Cookies by Oh Sugar!

Bruce Black
Owner, Oh, Sugar! (asi/74868)

Q. Please give us some company background.

A. Oh, Sugar! was founded in 2003 with our signature chocolate chip cookies, Nam’s Bits. As the years progressed, we added new flavors like Brownie Crisps, Confetti Cupcake and several candies and snack treats. As our reputation grew, we received calls from distributors that had end-users who wanted to use our cookies in a variety of promotions. Whether as a lead generator for salespeople, a trade show giveaway, a corporate gift or just to let them know you are thankful for their business, Oh, Sugar! sweets and treats are the perfect items to keep your customers coming back for more.

Q:  Which products are hot sellers right now?

A: Our chocolate chip cookie, Nam’s Bits, is our number-one selling item, and the container used is largely dictated by the user’s budget and the occasion. With corporate gifts, our gallon jar is our most popular item, along with our combo mailer packs. We can drive an entire program from art design and creation to fulfillment and client delivery.

Our second most popular item is probably a tie between our Brownie Crisp and our Confetti Cupcake cookies. The Brownie Crisp tastes like that crunchy top corner piece of a delicious brownie for the chocoholics, and the Confetti Cupcake cookies taste like cake frosting with rainbow colored sprinkles inside, hence the confetti.

Q: What are some of the top markets?

A: Corporate gifts are a big opportunity this time of year. We do a lot within the financial, legal, health and hospitality industries from customer appreciation to lead generation. Quite a few distributors target the automotive industry with customer thank-you gifts for purchases, along with giveaways in the service departments. It’s a unique item that stands out, and that’s why end-users keep coming back to that item, because it helps their brand stand out among their competitors who are giving the same old items for branding or lead generation.

Q: What makes these products unique vs. other food suppliers’?

A: It is a gourmet, handmade product. It’s not just the pure natural ingredients like real butter, real sugar, and hand-cracked eggs, but also the process we use to bake them that makes them super crispy and buttery all at the same time. Our prices are extremely competitive, our minimums are incredibly low, we don’t charge setup fees and we are very flexible. I don’t think there is anyone in the industry easier to work with than us.

Q: What features should distributors note when pitching your products?

A: The feedback we routinely receive is how impactful the taste of the cookies were on the end-user’s client. I call it the telephone tree. When the end-user receives a flood of phone calls from their customers thanking them for the gift and how well it was received by all those in their office, the end-user picks up the phone to call their distributor and thank them for the recommendation of our product and relates how much their customers liked the gift.

Then the distributor calls us to thank us for the execution of the program and tells us how wonderful it was received all the way through the value chain. That’s what we consider a success. To generate the order, we simply offer free tasting samples for distributors to entice their client. My job is to get distributors to taste the product so they know how special it is. Then it’s the distributors’ job to get the end-users to try the product and understand how impactful it will be for their clients.

Q: Can you share info about promotions for which your products were used?

A: My favorite example is a program we started eight years ago with a distributor in Florida. He had a client that was familiar with our chocolate chip cookies, Nam’s Bits, and wanted to do a program with 1,200 of our gallon jars for corporate gifts in the fourth quarter. It went over great and we repeated it for four more years, changing the label design each year to keep it fresh. In year six, someone decided it might be time to try something different instead of the cookies. The end-user received the opposite reaction in the telephone tree. They were flooded with calls from clients disappointed that they didn’t receive their cookies, relaying how much they looked forward to that gift each holiday season. Of course, they resumed the program for the last two years and vowed they would never make that mistake again.

Another example that demonstrates our extended capability involved a kitting program for an investment fund. The distributor organized leather bags embroidered by Leed’s and had them shipped directly to us. We manufactured a beautiful mailer package that had the bag nestled in crinkle-cut paper with a half-gallon jar of our cookies and two pint jars of candies resting on top. We completed the fulfillment, drop shipping to the end-user’s recipient list which resulted in appreciative phone calls to the investment fund manager who then made the same phone call to the distributor. We earned each party’s trust and hopefully a lifetime customer in the process.