entrepreneurial assessment workshop put on by a company called Community Futures. I decided I should perhaps, just for once, explore my dream. It was a bit frightening, but for two days, I allowed myself to go on a journey of imagining.
In the Fall of 2004, I shyly approached fellow fitness club members and stammered out “I have a home-based fruit cake business.” To my great surprise, many people bought them, and in total I sold 240. I had chosen a logo for my labels, and had nice white boxes. This only after it became apparent that no one outside of acquaintances was going to buy an irregular-shaped fruit cake wrapped in tinfoil!
The next year, 2005, started sluggishly as I developed the wedding favours. I spent hours at Michael’s Crafts and at home decorating tiny boxes. In the fall, I decided to get serious, and by then had my fabulous website, too. I had also taken the step of renting a commercial kitchen and hired a friend to help me bake. We made and sold approximately 1,000 Totally Decadent Fruit Cakes(tm).
A lot of those 1,000 were sold at the dreaded craft fairs. You have to stand for eight hours, smiling, and offering samples to people who say rude things to you. You must remain civil, as women shovel handfuls into their mouths, then say, “thank goodness I just finished making all of my fruit cake today.” No matter how ugly, or how unwashed The Public is, you must act as though they are wonderful.
So imagine my surprise when early this year I developed Okanagan Harvest Cake(tm), and it began to sell at winery gift stores. I quickly had to figure out a better way to package the product (other than the three layers of cellophane) so had to buy my precious vacuum sealing machine. Suddenly, I became a wholesaler, and now have only the most wonderful, the most high-end stores of Vancouver, Victoria and the Okanagan ordering my products. Who knew?
I guess the point of this is not to take some idiotic idea and flog it to death just because it’s your so-called dream. You must first have an incredible product or service, or no one is going to give two hoots about your silly dream. But if you do have something that you make or do, and people say to you “OH, MY GOD,” then for heaven’s sake, don’t just sit there, do something.
The family, of course, gives no hoots about the stores who are ordering, or my nerves, as their eyes glaze over whenever I add a new store to the list. They’re like “when’s dinner ready?” And I am like “Sheesh. Never mind.”