Clarendon Hills lollipop maker hits home in China - Blue Sky Innovation
By Danielle Braff, Special to Blue Sky
April 29, 2014, 10 a.m.
A small hobby turned into a Clarendon Hills-based candy company and a sugar-fueled international obsession.
Vintage Confections makes unique and custom lollipops, which the company says has hit a sweet spot especially among Asian, particularly Chinese, customers in the U.S. and abroad.
Heather Kelly, the company's founder and CEO, said she never envisioned this five years ago when she started making homemade lollipops in her kitchen to sell them on Etsy, an online marketplace. She worked at the time as an administrative assistant for an international sports-nutrition company.
In 2010, she began experimenting with making her own lollipop molds to satisfy customers who requested specific designs. A break came in December of that year when Martha Stewart Weddings featured her four-inch table-number lollipops, poured from her hand-crafted molds.
"After that, it was nothing but lollipops," she said.
Vintage Confections today makes caramels, chocolate dipped treats and other novelties at its Clarendon Hills retail location. But the company sticks its reputation on its lollipops. Its signature Planet lollipops feature candy-coated replicas of Venus, Jupiter, Mars and all the others in 10 flavors.
The company also makes design-your-own lollipops that include personalized photos, logos and text embedded into the candy.
Kelly, 42, said the lollipops remain especially popular among Asian customers. The company's website even includes an alert in Chinese to counterfeit Vintage Confections products in China.
"It's been a crazy phenomenon," said Cheryl Carr, 36, Kelly's sister and the company's CFO. "We've had people come straight from the airport. Every Asian person who comes into our store says, 'Do you know how famous you are in China?'"
Vintage Confections says 95 percent of its business is online and that, according to IP and mailing addresses and customer feedback, 95 percent of those customers are Asian. Half live overseas, mostly in China, Carr said.
Sharon Li, a Naperville-based reseller of Vintage Confections products, explained that candy is big in China and that the Chinese appreciate products made in the U.S. As a result, she said, American-made candy that's unique and trendy will hit it big there. Li said she sells the candy on Chinese online retailer Taobao.
"They have very creative, high-end designs, and are hand-made American products," Li said of Vintage Confections candy.
Li said the average price in China for a set of 10 Vintage Confections lollipops is $40, almost double the price of the lollipops in the U.S., and she said they're a popular gift among young people there. Part of the appeal of the Vintage lollipops, she said, is that they're hard to get. After they arrived in China, in November 2012, the waiting period became three to six months, she said.
Kelly said their popularity began to pick up earlier that year when the company began to make the lollipops that featured photos or logos and custom shapes. The company printed the images on the edible material. It took — and still takes — an hour to make a custom set of six. Then the lollipops get hand-polished.
The company listed those lollipops on Etsy for about a month before it sold its first set, Carr said. At the time, Vintage Confections still operated from Kelly's kitchen and sold only about 15-20 orders per week.
But everything changed when the company developed Planet lollipops, which got mentioned on a few blogs in 2012.
"In a 24-hour period, we had 135 orders," Carr said, "and we haven't recovered."
Carr, who had been a stay-at-home mom, offered to help Kelly with office work since her background was in accounting, and she increased her involvement in the business. But the sisters agreed that they couldn't continue at their current pace from Kelly's home.
They got a retail store and commercial kitchen in Clarendon Hills in October 2012. The sisters and their mother used their own money to fund the business, Carr said.
"We continuously dumped money back in," Carr said.
Last May, Kelly quit her day job. The company went from 11 employees to 26, most of whom prepared the lollipops. It also moved into its current larger space in Clarendon Hills.
Carr said the backlog remains eight weeks despite weekly production of 12,000-15,000 lollipops. She said the company's seeking confectioners to help relieve the backlog.
"We literally can't make lollipops fast enough, which is crazy," said Carr, who declined to provide details on profits. "The goal is to grow as big as we can, and there really isn't a limit."
By Danielle Braff, Special to Blue Sky
April 29, 2014, 10 a.m.
A small hobby turned into a Clarendon Hills-based candy company and a sugar-fueled international obsession.
Vintage Confections makes unique and custom lollipops, which the company says has hit a sweet spot especially among Asian, particularly Chinese, customers in the U.S. and abroad.
Heather Kelly, the company's founder and CEO, said she never envisioned this five years ago when she started making homemade lollipops in her kitchen to sell them on Etsy, an online marketplace. She worked at the time as an administrative assistant for an international sports-nutrition company.
In 2010, she began experimenting with making her own lollipop molds to satisfy customers who requested specific designs. A break came in December of that year when Martha Stewart Weddings featured her four-inch table-number lollipops, poured from her hand-crafted molds.
"After that, it was nothing but lollipops," she said.
Vintage Confections today makes caramels, chocolate dipped treats and other novelties at its Clarendon Hills retail location. But the company sticks its reputation on its lollipops. Its signature Planet lollipops feature candy-coated replicas of Venus, Jupiter, Mars and all the others in 10 flavors.
The company also makes design-your-own lollipops that include personalized photos, logos and text embedded into the candy.
Kelly, 42, said the lollipops remain especially popular among Asian customers. The company's website even includes an alert in Chinese to counterfeit Vintage Confections products in China.
"It's been a crazy phenomenon," said Cheryl Carr, 36, Kelly's sister and the company's CFO. "We've had people come straight from the airport. Every Asian person who comes into our store says, 'Do you know how famous you are in China?'"
Vintage Confections says 95 percent of its business is online and that, according to IP and mailing addresses and customer feedback, 95 percent of those customers are Asian. Half live overseas, mostly in China, Carr said.
Sharon Li, a Naperville-based reseller of Vintage Confections products, explained that candy is big in China and that the Chinese appreciate products made in the U.S. As a result, she said, American-made candy that's unique and trendy will hit it big there. Li said she sells the candy on Chinese online retailer Taobao.
"They have very creative, high-end designs, and are hand-made American products," Li said of Vintage Confections candy.
Li said the average price in China for a set of 10 Vintage Confections lollipops is $40, almost double the price of the lollipops in the U.S., and she said they're a popular gift among young people there. Part of the appeal of the Vintage lollipops, she said, is that they're hard to get. After they arrived in China, in November 2012, the waiting period became three to six months, she said.
Kelly said their popularity began to pick up earlier that year when the company began to make the lollipops that featured photos or logos and custom shapes. The company printed the images on the edible material. It took — and still takes — an hour to make a custom set of six. Then the lollipops get hand-polished.
The company listed those lollipops on Etsy for about a month before it sold its first set, Carr said. At the time, Vintage Confections still operated from Kelly's kitchen and sold only about 15-20 orders per week.
But everything changed when the company developed Planet lollipops, which got mentioned on a few blogs in 2012.
"In a 24-hour period, we had 135 orders," Carr said, "and we haven't recovered."
Carr, who had been a stay-at-home mom, offered to help Kelly with office work since her background was in accounting, and she increased her involvement in the business. But the sisters agreed that they couldn't continue at their current pace from Kelly's home.
They got a retail store and commercial kitchen in Clarendon Hills in October 2012. The sisters and their mother used their own money to fund the business, Carr said.
"We continuously dumped money back in," Carr said.
Last May, Kelly quit her day job. The company went from 11 employees to 26, most of whom prepared the lollipops. It also moved into its current larger space in Clarendon Hills.
Carr said the backlog remains eight weeks despite weekly production of 12,000-15,000 lollipops. She said the company's seeking confectioners to help relieve the backlog.
"We literally can't make lollipops fast enough, which is crazy," said Carr, who declined to provide details on profits. "The goal is to grow as big as we can, and there really isn't a limit."
