Monday was the 21st time we have met with one of our candy sales reps, Gary to order Halloween and Christmas/Chanukah candy. Along with one other candy retailer in Oklahoma we may be the most consistent and one of the "oldest" stores which Gary has served.
We actually find that statistic amazing. These days so many retailers have been lost to the internet, to bad planning, bad marketing, location-location-location. We are still here and sometimes we find that amazing.
Let me give you a little insight into what a candy ordering day with Gary looks like.
In 1992, rookie me sat down with Gary to order candy for Halloween and Christmas. It took us 8 hours to get through that order! Yesterday Jeff, Gary and I finished in about 5 hours and that included a lunch break for barbeque sandwiches....Gary's favorite meal when he comes to Tulsa.
Halloween ordering was about 1 hour of that time. Over the years Halloween has become more of a party/costume/group holiday and not so much the ole Trick or Treating that I remember as a kid. So the candy we order is much different than the candy people give out to costumed kids who come to their doors. Our Halloween candy is more "gifty", more specialty and not so much a big bag of candy for distributing. As a consequence, it doesn't take as much time to look through Gary's samples and catalogue for Halloween goodies.
My favorite (just to give you a heads up) is the plush Witch with the little Peep candy witches.
The rest of the time was spent looking through over 300 pages of Christmas and Chanukah candy, checking out some of the samples Gary brings in these big coolers including a little bit of tasting, going back and forth between me and Jeff as to what we agree upon and then turning to Gary for his opinion.
Christmas is the biggest candy season and it lasts a lot longer than Valentine's Day or Easter. It begins with clients who want to purchase gift baskets (or hosting Candy Buffets) and need greater quantities of candy. It goes on to marketing Advent Calendars with chocolate, games and sometimes music.
Then we hit the more serious days leading up to Christmas.....oh, about December 5 or so. That is when individual customers come in to purchase Christmas or Chanukah candy before we start running out of seasonal candy.......which as you know cannot be re-ordered.
I will let you know some of my favorite Christmas candy in another blog...as you might imagine, 300 plus pages of a catalogue provides many wonderful candy possibilities.
I know it is only May 20 but retail is all about looking into the crystal ball for what lies ahead in the future.
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