1 Million Cups Features Treatsie, SumoText In First Session

A new education endeavor brought 40 interested entrepreneurs to the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce for the first “1 Million Cups” program.

“1 Million Cups” is a weekly gathering aimed at building start-up communities over cups of coffee and conversation across the country. The program began in April 2012 in Kansas City, the hometown of its founding organization, Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The program’s model is consistent in each location among the 33 cities it has launched. Each Wednesday morning, two founders present their companies to an audience of mentors, advisers and other entrepreneurs. Each founder presents for six minutes and then fields audience questions for another 20 minutes.

On Wednesday (April 16), two Little Rock-based start-ups – SumoText and Treatsie Artisan Sweets – shared their launch stories.

SUMOTEXT
Tim Miller, President and CEO of SumoText, said his firm has shifted from working with small, local retail outlets to larger companies such as Guitar Center, Firehouse Subs, and its newest client, Starbucks.

“It’s a game-changer for us,” Miller said of the Starbucks addition.

SumoText provides branding and marketing message campaigns to connect clients with mobile audiences through alerts, text messages, Passbook and Google Wallet.

Miller described the evolution of his company, which originally marketed to local boutique stores and restaurants when it began in 2008. Three years into it, Miller said he recognized that “we were more software guys,” so they shed the small-time thinking and went after bigger deals. The result moved SumoText from an operation with hundreds of accounts generating small monthly recurring revenue to a hundred accounts with much larger revenue generation.

“In short, we shrunk to grow,” he said.

SumoText has been experiencing about 20% annual revenue growth, Miller said. He also indicated that the company’s stability has it looking to expand.

“We’re back in start-up mode looking for ways to utilize our infrastructure,” Miller told the group.

TREATSIE
Jamie Walden and Keith Hoelzeman run an even greener start-up shop, Treatsie Artisan Sweets.

The Little Rock-based company turned one year old this week and the two founders shared their rapid education curve that helped them raise venture capital, alter their distribution model, and led them into writing content to boost sales.

Treatsie provides its members a monthly candy sampler from artisan candy makers from across the U.S. For a $15 a month membership fee, Treatsie sends you a surprise box of candy. Every month, it is a different combination of items with the vendors being able to market through Treatsie’s monthly delivery and web site.

Within the last year, Hoelzeman said the company has closed on $300,000 in venture capital to invest in Treatsie’s expansion plans. The company is building inventory at its Little Rock location in order to control distribution to members and the costs associated with it.

Walden said that it had become cost-prohibitive to drop-ship orders from three different vendors to one client and by consolidating inventory, mailing expense control has helped improve the bottom line.

Treatsie, whose Twitter handle is @TreatsieSweets, has begun adding writer content to its web site in an effort to distinguish itself from competitors and to cut through the clutter in search engines that can sidetrack potential customers.

A challenge for the company includes finding technology talent in Arkansas. Treatsie can’t compete with the Acxioms in terms of pay scale, so the co-founders say that will remain a constant battle.

Also, they shared with the “1 Million Cups” audience that local customers are not their biggest base of business. For Treatsie, its biggest client core comes from Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.