Mars

Last month, a blockbuster deal was announced in the candy world.  Hershey’s number one competitor in the United States, Mars, Inc. (makers of Snicker’s and M&M’s) purchased the world’s largest gum maker Wrigley, for $80 a share.    

Both of these huge candy companies are family businesses started decades ago, and combined they will be an undeniable force in the candy industry. The deal includes financing from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

Combined, this company will be the number one chocolate maker in the world, and is sure to spark more consolidation in the candy industry.  We will continue to watch and see what happens next, but here at CARSON, we will just continue to work hard to exceed our customers' expectations, one customer at a time.

Hershey’s Eye Candy

In my home, reality television dominates our evening viewing schedule.  From the Food Network to the Amazing Race, America’s Got Talent to American Inventor,  American Idol to America’s Next Top Model , we have watched them all.

One of my daughters' favorite reality shows is Project Runway on the Bravo Network.  The Hershey Company was a corporate sponsor of Season Four.  One of the challenges involved the contestant designers going to Hershey’s Chocolate World in New York City’s world famous Time’s Square.  In just a few minutes time, they had to canvas the store to gather anything they could to create their next fashion design.

After they tore through the store grabbing everything from pillows to bags of candy, the designers crafted dresses out of York Peppermint Patty bags, Reese's cups,  and even Twizzlers licorice.  It was truly amazing to watch what they were able to design and actually make into a wearable dress.

After the judging was completed by the show's celebrity hosts Tim Gunn (Make it Work) and Heidi Klum, the winner of the Hershey’s Eye Candy Challenge was Rami.  He designed a dress with a top made from Twizzlers  branded material and a skirt made of York Peppermint Patty wrappers.  Really Cool.

One of the greatest things about Project Runway is that after the competition is complete and the season has ended, the fashions created by the designers are auctioned off  for charity.  In March, the Hershey’s Eye Candy Dresses were set to be auctioned with the proceeds benefiting the Young Survival Coalition which is a wonderful group that supports awareness for younger women with cancer.

It was a combination of our obvious connection with Hershey’s, the opportunity to support a worthy cause, and my daughters' love for the dresses they saw on Project Runway that led to us bidding on and winning 8 of the 10 dresses.

We are extremely proud that they will soon be home in our newly remodeled offices and will have a prominent display in CARSON’s own Hershey’s Museum that is being completed as we speak.

Photo credits: Show Patrol Redeye's TV Blog
Photo close up credits: CARSON wrappedhersheys.com

Renovation

Typically, November and December allow us a time to review  the current year, and then turn our focus to internal strategy and plans for the upcoming year.  2007 was a little different because we basically decided to completely tear our building apart and renovate everyone’s working space and environment.

We are blessed to be in a very nice building that Ed Carson built in 2000 to house his expanding custom Hershey wrapper business.  From his start in his garage to a new 16,000 sq. ft. facility, the business had come a long way.

However, it was time to make some new improvements, enhance the environment and really reward our team members who work hard every day to make our customers happy.  My partner in work and life,  Sharon, has a bachelor degree from Miami University in Interior Design, and she is truly a master at seeing the potential in any space.  She began planning for the new environment in the Spring of 2007, working with an unbelievably talented group of designers at Enriching Spaces.  Together they came up with a space plan that focused on bringing our group closer together, promoting greater teamwork, efficiency and also fun.  We tore down walls, displaced everyone, ripped up carpet and made a real big mess in the process, which was really not much fun.

Nonetheless, even in the mess and chaos we continued to maintain focus on what was most important--our customers--and getting their Holiday Season orders out with our utmost care.  No one who ordered with us from November through January would have ever guessed we were working out of a total disaster of a building that we were also trying to put back together.
The final result is something that is amazing, and we are extremely proud of our new environment.

Our General Contractor and all around handy man is Tim Jaroscak, and this is one guy who can handle  just about any challenge you throw at him...and boy did we throw challenges his way.  Tear walls down, but keep it quiet so we can answer our customer’s phone calls…don’t create too much dust, because we have printing equipment that cannot get dirty...move this now, but we cannot move that until after we close for the day...that part of the job has to be done on the weekend when no one else is here...we just had a lot of obstacles, but Tim never flinched and helped us do anything needed.  Never once did he say, "that’s not my job."  He just got ‘er done!

When it all came down to the wire, we had carpet being ripped up, walls being painted, new carpet being laid and new furniture being put on it as soon as the glue was dry.  People were working right behind each other and as soon as the group ahead of them finished, they would do their part.

After about 2 months of having work crews everywhere every day, I think we were all ready for it to be over.  Sharon had also been introduced to Edward Casagrande, a truly talented artist who works mainly with metals and creates the most wonderful and unique sculptures.  Edward has done sculptures for many years, and his work is on display all over.  His art is whimsical, yet  has meaning as well as function.  He introduced elements of our business in his pieces.  In his own words, “Throughout the entire facility are candy colors and Hershey's memorabilia. It wasn't difficult discovering an inspiration.“

What we have now completed is a true showcase facility that is stylish yet practical.  Every piece put into place has a purpose and adds efficiency, while paying homage to our roots both as a company and our connection to Hershey’s chocolate.  Included in the renovation is our own, “Hershey Museum”, which displays our many Hershey artifacts for all of our visitors to see.  This is also where our newest purchase will soon be on display, the “Eye Candy” dresses created on the tv show, Project Runway.

I’ve always enjoyed coming to work, but now, it is even more sweet!

Necessity's Child

Five years ago, in early 2003,  Hershey changed the wrapper on the standard size 1.55 oz. chocolate bar from the long standing and well recognized paper and foil over chocolate, to what is known as a “fin-seal” or “flow” wrapper.  While the fin-seal certainly helped protect the chocolate, and also increase production capacity, the change did not initially sit well with many of Hershey’s loyal customers.  However, the positive aspects of the new wrapper, like keeping the chocolate air tight and fresh tasting, certainly outweigh the change in appearance.

Needless to say, this change in the Hershey’s standard chocolate bar wrapper presented a pretty serious challenge for our production of custom wrapped Hershey’s bars here at CARSON.  Although we have utilized actual Hershey’s wrapping machines for many years, until 2003 our wrapping machine simply put our custom paper wrapper over top of the Hershey paper wrapper/foil combo, and it made a perfect presentation for our customers.

Thankfully, CARSON also had the ability to put foil on the bars with our wrapping machine, and after much readjusting we were able to use our machine to put both foil and our custom wrapper over top of the new Hershey’s fin-seal bar and make it look perfect once again. 

There was a catch however.  The new fin-sealed Hershey’s bars had crimped tabs on each end which had to be folded and taped back in order to re-wrap the bar with our wrapping machine.  That may not sound like a large hurdle if you only wrap a couple hundred bars a day, but when you wrap several thousand bars a day like we do at CARSON, the chore became quite a cumbersome challenge.

Finally, it was decided that we needed to find a solution that would replace the manual taping back of the fin-sealed ends because we just could no longer keep up with demand.  So last October, I attended the Food Packaging and Machinery Expo in search of a solution where others have failed before.

I arrived at the expo and was utterly shocked by how large this convention and exposition was as I tried to figure out just where to start.  Now you have to remember, I do not have an engineering or machinery background in any way, so I started out with one big strike against me.

After walking the span of several football fields of machinery and packaging options for just about everything you could imagine, I started to narrow down my search to those who dealt with adhesive tapes and the machinery that applies such material.  I spent a lot of time talking with the group from Boshe who now owns the company that made our wrapping machines, Sigpack.  Boshe makes machinery for many types of industries worldwide, and Sigpack focuses on packaging solutions for many types of food and candy companies.  These people really know what they are doing and understood our situation very well.  It was after spending time with them mulling over our circumstances and need for a solution, I went in search of machinery that applied adhesive materials.

I found Nautilus Systems, and with my Hershey bar in hand explained my quest.  Steve Gunnerson and Eric Moore from Nautilus immediately felt as if they had a solution. Using existing technology they have had in place for many years, they could devise a machine that would apply adhesive tape squares to hold back the crimped ends of the bar.  To make a very long story from here very short, Nautilus did exactly what they proposed to do, and jumped all the hurdles to create a machine that will do in 10 minutes what would take us an hour to do by hand.

This new machine could not have come to us at a better time, and the first day it was installed and our team was trained to use it, we quickly put it into service because we had an order for 5000 bars and another for 3000 that had to ship out that day. 
Raleigh Sanderson, and engineer with Nautilus Systems, flew from Phoenix to train our team on how to use the machine.

In the CARSON facility right now, the new “Tape Machine” is the champ, the King, the bomb, the beast, whack, and any other superlative you can think of, all rolled up into one!

Taste Test

Dark chocolate has really grown on me as I get older and sample a greater variety of chocolates on a regular basis.  I tell everyone that eating chocolate is part of my job.

Recently, I brought in several different dark chocolates made by Hershey’s for our entire group to sample.  Hershey’s has definitely capitalized on Americans new found love for Dark Chocolate, which has more traditionally been a European favorite.  Ask many Europeans who love chocolate what they think about milk chocolate, and what you will hear is not very pleasant. I would not have any kids around, because the response may contain an expletive or two.

After the tasting was complete.. meaning everyone had eaten all the chocolate I put out in the break room at Carson, I asked everyone to email me their thoughts on what they had tasted.  Here were the selections they had to choose from.

And here was the feedback I got..

"The mint one was great! They need one with raisins next."
-Kim Bires

"I tried the coffee bits, it had a few too many bits in it for me, I had trouble getting the bits out of my teeth.  It could be a great pick me up if you needed it.  I do like the dark chocolate though now, never used to."
-Dee Stammer

"Just wanted to let you know I enjoy the dark chocolate alot!!"
Thanks Again, Gail

It is safe to say that little by little, many of the Carson team is coming over to the “dark side” .. dark chocolate that is ..

Recently, Pam Bottles, one of our fun loving marketing associates, took the whole chocolate taste testing thing a little too far for me however, and actually brought in a chocolate bar her Dad had purchased for $7.25 that actually had BACON BITS in it.. that’s right, a bacon chocolate bar !

Well I love chocolate, but I just could not make myself try the bacon bar.  I immediately took the bar to our resident taste bud daredevil, Matt, who is in our customer care center, to see if he was brave enough to try the bacon bar, and sure enough he did.. two whole squares. I think Jennifer also tried some..

Strangely enough, neither of them had to spit it out, and even said it was not that horrible, but I just could not make myself give the bacon bar a try. 

I guess as the saying goes, “to each their own” but I’ll have my chocolate with nuts, fruit and maybe even some nugget, Carmel or marshmallow, but please.. hold the bacon.

Johnny’s 60th Birthday

As a young boy growing up in Hamilton, Ohio  I was fortunate in many ways.  My grandfather was an engineer at a General Motors stamping plant in town, and somehow in the early 70’s met and became close friends with Johnny Bench when he joined the Cincinnati Reds as a rookie.  Even though I was too young to appreciate the significance at the time, I spent a lot of time around the Big Red Machine players, who won the World Series in both 1975 and 1976.  As I look back, I definitely understand how this team is now revered as one of the best ever in Major League Baseball.

Johnny’s 60th birthday is December 7th this year, and they had a small gathering of friends and family in Cincinnati on October 29th at the best rib joint this side of Texas, the Montgomery Inn Boathouse.  The Montgomery Inn is a Cincinnati tradition, and has served famous athletes, celebrities and U.S. Presidents for many years.  Bob Hope  was particularly fond of the ribs and the great sauce served at the Montgomery Inn, and for many years had them flown to his home in California every New Year’s Eve.

So anyway, we are at the boathouse, about 50 people on a Monday night, eating ribs and telling stories, while celebrating Johnny’s birthday.  One of our graphic designer’s Mike Reuter  had designed a very special wrapper for a 5 pound Hershey’s bar for us to give Johnny that pictured him as a young catcher and also showed him when he was inducted into the Major League Hall of Fame with the phrase."A Hall of Famer at any Age".  It turned out great, and JB loved it.

About an hour into the gathering, Johnny left the room and walked back in saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States" and in walked behind him one in the same, George Bush. Everyone was absolutely shocked.

I will admit that George Bush has gone down many pegs on my board with his political maneuvers over the last several years, but the fact remains, he represents the most powerful office in our country, and his position is one that I have a tremendous amount of respect for as an American.  Johnny has been a steady supporter of Republicans for many years, and I know that the fact that the President was in town for only a short period of time for a fundraiser, and stopped by for just a few minutes to wish him a happy birthday, was a tremendous honor.  The President also took home a few slabs of ribs with him as well, because you can’t go to the Montgomery Inn and not get the ribs.

Hershey’s Presents Brad Paisley.. Bonfires and Amplifiers Tour 2007

The Hershey Company is a proud sponsor of country music star Brad Paisley and his most recent tour, Bonfires and Amplifiers. Brad recently made his swing into Cincinnati, and the fine folks at Hershey had a VIP event, including dinner before the show, a backstage tour and the opportunity to meet not only Brad Paisley, but also Rodney Atkins   and the newest up  and coming country star, Taylor Swift. The night was just perfect, and one of our designers, Kelley Fulmer, created a special wrapper that I presented to Brad as a gift from the Carson gang.  Brad absolutely loved them and signed one that I gave to Kelley as a keepsake.

If Brad is coming to your town any time soon, you don’t want to miss his show.  He is a great story teller with his songs, some of which are absolutely hilarious.  Right now, he has a new video out, from his hit single “Online”  that includes stars like William Shatner,  Maureen McCormick ( Marcia from the Brady Bunch ) and from Seinfeld,  Jason Alexander.  If you haven’t heard it yet, you will love it, and laugh.

The Candy Wrapper Museum

I found this website while doing my regular all things candy bar wrappers search recently on google and thought it would be fun to share.

It is a cool little site started by Darlene Waddington, with a great history on herself and how she came up with the idea of telling the candy wrapper story online.

Probably my favorite part of the site is her images and discussion about candy bars that have shown celebrities on their wrappers over the years.  Anyone for a Mr. T bar?  She also has a Pete Rose bar that I remember growing up as a kid in Cincinnati.  I used to love those as well as chugging them down with a big can of Pete Rose chocolate drink which I still have a can of someone in storage at home (don't tell my wife or she will find it and throw it away as excess clutter).  This of course was long before Pete Rose let the baseball world down by being a major league gambler.

Personally, I am a Johnny Bench fan.  While he doesn'€™t have any candy bars with him on the wrapper, he does have a very nice scotch label right now.

So check out the candy wrapper museum site, and please feel free to email me if you see any other candy related sites of interest out there at sjfrederick@carsonbars.com.  Around here, we love all the candy information and news we can get.

WHO DEY!

If you read this blog regularly, you know that certain themes emerge, one of which is the fact that most of our Carson group are Cincinnati Bengal’s fans.  You can only imagine how excited we are that NFL Football  is just around the corner.

Recently, my football fan daughter and I went to Georgetown College in Kentucky to watch our fearless Bengals swelter in the 90 plus degree heat during an intrasquad scrimmage.  Ellis’ favorite receiver is Chad Johnson, but TJ H is not far behind, and of course we all think Carson Palmer is going to have a great year with his offense.  Of course we took the team and coaches some custom made Hershey’s bars to help them get through the dog days of training camp.

Joe Mays, our production supervisor, is also a pretty huge Bengal’s fan, and each Sunday he tailgates with a large Carson Wrapped Hershey's banner on his truck and we give away free Bengals custom wrapped  “ Who Dey “ miniatures to anyone who needs a chocolate fix before the big game.

Joe and I are also in the same fantasy football league which has been a tremendous amount of fun over the years.  I remember when the league first began back in the mid 80’s and I was in college.  Miller Lite Beer  was the first major brand to sponsor a fantasy league like this and they have just grown to enormous proportions today, and are really a lot of fun.

This year, our shipping manager, Bob Jeffries is going to be the commissioner for the Carson Fantasy Football League that will provide a little friendly competition  among the football fans in our building.  We are still trying to convert some non football fans, but I am proud to report that we have many success stories, one of which is in our Marketing Department, Kim Chamberlain. Kim came to us a Miami University grad and a Ben Rothlisberger fan.  While we all loved Ben while he was at Miami I explained to her, now that he plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers, she at least is not allowed to root for him when they play the Bengals.

Carson is a proud sponsor of the Marvin Lewis Community Fund  which we chose not only because Marvin Lewis is a strong community leader, but because of the organization’s focus on youth and giving those who may not have the same opportunities as others, a better chance by providing assistance in many areas including scholarships to high school kids who may not otherwise be able to attend the college of their choice, among many other things.  His golf tournament this year alone raised over $500,000 for the fund and will be put to very good use.  In October, we will also sponsor Football 101 again, which is a great event where men are not allowed to go.  Women get to interact with the Bengals coaches and some players, run drills on the field, go into the locker rooms, while us guys get to stay home and mope because we are not allowed to go.  This event also supports a wonderful cause which is Breast Cancer Awareness.

I will keep you up to date on the Bengal’s season, and my weekly drubbings of Joe Mays’  team, as we compete in fantasy football this season.

Rascal Flatts

My oldest Daughter’s favorite band in the whole world is Rascal Flatts.  She is a die hard fan who is committed to the cause.

Growing up, I never much cared about concerts or even music for that matter, but my daughter is passionate about it and has quite an itunes  library. She could sing before she could talk and dance before she could walk.

Not only did I not grow up caring much about music, I cared even less about country music.  Ellis’ love for Rascal Flatts however opened up my eyes to an entirely new genre of music that I actually quite enjoy.  Country music is full of life’s lessons, with a general common sense approach to most of life’s ups and downs.

Have you ever listened to any country lyrics recently?  Last Spring, we got quite busy which meant that everyone at Carson had to pull their weight plus that of about two more people to get all of our orders out on time.  I was recruited to do “second proofing” which, you guessed it, is the second time we proof a wrapper before it is wrapped around a Hershey’s bar.  Anyway, I was in Gail Hale’s office doing my duties, and she listens to country music, so that meant I also listened to country music.  Well let me tell you, I got quite an education in there listening to those country lyrics ( although I wasn’t a very good proofer I hear..)

I’ll save some of the more sultry lyrics for later, since this is a G rated blog, but one of my favorite songs I heard was one by Rascal Flatts called “Country Song Backwards."  While people used to claim that if you played certain albums by various artist backwards you would hear subliminal messages ie. The Beatles and Ozzy Osbourne (link) when you play a country song backwards you actually get things back, like your old truck, your dog and other items lost during your life.

Anyway, back to my story.  Rascal Flatts came to Cincinnati  and Columbus this summer, and somehow I ended up taking Ellis to both shows.  As a fan club member, Ellis is eligible for certain “perks” that come with the privilege, one of which is actually getting to meet the group, Gary, Jay and her favorite Joe Don.

Only 30 people per show get this honor, and it is a race on the computer to see who clicks the fastest when they announce the sign up online.  Needless to say, Ellis did not get a “meet and greet” for the local shows.  Being the encouraging Dad that I am, I gave her the idea of just keep trying each time they announced a sign up, regardless of where it was, I guess expecting that it was so far fetched, it would never happen.

SO you guess what happened from there…. Yep, the next time she tried she actually got her meet and greet .. IN HARTFORD CT.

She was so excited she floated around the house for days, and I was feverishly trying to find a cheap way to get to Hartford.

You can read her blog post to get all of the details about the “moment” she met the guys.  She designed her own custom wrapper and gave them a gift of her own custom wrapped Hershey’s bars, which you can also see on her blog post, from a photo I took at the Columbus, Ohio concert.  They loved them, my daughter was again floating on thin air, and we then enjoyed a great show in the “pit” right by the stage.

Jason Aldean opened up and was great as well.  When all the smoke cleared, and it was time to go home, we both had some great memories of the evening, and her old Dad had some legs that were ready to collapse after standing for 9 hours straight, while his daughter floated all night long.

West Palm Beach & Hershey

I know... long time no blog post.. not because I don’t like to post, but more because I have had several distractions over the last several weeks, some fun, some not, some of my own creation and some created by others.

One of my distractions was a 3 day trip to West Palm Beach Florida with my family.  Every year, during hurricane season, and before the new school year, we have made this trip as a way to reconnect and regroup with our children as a kind of “last hurrah” before going back to school.  Back to school actually happens to be a great time of year for us at Carson, and we have some great designs to celebrate.

Every day I am surrounded by Hershey’s chocolate here at our facility in Ohio, but I often feel as if the brand follows me somehow when I am away. I promise this is not just some conspiracy theory.

So I am in the Atlantic ocean with my daughters, when all of the sudden I see a shiny piece of paper is floating around me.  Not one to leave garbage floating around, I reached down to pick it up… and guess what it was… A HERSHEY BAR WRAPPER!

As if it were a sign from above telling me I was meant to be around Hershey’s bars all day.  When I showed Sharon, she just shook her head in disbelief.

Cincinnati Favorites at Carson Wrapped Hershey’s

If you travel anywhere near or just happen to live in the Cincinnati area, you know that we have several "local favorites" when it comes to food.  Larosa's pizza, Montgomery Inn ribs, Skyline Chili and Graeter's ice cream  are some of the local edible treats we all enjoy around here.  There is not a week that goes by when most of us "locals" don't enjoy one, more or all of these.

Last week, as a special treat, we grilled out at lunchtime and as part of our normal monthly company meeting enjoyed barbequed chicken smothered in Montgomery Inn sauce, and had a Graeter's Sundae Bar for everyone to enjoy.  They do this wonderful set up where they provide individual vanilla ice cream cups, and all the sundae necessities like hot fudge, caramel, strawberries, whipped cream and pecans.

If you haven't  had the opportunity to enjoy Graeters or any of these other terrific treats, you can order directly from their websites and have shipped worldwide, or go to http://www.cincinnati-to-you.com/ and you can order a variety of these different items together and bring Cincinnati to you, wherever you are.  Enjoy!

The Nose Knows

Have you ever walked outside of your home to the sweet smell of chocolate?  Do you think that you would have to live in Hershey PA in order to be so lucky?  Not so!

Several years ago, my wife and I were turned on to Cocoa shell mulch for our flower beds. It holds its deep brown, rich color year around, is a great fertilizer for your soil, and yes, it smells just like chocolate, or more properly, cocoa.

The bags are much lighter and easier to haul around the house when putting down, and the application is easy as well.  I suggest anyone who enjoys a nicely landscaped flower bed, and also wants a sweet smell of choclate aroma in the air without moving to Hershey, PA try some cocoa shell mulch at home.

Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate!

There is a controversy brewing in the U.S. about just exactly what properly constitutes the content of real chocolate  and some fine people have taken up the cause to protect all of us chocolate lovers.

Probably one of my favorite blogs out there is CANDYBLOG.   This is really a must visit for anyone who enjoys candy even the slightest, which pretty much qualifies all of us.  You can also learn about the fight to keep the FDA from messing with the definition of real chocolate here at http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/dont_mess_with_our_chocolate.

To learn even more, visit http://dontmesswithourchocolate.guittard.com/  for all of the current information and industry positions, and there even a place to leave your comments to be registered with the FDA.

Work and Play

It has been far too long since my last post, but I promise you it is not because of lack of effort.. we have just been very busy at Carson.  April was a record month for orders booked and shipped and May has come in like a lion.  Everyone here has been working a lot of overtime, so I have tried to find ways to give everyone a well needed break with a little recreation.
Last week we rented a 12 person suite at Great American Ballpark for 3 home games and offered it to our team  members and their families to enjoy a night out.  Of course the Cincinnati Reds are struggling, but that did not keep the Carson gang from enjoying a great night at Great American !

It is very important to Sharon and I that the people who work with us at Carson not just feel appreciated, but really know that they are appreciated.  We strive to create an environment where they can have a sense of community.  We work hard, but we also want to have opportunities to do things together that are not work related and really are just fun.
This past week we also had a contest where we put up baby photos of our team members and let everyone try their best to guess who was who... I have to tell you it was not easy but we all had a great time guessing and talking about the pictures.
Today we are grilling out for the gang at lunch because it is a beautiful day here and we want to spend just a little time outside as we wind down from a long week.

WOW...What a Week!

Last week represented our busiest shipping week since Sharon and I purchased Carson in mid 2003.  Thanks to a lot of orders from our great customers and a lot of hard work from our entire team, we were able to process and ship 1012 orders in 5 business days.

Now, that may not seem like a lot of orders for some companies, but let me put a little perspective on it for you.  In August 2005, after working toward positive growth and having some success, I sent an email to all of our team members that said “ It is Friday at 3 PM and if we ship 30 more orders today, we will hit our goal of 500 orders this week!”  For us, just 20 months ago, 500 orders was cause for a small celebration because we had been trying to get there for several months and it was finally a reality.  Hitting the 1000 order is a milestone for us now, because we have kept working hard along the way, not to just meet our customers expectations, but to EXCEED them whenever possible.  Our people and our dedication to our customers is exactly why we have been able to grow.  There are no shortcuts, it is just that simple.

At the end of this week, after congratulating everyone at Carson Wrapped Hershey's for doing a wonderful job, I couldn’t help but think ahead to our next goal..1500 orders a week, to represent 1500 happy customers.  No rest for the weary …

Cost of Chocolate & Pricing

On March 27th I mentioned an article discussing the cost of cocoa was somewhat unstable, and surmised that an increase in cost of chocolate was probably on the horizon. This is one case where I wish I had been wrong.  The Hershey Company announced last week that a price increase of 5% would take effect immediately on its standard size chocolate bars. Since these are our most popular selling bars, it will impact us greatly, I am proud to say we have no intention of raising prices anytime in the foreseeable future, which makes our products even a greater value for our customers.

WOW! That's a lot of chocolate

What’s the largest order you have ever handled ? That is a question I often get when giving someone a tour of our facility.

While we have had many orders between 25,000 to 50,000 custom wrapped candy bars for some of our larger corporate customers, the largest order we have wrapped and shipped was for over 180,000 standard size Hershey’s bars that shipped to over 990 department stores nationwide.

The order involved a sweepstakes contest  and the attorney for the customer came to our facility and carefully placed the winning “Golden Tickets” inside random wrappers before we boxed them to ship.

The shipping was facilitated with UPS so that each order arrived at the same day to every store regardless of where it was located in distance from our Ohio facility.  Basically a semi left our building with all orders individually packaged,  and hit the UPS shipping channels within hours.

That is perhaps one of the greatest aspects of our business.  We never know who might call us on any given day and ask that we create a large custom order for their business and where we may be shipping it.  Promotions, giveaways, “Golden Tickets”, trade shows and Casinos.  We have done many interesting orders for some of the best companies in the world.

Hershey's Around the World

While on Spring Break with Sharon and our daughters, I am once again reminded just how strong the Hershey’s brand is in other countries.  In the gift shop at our hotel in Costa Rica, right next to many other snacks and confectionary treats I have never seen before, is a row of Hershey’s chocolate bars.

This country is not only extremely beautiful, the Costa Rican people are some of the most friendly people I have ever met anywhere.  The beautiful environment along with the local hospitality has made this trip one of my favorite family vacations.  Sharon and I work very hard to balance our passion for the work we do at Carson with the time we love to spend with our daughters who are 10 and 13 years old.

At Carson, we are also blessed to have a bilingual account representative from Costa Rica, Carola Stiver. Carola is helping us provide better service to our many bilingual customers as well as give us guidance in creating new wrapper designs that will appeal to our Spanish speaking customers.  Keep an eye on our web site, as we are putting up new Spanish designs on a regular basis throughout 2007 and beyond in all of our markets and occasions. If you would like to place an order with us in Spanish, please call and ask for Carola.  She will be glad to assist you in placing an order for any of our existing designs, which we can translate to Spanish, or help you create a custom design just for you.

Let Me Introduce Myself

Since this is my first post to our blog, I feel it necessary to at least tell a little about myself before we get rolling.  Here is a little story of how a trial lawyer turned to a honest life of chocolate.

After graduating from the University of Dayton School of Law in 1994, I settled into practicing law in Butler County Ohio, just north of Cincinnati.  This was about the same time Ed Carson, the founder of our company, began his venture into the business of selling personalized Hershey Bar birth announcements that proclaimed HERESHEIS®.

I loved practicing law. Never could I have imagined the excitement and opportunity every day would bring to make a difference for someone or something. It also is a very demanding line of work... evenings, and nights and weekends... it really just never stopped. Eventually you come to grips with the fact that as a trial lawyer with several hundred clients, you never really get caught up or relax.  If you did reach that point, that would mean that you were probably a broke trial lawyer which would carry another set of issues. Luckily for me, I never had any worries over staying busy, but I sure had plenty about keeping up.  All of that said, I would not trade the 10 years that I actively practiced law for anything, because it basically taught me that the more you learn the less you know, and boy did I learn a lot.

Ed Carson was busy between 1994 and 2003 also, keeping up with the demand for his personalized wrapped Hershey'€™s chocolate bar favors.  What had started out as a simple birth announcement business where people hand wrapped orders and shipped them out of a small warehouse space, became a business with 50 employees and the latest in printing and computer technology, shipping out over 5 million Hershey bar favors a year to people all over the world.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ed and I came together .. He needed my legal services and I needed the work, so it seemed like a match made in heaven.  For several years I helped Ed navigate everything from copier lease issues, domain name squatters, copyright infringers and construction complications.  I tell him today, he did a lot of owner financing over the years to allow the sale of the business to me.

So how did I get here you ask... very simple.  Over the years I knew Ed, I came to be fascinated with his business.  Not so much the processes, but fascinated with the impact his personalized candy bars had on the people who ordered them.

I remember sitting in the front reception area waiting to meet him for an appointment and watching as a customer came to pick up an order at our facility.  The first thing they did was open the box, just like Charlie in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with almost a giddy anticipation.  The look on their faces when I watched them admire their name on their own Hershey chocolate bar was all it took... I was hooked. 

For years after that I would always say to Ed when we were together, €œ"Ed, if you ever decide to sell the business, call me first please."  I was almost joking, and doubt he took me seriously, but in the Spring of 2003, I did get a phone call from Ed who said he was considering retirement and was I really serious about my interest in the business.  I told him, without thinking, that yes I was interested and that evening I went home to tell my wife the great news about our opportunity to work with chocolate all day long!  Of course you can only imagine her excitement when her trial lawyer husband came home with this to tell her... she thought for certain I had finally snapped and gone off the deep end. 

So the end of the story goes like this... Sharon and I both left our careers, and security and partial sanity to buy Carson Wrapped Hershey'€™s from Ed Carson.  Now everyone thought we were crazy, and looking back they were probably right.  I tell those who ask me how I got here this same story, but it always ends like this... after a good day at Carson it was Sharon's idea to buy the business and after a bad day it was mine ... and that'€™s the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.

by Scott Frederick, President of Sales & Business Operations