How Adama Nesil Hacked the Candy Market
Today, we step into the world of Adama Nesil, the creator of Candy Hackers. In a landscape dominated by sugary, processed treats, Adama has managed to carve a niche with gluten-free and dairy-free candies. But this is more than a story of culinary innovation. It’s about how a mother turned dietary restrictions into an advantage, capturing not just the palate but also the imagination of her audience. From her modest kitchen to TikTok fame and even to the corridors of a renowned UK chocolate factory, this episode explores the sweet blend of creativity, resilience, and smart business.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
9/26/2023
Kurt Elster: Today, we’re talking to the incredible Adama Nesil, the force of nature behind Candy hackers. She’s turned the tables by making gluten-free and dairy-free treats that aren’t just good for you. They’re the envy of every kid’s party. Imagine that. Your child’s diet restrictions becoming the coolest thing at the birthday party? We’ll dig into how Adama went from a tiny kitchen to a TikTok sensation and how she’s even got a major U.K. chocolate factory bending their rules just to work with her.
How did she do it? Well, you’ll have to listen in, stick around, and find out. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And this is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: Adama, welcome.
Adama Nesil: Thank you for having me.
Kurt Elster: Oh, my pleasure. So, you had stumbled on me on YouTube. Darn YouTube. Social media. And you emailed me, and you told me your story. Immediately, I was hooked. I said, “This is incredible. I want to hear more about it. And let’s just go ahead and do that live for the benefit of our listeners.” And that brought you here, but let’s start with Candy Hackers. What’s going on there? What’s the story behind starting Candy Hackers?
Adama Nesil: So, Candy Hackers started way back, because I have two kids and they both struggle with dairy and gluten. And it was always really tough when we went to the supermarket or the grocery store to get sweet treats, and there were tears at the free from aisle because if you look at a free from aisle, it’s a really narrow selection, maybe like four, five major brands on there. Then you go to the mainstream aisle and there’s… You’re spoiled for choice, all right? You’re just spoiled for choice. And it just made my kids feel like the chocolate industry had forgotten about them.
And after years and years of this and going to parties where the birthday cake is dairy and gluten, all the spread, all the treats. We’d have to bring our own bag full of the usual free-from stuff. You know, there are tears, and it was just horrible to see them feeling left out, and I just… One day, I just thought, “Enough is enough. We need to do something about this.” So, I started to formulate recipes, and it took a few years, and it was really hard at first because I’m not a chocolatier. I’d had no intention of being a chocolatier. You know, I’m not a great cook or anything. I just wanted to solve for this problem, so I had to be self-taught, lots of YouTube videos, and loads of mistakes, loads of awful chocolate bars in the beginning, and then after some time we started to get the recipe down and that’s kind of the backstory to how it started.
Kurt Elster: So, you have kids with dietary restrictions, and… Well, what’s it like having to say no to them or denying them on things that seem otherwise a normal part of a child’s life?
Adama Nesil: Honestly, it was really hard, because full transparency, we’re a neurodivergent family. My kids are neurodivergent, so we have a chip on our shoulder about that a bit, you know? Because we weren’t really in the mainstream of society in that way. So, we had kind of layers of that, being left out of the mainstream, so it was very hard for me to say no to them because I have layers of that in our backstory. And it hurt because I’d just had enough of them being put to the side for whatever reason. You know, and that was the one thing I wanted to give them. I know it sounds stupid, like sweet treats, but I just wanted them to have something that they could have that wasn’t just what everyone else was having, but I wanted to almost go up a level so that it was something even better than… I know that sounds crazy, but something that was even better than what was on the shelves.
Kurt Elster: You know, traditionally these things are substitutes, right? It’s like, “Well, you can’t have this, so we’re gonna substitute it with this,” that’s like if you’re lucky, it’s 80% as good, right? And so, you said, “You know what? I don’t need that. Why can’t we start new? Why can’t we make something better?” The advantage to… You said you’re not a chocolatier, so I’m guessing you didn’t have a lot of experience here. There is advantage in that. When you don’t know what you don’t know, sometimes it makes it easier to not talk yourself out of it.
Adama Nesil: So true.
Kurt Elster: Like I sometimes wonder, it’s like if I had… I’m here because in 2009 I said, “I’m gonna build an eCommerce platform,” with no knowledge of how insanely difficult that would be or what an absurd statement that was. And yet I failed at that, but that kicked me off into my career here, and so there is some advantage there. I love the name, Candy Hackers. How did you come up with the name?
Adama Nesil: We had a few options, and we ran a poll on… I think it was Facebook or something. And Candy Hackers just felt so right for us because my kids love technology, you know? They love gaming, coding, all of that, so I just… We’re not hackers in that respect, but we wanted to hack candy. We wanted to hack chocolate. So, almost kind of like not copying, but hacking the mainstream niche and bringing it to our community, and elevating them in that way, so it was kind of cool, and edgy, and we have a pixel heart on our logo, as well, so we got like a retro gamer kind of feel to our branding.
Kurt Elster: That retro style, that pixel style, that gaming culture stuff, it’s great because really it works for… I’m 40. I grew up with NES, so it works on me just as well as it works on my six-year-old because of Pokémon. It’s a wonderful art style and really on trend, and then kind of fits the audience, and the brand, and the idea, and that ethos. Candy Hackers. It’s just great.
Adama Nesil: Thank you. And also, a lot of the branding that’s aimed at kids today, at least in the U.K., are kind of… I feel like kids are in a different place nowadays, you know? It’s almost cutesy, cartoony kind of… I don’t know. I just feel like kids are cooler these days, you know? I just wanted to do something completely different for the kids.
Kurt Elster: They are. And when you take them seriously, it works. I watched this documentary called The Orange Years about Nickelodeon and that was really what really powered them through the ‘90s, was how they’re like, “We’re gonna get actual writers who are gonna write real stories and real characters for kids’ TV.” And that was just like a revolutionary breakthrough. You know, that same concept here. You’re like, “Look, you’re a little person with not a lot of life experience, but you’re still a person and I’m gonna take you seriously.”
Adama Nesil: Exactly. Yeah. Spot on.
Kurt Elster: So, speaking of our little people, what are our dietary restrictions here? Gluten and dairy?
Adama Nesil: Yeah. We started off, actually, with a lot more. We started off in 2019 trying to do everything. Sugar-free, soy-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free. We tried that and it just restricted our recipes and creativity too much. And also, my message wasn’t getting across. You know, and it just didn’t taste great, and the whole point was we wanted to make it fun, and I had to really think about who we are serving.
So, we basically broadened out and got rid of all the other stuff, and then just made it what we originally wanted to do, which was gluten-free and dairy-free. But we’re not free from as in certified free from, because it’s really tough to do, so we are made without dairy and made without gluten in the ingredients. We have to say may contain on our labeling, but we have a gluten-free kitchen and everything. Yeah, so it’s gluten-free and dairy-free, which is hard to get in combination, because a lot of the coolest stuff I’ve seen on the market is either gluten-free or either dairy-free, but it’s not together, you know? So, kids like mine are left out either way. It’s more frustrating for them.
Kurt Elster: So, that really… The struggle to find stuff is with trying to find stuff that A, is good. There’s limited selection. What is available will often be a subpar substitute and you’re struggling to find stuff that meets these two major criteria, gluten-free and dairy-free.
Adama Nesil: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: That’s the struggle. Okay.
Adama Nesil: Yes.
Kurt Elster: So, I get the issue here, and were I in the same position, of course I’d want to help my kids. I wouldn’t know where to begin. What is the moment where you say, “You know what? I’m gonna go make some candy bars?”
Adama Nesil: Yeah. Yeah. I’m kind of naïve in that way. You know, so I guess I have an entrepreneurial spirit. I’ve always been quite naïve about my goals and things I want to do, like I just go for it and sort of figure it out as I go along. And I just have… I don’t know. You know what? I saw a big vision for Candy Hackers. It wasn’t just chocolate, all right? Chocolate was one of our products. So, I’m thinking more of the person and not the product, you know? I want to solve for a lot of things and sweet treats was just the thing that we struggled with the most, you know, was the sweet treats. Because you know, the free-from industry is way better today, let’s face it, than it was 10 years ago, but yeah, sweet treats is something we all love. We have a serious sweet tooth in our family and so, I have a line of products I see on the horizon, and I just literally got started in my kitchen, just doing some research, finding out what things we loved that we can’t have, and my kids really led the process. They told me what it was that they wanted and then we just tried to hack around it and that’s kind of how I started.
Kurt Elster: So, what were their… How old were they when you started this and what was their wish list?
Adama Nesil: Oh, so we’re looking about four years ago, so my daughter was about six years old when we got started, and the wish list was really long, and their flavor… what they wanted changed over time. But the thing that really, really cracked it for us was when my daughter saw… You know Oreo cookies, there are gluten and dairy in it? I think it’s got dairy in it. But anyways, definitely gluten. When she saw some viral trend going online where there were these chocolate bars with broken up Oreo cookies on them, and she really wanted it, and again, I hate saying, “No, you can’t because you’re different, and you can’t have what everybody else has.” I said, “You can’t have that, babe. I’m really sorry.” And she cried and cried her heart out. I mean, it just… She just cried so hard.
Kurt Elster: And the poor kid’s just like, “Look, I just want to put some Oreos on something.”
Adama Nesil: Yeah. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: That’s tough.
Adama Nesil: It’s so hard, you know? So, I said, “Look, babe. Put your shoes on. Let’s go. We’re going to the supermarket. Let’s go.” So, we went straight away to the supermarket, and I went to the free-from aisle. I said, “What do you like?” No, we went to the mainstream aisle first. I said, “What do you like here?” She said, “I like this one. I like that one.” I said, “Okay, let’s go to the free-from aisle,” and we just put gluten-free ingredients inside our basket. I filled my basket up. And we went… We got home, we broke things up, we experimented, we spent hours literally just messing about. And although they were a bit crazy what we came up with, those were the beginnings of the recipes that we have now, so that’s kind of… Yeah, how it started.
Kurt Elster: Frankensteining together some ingredients from the store, you will make a delicious treat, but this doesn’t get us to mass manufacturing a product. What was the first thing you successfully made and then how did you go, “You know what? We should make this at scale in a factory?” We should try to sell this. How do you get there?
Kurt Elster: It was kind of like forced into that position because when I shared our story on TikTok, and it went viral, I know for viral it can be tens of millions of views for some people, but for us it was almost a million views. About 940,000 views or something. And then we sold out everything on our website. Yeah, that was basically what really pushed us to find a factory, was because I actually had to make all that after that viral video. Hand make all of it with… It was so tough. And I was the bottleneck. I still am to this day the bottleneck in the business because it’s just my bare hands mixing and trying to do hundreds of bars myself, and my kitchen’s tiny. We live in a small London apartment, and it was just too much. It’s just too much.
And then it was also frustrating to see all the customers on our waitlist waiting for chocolate bars, emailing in really angry comments on TikTok. You know, and I appreciate it. I appreciate it. It’s a good problem to have. But the whole point is just to get rid of the problem, right? So, it made me doubly frustrated because on the one hand I’m trying to solve a problem and I created one at the same time with my customers. So, then I started sending out emails and making phone calls, and pretty much nobody gets back to you because you’re small time or whatever. You have to be doing some serious volume in order to have a factory work with you. But then we did find one who actually produced millions of chocolate bars and worked with major supermarkets across the U.K.
And when I spoke to them, I just said it raw, right? I just laid it on the table. I said, “Listen, this is who we are. This is why we’re doing this. Here’s who we’re trying to help. Can you help us so we can help our customers? Can we do this?” And yeah, at first they were like, “Well, you know, need to do…” How much was it? 6,000 bars per flavor minimum order. I was like, “Oh… That’s a lot.” And they said, “Let’s see what we can do. We don’t normally take anyone during Q4. It’s our busiest time.” You know, they don’t even look up for anybody from the work that they’re doing. So, it was a back and forth, but then they spoke to the person who runs the factory and then they agreed to work with us and lower their MOQs right down, and they said to me, “We have never, ever… We’ve been in business for decades. We’ve never, ever done this for anybody, ever.” So, yeah, I couldn’t believe it.
Kurt Elster: Why did they do it? It was for you? It was the story? It was compelling? Or they’re like, “Let’s just flip a coin and she won?” Why change the system for you?
Adama Nesil: I can only guess, but I feel that they were really nice people, and I just think that they were kind of… I think they were intrigued by the traction we had on social media. You know, being a small… I don’t know, one-woman show with a couple of kids in a flat in London, I think they were intrigued by that, and also I think they felt they wanted to support the mission that we have, so that’s what I’d like to think.
Kurt Elster: I believe it because they really have no need… From what I’ve heard here, they have no need to do this. They made a choice to support you and they only know… You know, what do they really know? And they know that story. And so, when you have a compelling story and you’re willing to put yourself out there and share it, this is the impact it has on people. They’re bending over to help you. It’s great.
Adama Nesil: It’s fantastic. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, you’ve mentioned several times the big inflection point here is your TikTok moment. You went viral on social media, which… Tough thing to engineer. And when it happens, it’s magical. Tell us about it. What happened there?
Adama Nesil: You know, it was… It was one of those moments, like I hope that this helps somebody who’s listening to this right now. If you’re ever in a situation, let me share what happens. So, I’ve been hustling on TikTok for years. You know, like nothing. 100 views. 200 views. You know how it is. One night I was so tired, and I think I was getting the kids ready for bed, and I was like, “I have to post on TikTok.” I was like, “You know, I think I’m just gonna leave it.” And you know, you have those moments. You really… It’s not gonna hurt you to not post on TikTok, right?
But something said, “No. Sit down. Open CapCut. Let’s go. Let’s edit a video.” And then it just… I just put it together. It sort of flowed. You know, I did give it some thought. It wasn’t just random. I did give it some thought like, “What do I want to say? Who do I want to help? What’s our story? How are we solving it?” You know, I did give it some thought, so I’d be lying to say that it just came out, because it didn’t. What’s our hook? Because people are scrolling all the time and I’ve had experience on TikTok, you know, where nobody’s listening.
So, I just laid it all out for the first time. Really laid out our pain. And I focused on my daughter. I just said, “Look, my daughter’s dairy and gluten-free. We cry at the supermarket a lot.” And I had lots of footage of my daughter that I had taken over the years of her actually in real time struggling in the free-from aisle. So, I edited all of it. I just put her in the videos and showed her real… her proper reactions. And then just showed how we’re trying to solve for it, and it blew me away, because the messages were, “Look, I’m 30 years old, but I’m like your daughter. I have cried at the free-from aisle. I know how she feels.” And some people said they cried when they found us, you know, which blew me away because I didn’t realize that the pain went so deep even with adults, you know? I didn’t realize that.
Kurt Elster: You almost didn’t post. And instead, you said, “I’m gonna share something real. Something authentic. Raw.” Your kid struggling in a supermarket. And it touched people. It moved them. You’re agitating the pain by demonstrating this real emotional thing in your life. And then you’re saying, “Look, this is how we’re trying to fix that. This is how we’re trying to solve for that.” And by this point, you had developed the product and it was available for sale, but you weren’t using… You didn’t have the factory yet? You’re making it?
Adama Nesil: Making it myself. Yeah. At that point, I was doing… The best we’d ever done was like an order or two orders a week, literally. Sometimes an order a month for years. You know, sometimes I wonder why am I even continuing with this, you know? Why am I doing this? I just had this fight. I just have this vision in me that’s something gonna happen with this, and this kept me going over the years. You know, I don’t have time. I don’t have time to start a brand. I’m a single parent, right? I homeschool my two kids. But I just kept on going, so yeah, I don’t know, I just-
Kurt Elster: And so, it finally did. It happened. You have this viral TikTok moment. And people are reaching out. They’re sympathizing. They’re empathizing. What impact does that have on the business?
Adama Nesil: I think first of all, it was like a shock to me because I actually realized, “Oh, we have a business.” You know what I mean? When you’re starting off, it’s almost like you’re a wannabe business, right? You know, and I mean that-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Imposter syndrome.
Adama Nesil: Yeah. I mean that respectfully to all of us out there who are starting a business. You know, you do have to wear the business hat, get in the zone, but until you’re making sales, and you got traction going, you really are… You know, you’re not really knowing that you have a business, right? And then when it happened, I was like… I felt like, “You know what?” Like I just started a business. It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to explain. Do you know what I mean?
Kurt Elster: No, initially it’s like it feels like a bit of role playing, right? You’re adopting this role. But there isn’t money coming in. There’s money going out the door. And isn’t the whole point of the business that it becomes an income, right? That it supports you? But that doesn’t happen on day zero, on day one, and in some cases it will be years until the business is profitable. Like for us, I was like, “All right, it’s like year two we get to breakeven.” And I’m like, “I don’t know about this.” And then suddenly it takes off, and we all have those moments where you go like, “Oh, there’s something here. This is legit.” And for me, it was like the first time a stranger referred another stranger to me. It’s like, “Oh, that means there’s word of mouth happening. Network effects.”
You had this tremendous moment where like all of that happened all at once very quickly thanks to social media. This turned into orders? More orders than you’d seen before?
Adama Nesil: We had more orders overnight than I’d seen in four years. Multiple times over. You know, hundreds of bars ordered. And panic, really, because you know, when you’re working, scale can be anything, right? From 10 bars to 100 bars to 500 bars. It’s a whole new level, new devil thing, right? How do I solve for this? How do I do this? How do I be efficient with this? And it’s like I realize I’m a bit of a… I try to plan things in advance a bit too much. You know, I’m one of those people that it’s a really bad trait to have, but I try to solve for things before I take steps sometimes, but I was forced to do it messy, make mistakes, and on top of that we had a freak heat wave in the U.K. Chocolate and heat.
Kurt Elster: Not a good combo for chocolate.
Adama Nesil: You know what? In the worst possible way. It’s not even the melting. There’s a thing called bloom where chocolate can go white if it’s-
Kurt Elster: Right. Oh, I didn’t know there’s name for that. It’s like… Yeah, you raid the kids’ old Halloween candy and you’re like, “I don’t know about this color, but it smells right.”
Adama Nesil: Exactly. It doesn’t hurt you. If you ever have white chocolate, it’s cool. It’s cool. But it is ugly and it’s not the best texture, and it looks like it’s gone bad. So, my first attempt, my first 60 bars bloomed, right?
Kurt Elster: Oooh.
Adama Nesil: Yeah. Because the heat just kicked in, so I had to buy an air conditioner. I had to get… Then there was another problem, and I had to buy a dehumidifier unit, and there’s another problem, and another problem, and then I had to rent a machine to help me temper the chocolate, which means you have to structure it. Otherwise, you can’t put it in molds. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I had to hire a machine, and that blew. The machine blew. It went, “Bang!” And smoking and everything. So, it was almost like something cursed us, so it was really funny.
And I didn’t have many molds. You know how you have to have loads of chocolate molds? I have four molds. Four.
Kurt Elster: Four? Quite the bottleneck.
Adama Nesil: Yeah. Of each mold. Yeah. Each mold has like three bars. I could only make them 12 at a time. You know, and because the money was coming in, but it had to go out. I had to get ingredients. And you can’t just… You know, before, “Oh, I have one order. Oh, I’m gonna go and get some ingredients. Okay. What do I need? Oh, I can take my time.” You know, it was one of those things. But now I’m like I have to go to different supermarkets now, because that one doesn’t have enough of this, and I need to buy in bulk from that, and I need a wholesale account with this person, and I need to… You know, so I had to buy more quantities of packaging than I’ve ever bought before. More than even I had orders for sometimes, you know?
So, I literally lost money. That’s fine. It’s fine because I’m looking at the long road, not the short road, but yeah, I had to cover a lot of expenses with that. So, we’re out of stock. We’ve been out of stock for a while now. Yeah. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s a really educational experience. But I say to anybody, if you’re on TikTok and you’re trying to promote your brand, yeah, just think you might go viral, and it might happen to you when you don’t expect it. You might not plan for it. It was a shock.
Kurt Elster: It’s really… It’s a tough thing to engineer. And when it did happen, you suddenly… It validates everything you’ve been doing. But now you have a tiger by the tail in this now very real business. I’m sure you’ve probably tried to repeat the success of going viral. Do you have advice for other folks who are hoping to see similar traction on TikTok?
Adama Nesil: I’m actually afraid to replicate that because I still haven’t solved yet… I’m not ready to facilitate those orders. So, I’ve kind of been holding back a bit on TikTok, to be really honest. I probably shouldn’t do that. I probably shouldn’t do that.
Kurt Elster: I don’t know. I don’t know what the right answer is. I suppose it depends what the call to action is. But you know, also it’s frustrating for people, but if it’s like, “Hey, the free-from chocolate bar that’s sold out 10 times. Get on the waitlist now.” That kind of thing would have to be the call to action. And it’s audience building. You’re trying to get this big newsletter and capitalize on that popularity, that success now, so that you own the customer when you have them in a newsletter, and now you’re like, “Okay. Hey, we’re ramping things up. Our factory order’s coming in and now’s the time to preorder to get your bars.” It gives you a more one-on-one way to communicate with them.
Adama Nesil: Yes. I’m appreciating what you’re saying to me, Kurt. And so, I feel you validated what I’m doing, because all I’ve been saying is I’m not gonna announce it on social media. I’m only going to announce it on my email list because my email list alone is gonna be a stretch for me to fulfill, the community on the email list, let alone on social media. So, everybody who asks, I say you have to get on my list because I’m gonna announce it there first.
But I’d say to anyone who wants to… I’ll tell you what I would advise. First, I would go and look at other accounts who solve to customers in your niche or whatever you’re doing. So, not just your product, but your audience, right? So, go to accounts who appeal to your audience, and look at the ones that come up to the top of the search. That’s what I started to do. And look and see what are they saying? What’s their hook? What’s their story? What’s their call to action? How many… I know it’s a bit OCD. Forgive me, but I’m really OCD, and I love to analyze things. Maybe too much. So, I look to see how are they editing that video. How quick are the cuts? I look for details like that.
So, that’s what I did. I looked at ones that were doing well and I thought, “Why did I stop scrolling? What made me stop scrolling? What made me listen?” And then you sort of get a framework in your mind, and then you can plug in your authenticity, your story, what’s real to you, and you can plug that into those frameworks, and somehow it’s almost like there’s a kind of alchemy that happens when you do that.
That’s what I found.
Kurt Elster: I think that is great, straightforward advice that anybody could do if they’re willing to put in the work, and it sounds like step one is you’re going to immerse yourself in your audience’s social media consumption in the same way, but through a different lens, and really take notice of the individual elements. You’re thinking about what’s the hook, how often are they cutting, how are they cutting, what is the style here, how are they editing this? Everything so that when you show up for that audience it is recognizable as relevant to them. And I think you came to that approach as just part of your personality, kind of how you approach things. You say like, “I want to be prepared.”
Earlier in the year, we had a professional YouTuber, full time YouTuber, Disney Dan, and that was his approach. It was like he needs to produce a YouTube video once a month, and it was like the first two weeks, or week, is just him spending all his time watching YouTube videos of similar topics and noting everything down before, all right, then he makes his presentation, then they film it, and then edit it. But half of it is just like research and prep, not actually producing anything.
Adama Nesil: That makes a lot of sense.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. The branding and labels. You talked about that, like that retro gaming pixel look that Candy Hackers has that I dearly love. How’d you get the branding and labels? Did you design it?
Adama Nesil: My kids and I designed everything, and my 13-year-old does the packaging, and-
Kurt Elster: Incredible.
Adama Nesil: And we get compliments all the time on our branding, and people… Other brands ask us. Who did your website? Who did your packaging?
Kurt Elster: A 13-year-old did this.
Adama Nesil: He was 12 at the time. He just turned 13. He was 12 and he did all the packaging, amazing. And my daughter, her artwork, we put stickers, vinyl stickers in our packages, and her artwork’s on our thank you cards. She does anime drawings, so she has her art on there. So, yeah, we’re gonna continue putting our creativity together in what we do.
Kurt Elster: I was admiring these labels with a new lens as I discovered, oh, a child did this, and it looks better than a lot of what I see from supposed professionals. This factory partnership. What’s it mean for you to be able to work with a factory? How is that going?
Adama Nesil: So, it’s a lot of back and forth, and it’s also finding the balance, because… I’ll tell you the latest, where we’re at now. So, they’ve noticed that our bars are quite complex, so we have four to eight different steps in the production where they’re used to working with bars that are two to three steps on their assembly line, so they’re concerned at the moment, being completely honest with you, that we might be too complicated for them to make money. Because what they said, you know, what you do in a few hours we can do in 20 minutes without a blink of an eye. We can do things fast. Even though they specialize in handmade, they hand finish, so they do have some machinery involved.
So, we’re at that place now where we need to decide. Do we want to simplify what we do? What is it that our community wants? And I’ve been looking at the feedback and a lot of our customers love… They love that we’ve put so much effort and so much detail in our bars, so we’re on the fence at the moment about what we’re going to do, to be honest with you. We got some advice from other experts in the chocolate industry. I’ve been fortunate that they’ve been very supportive. And they said, “Hey, have you thought about opening your own facility? Just open your own facility because then you’ll have more control over your product. And you can react, also, to your audience a lot quicker.” Because with the factory it’ll take time to get a new flavor out there. You know, a lot of back and forth samples, and when they’ve got time for you, as well. Because remember, they’re doing millions of bars.
So, I’m not gonna rule that out. I’m not gonna rule that out. And that’s why I’m thinking of doing maybe a crowdfunding situation with my community, using Crowdfunder, the crowdfunding app on Shopify. So, I’m thinking to use that maybe for the next run.
Kurt Elster: That would be cool. Well, and if you could… When you have the community and the audience behind you, and you can explain to them what’s going on, like, “Hey, we can’t meet demand. We have to ramp up output. We’ve found a factory willing to work with us, but they think we may have to dumb down the product a little bit for that to work. Or we can try and raise the money and we can build our own factory and we can do this ourselves.” That’s the authenticity, that honesty, that’s the thing they can get behind. That factory, they can just provide the output. They don’t have some way to help you grow outside of that, do they?
Adama Nesil: No.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And you could have them… Come up with a different candy bar specifically for them to manufacture that you’re like, “All right, we have one that’s mass produced and accessible.”
Adama Nesil: Yes. More commercial line. Could do something like that. That’s… So, I’m not gonna rule it out completely, so we could do something that maybe can… It’s quick and we can be in stock with it. It’s not too complex. And we can leave some of our more exclusive flavors maybe for our members, because we want to do a monthly subscription box, so I might save those exclusive bars, hire some Oompa Loompas, and then we can make them in house. That would be cool. So, yeah, we could find a middle way somehow.
Kurt Elster: If you have the factory producing stuff, you want the short-term and the long-term strategy for get cash in your pocket. The factory is there. Why complicate it? They don’t want to have to switch lines. Just, “Hey, do a run of this bar as reasonable as we can.” Switch up the packaging. Give it a new brand name so that it’s not confused with the other stuff. That’s the one you could sell and that gets cash going.
Adama Nesil: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And proves like, “All right, we are shipping. This is real business.” And then raise the money and then try to do it in house so you can make it the way you want it. Easier said than done. I have done none of this. I have manufactured nothing. The whole concept would overwhelm and terrify me, right? None of this is easy. Me giving the advice, very easy. “Oh, just do this. Do that.”
Adama Nesil: But that’s like you said earlier, that’s where the good ideas come, when you haven’t got experience with something. That’s where you get out of the box solutions, so I really liked what you said, honestly, so…
Kurt Elster: Okay. Good. So, it’s good advice. I appreciate it.
Adama Nesil: Yeah. Thank you.
Kurt Elster: And so, you’ve got like… Right now, I can go on CandyHackers dot com. This is a Shopify store. Looks great. You and your kids did this? You set this up?
Adama Nesil: Yeah. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: How’d you end up choosing Shopify out of curiosity?
Adama Nesil: I noticed that… I did my research. And as there are others, maybe even cheaper ones that you can go with when you’re starting off, but I loved the… Because I’m thinking marketing, as well, because businesses are also… Marketing goes together, right? And I love marketing. And I think that there are lots of apps, and ways you can really make your customer experience what you want it to be using those, the marketplace and things like that, so Shopify was a good choice because you could really… I mean, look at the crowdfunding app. So, we could use that. You can’t really do that… Well, I don’t know.
Kurt Elster: I think the end result speaks for itself. What are your favorite flavors? What’s your favorite bar or your kids’ favorite bars here?
Adama Nesil: We love Pretzel Perfect, because that was definitely one that used to trigger the tears in the supermarket, not being able to have it, because it had gluten pretzels. Even the vegan ones had gluten pretzels, so this one tastes amazing, but Cookie Megabytes is our biggest seller by far. We do double Cookie Megabytes than any other bar on the store. So, with the gold dust, because we put edible gold dust on it and make it a little bit glittery.
Kurt Elster: Whoa.
Adama Nesil: They love that. And Poppin’ Orange is awesome, as well, with the popping candy and the organic orange oils in it. It’s just… It’s a really cool bar.
Kurt Elster: It’s also really pretty.
Adama Nesil: Thank you. Natural colors. We use natural colors, as well.
Kurt Elster: Oh, really? They’re so vibrant.
Adama Nesil: Yeah, because my kids used to have problems when they were little with hyperactivity with all the artificial colors and stuff like that, so we use natural colors on those.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Where can people go to learn more about you?
Adama Nesil: So, CandyHackers dot com is our website, and we have a waitlist at… I think it’s CandyHackers dot link slash waitlist, I believe. I think.
Kurt Elster: I’ll put that stuff in the show notes for folks. I’ll link to all of this. And I think I have a link to that TikTok, the viral post, so I’ll put that in there as well if people want to see it. Just tap or swipe up on the show art on your phone.
Adama Nesil: I really appreciate your podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Kurt Elster: My pleasure. Thank you for… You reached out to me, and you shared your story, and you were just looking for advice, and I said, “I want to hear more.” And I’m glad I did.
Adama Nesil: Thank you. Thanks for your advice, as well. I really appreciate it.
Kurt Elster: I hope it helps. Adama Nesil, Candy Hackers, CandyHackers dot com. Check it out. Thank you so much.
Adama Nesil: Thank you.
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