Please, introduce yourself and your business.
My name is Chris, and my business name is Cloud Candy Co! I'm out to 'disrupt' the concessions industry as it were, and turn cotton candy from a pink/blue flavorless garbage sweet for kids, into a decadent dessert enjoyed by all ages! Most cotton candy is made using the cheapest ingredients possible or from premade cartons.
We have come up with our own unique recipe that drastically changes the texture and flavor of cotton candy. Instead of gritty/sticky, our cotton candy is silky, light, and not overly sweet.
I really believe we have the most superior product on the market! Eventually I'd like to replace regular cotton candy at large venues (looking at you Moda Center.)
How did you start your business?
From age 17 I jumped into sales and for the next 10 years I helped both startups and small businesses exponentially grow. Taking some businesses from 4 to 6 figures, and other businesses from 5 to 7 figures annually.
Quite frankly with each of these businesses I worked for, I noticed the same pattern of owners essentially taking advantage of me. Reneging on things like financial compensation, or sometimes just making plain bad decisions. Often it felt like I was just following a trail of business owners constantly choosing to do things the hardest way possible and when it didn't work out for them, they would find someone to blame (mostly me).
After helping others for so long I decided to start my own thing. Cotton candy on the outside seems like a weird choice and sometimes I get funny looks. On the inside though, this is a product that has tremendous margins, allows me to express my creativity with our flavors, has relatively low competition, and allows me to provide decent paying jobs to people I care about.
How much revenue was your best year? (include margin if possible)
Within 12 months from our first event we made just shy of $100,000 at around $97,000 in revenue. Our profit margins are pretty hefty, usually at 85%+ for retail depending on if we are selling fresh spun or prepackaged. Although I have reinvested most of our profits back into the company for various revenue channels and to pay off accrued debt.
This year we are on track for $175,000~ and I think we will exponentially grow as we become more solidified in our area as a catering option as well as grow our ecommerce channels.
When did you notice traction when building your business? The “Oh S**t!” moment, what did that feel like?
We managed to luck out, our very first event we joined as a vendor was a county fair and we generated $26,000 in revenue within 10-11 days. This was with us doing all this for the very first time. I had to hire 9 people to operate the event, and the fair themselves took a 25% gross sales cut (This sounds very ew, but it pales in comparison to what we would pay if we could get into the local stadiums, who take 50% of gross sales up front)
So right from the get go, I realized this had big potential. People were responding really well to our product and our branding. I think our type of product is endemic to social media right now and so far we have already seen decent conversion rates and reorder rates in ecommerce.
What was your childhood like? Were you slinging candy on the playground?
Even as a kid, I've always been entrepreneurial. When I was 5 I was selling pet rocks to my neighbors. In 2nd grade I was selling candy to my classmates. Tictacs at 10 cents a piece. By 3rd grade I was selling all sorts of sweets and sodas.
At age 14 I took a regular job at a grocery store pushing carts. While I worked there I saw people who had worked there for 20 years making like $2-3 more than me. I decided very pretty much then, that I was never going to end up like that. At 17 I jumped into sales and actually ended up doing incredibly well, so I followed that path to here!
What has been your best marketing marketing channel?
We have not really invested too much into ppc ads at this point, but our tiktok shop has been going well, and our SEO rankings are already doing pretty good. In some categories we are already 4th -5th results for certain products.
How many attempts at building something did you make before you found what you’re working on now? Did you always have an entrepreneurial drive?
I tried building my own company probably 5-6 times. I co-owned a branding agency, I tried drop shipping back in 2014-15 and a few other ventures. I have certainly always had the entrepreneurial drive, although I lacked a lot of confidence in myself before 2021 basically.
What is your biggest overhead expense?
Previously we tried our hand at a brick and mortar which was somewhat costly, although I was willing to invest the resources into it for the business plan at the time. While it was going well the first few months, through a somewhat horrible circumstance, we ended up closing that location.
Now we have transitioned into lean mean startup mode to keep costs low. We work out of a commissary kitchen where the base rent is $200 (scales with how much we need it.) Honestly our biggest expense is probably payroll and/or some of the event fees we have to pay. Lots of people out there want a 20-35% cut of gross sales on top of deposits and then paying extra for electricity, etc. It's pretty rare an event we do is just a flat fee to get in.
What’s the most important skill you’ve learned?
Probably recognizing my limits and delegating. Doing this has forced me to grow in a lot of ways. I designed all our labels, built out 2 websites, did all the branding, filed all the things, contacted all the people. My background is sales / marketing but what I've come to realize is that while I have somewhat of a jack of all trades skill set, I can only get things to about 80% of my vision. The other 20% is where actual professionals come in.
Sometimes delegation is restricted to the resources you have available, so until I can pay a branding agency the 15-20k they are asking for I'll just continue designing my own stuff.
What do you spend the majority of your time doing, in a given week? (I think a lot of people hear entrepreneurs “work,” but may not understand what that means on a day-to-day basis.
Oh god, lets see... on any given week it just depends on my priorities. I do have people who help me with events or order fulfillment but right now I do pretty much all the rest of the work myself.
Any given week - social media content creation (this one is so time consuming...)
Event applications, networking events, events/catering jobs, making our sugar, filing taxes and reports, designing new labels or updating our website. Often on the weekends we will have 3-5 jobs all going on at the same time and I go from job to job getting things set up for my employees to run them. Lots of set up / tear down.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when first starting your business?
It seems obvious now, but we should have done things differently from the start with trying to scale ecommerce as much as possible before transitioning to a brick & mortar.
The world of entrepreneurship can be misleading. Many people think it’s always easy and always glamorous. What’s a big problem you’ve faced as a business owner and what were the emotions behind it?
Oh man, well to be honest we encountered a problem that maybe a lot of other businesses haven't? When we first opened our brick and mortar, it was at the local mall. We were excited to be planting our roots down. The back of our unit had a space that doubled as a commercial kitchen space, so the plan was to get that space certified, get the proper licensing to be able to sell online, and grow both the front facing space in the local community.
The first few months we were even in the black! Unfortunately a cascading chain of bad interactions with another business owner in front of our shop led to a dangerous and insane situation where my employees (2 of which were my sister and fiance, the other which was a 18 yr old girl) were being stopped and harassed by this other business owner.
Tragically, I had to watch people I cared about be violently threatened and verbally abused/harassed by another business owner. Eventually after about 2 months of trying to work with mall management to rectify this situation (they were not very helpful) we had to escalate this legally.
That began another month or two of court cases trying to get protection orders. I watched as the other person's attorney tried to drag my family's names and reputation through the mud, I had to watch people I loved and cared about go through a tremendous amount of suffering.
Then I had to make a decision between them and the business. It wasn't like I could just hire new people and make them go through the same level of harassment. I made a difficult decision to take the financial hit and cancel our lease. We won the protection orders, and I took on an incredible amount of debt.
The emotions behind that? Fear for my sister and fiancés life, disbelief at the situation I was in, regret that I had ever got into the B&M in the first place, anger at the people who stood by and took advantage of the situation, self-doubt that I was making the right decision by closing.
To me, a business wasn't worth that amount of suffering, and Ironically a business that I had started because I thought it was fun and inoffensive, turned into a bittersweet nightmare briefly.
We shut our location down, and for another 6 months or so we did basically nothing with the business as we took time to heal. In that 6 months I really debated on continuing on with this or not. Eventually I decided to get back into it and go for it full time. Honestly, I'm really happy I did.
The past 2 years since that awful situation have been full of really good moments, and I really believe in my business. We are still working through the debt we accrued, but I am very hopeful for the future.
Many people don’t know where to start in the business world, they feel stuck. They may want to start a business to become their own boss and create their hours. What is your best advice for someone who feels completely stuck?
My biggest pieces of advice:
-Be confident in your actions and decisions, even if they end up being bad ones.
It's impossible to be perfect, you are going to make mistakes. Self-doubt is a killer. If you start doubting your actions, that's when you'll sink.
-Eventually at some point you have to make the jump, and sink or swim. Having a business plan is great and all, unfortunately a lot of plans don't survive contact with reality. Take your ego out of it, and be ready to pivot.
-If you can, find someone like minded to talk to. Whether it's a mentor type figure, another business owner, or even going to some local networking events. You can get validation for your idea, guidance on how to start in your market, a lot of people love to help others.
Lastly there's a quote that I think about often I feel is somewhat apt for people building a business. 'There are years where nothing happens; and there are weeks where years happen.'
Sometimes you grind and grind, yet still feel stuck. You feel like nothing is happening, and then suddenly, you hit a breakthrough and a cascade of success happens. You see that all the effort you put in actually DID payoff. Use that high as momentum to propel yourself forward. In those slow moments, just trust yourself and keep doing the work.
Check out Chris and his delicious cotton candy, here:
