Artisan candy company Treatsie delivering via sweet technology

This January, Huffington Post included Treatsie.com in its list of luxurious winter treats and trends. Last December, InStyle magazine named Treatsie one of “11 Best Food Subscription Boxes (That Make Awesome Last Minute Gifts).”

Despite its relatively short history, Treatsie.com has made the pages of a number of local, regional and national press outlets including Forbes, USA Today, Candy Industry magazine, Arkansas Life, Little Rock Soiree and others. “It feels good when a stylish publication picks you up to promote you,” said Jamie Walden, a Treatsie co-founder who serves as the company’s chief marketing officer and creative director. A former business writer, Walden understands the power – and message – of a positive business feature. “It’s nice to know that they’re interpreting our products the way we see them and market them.”

THE MAIN IDEA
Co-founded in 2013 in part through a Kickstarter campaign, Treatsie.com is a subscription commerce company that has grown from two men filling orders out of a living room into a lucrative and still-growing business venture.

The Treatsie subscription box, the company’s staple product, is a monthly assortment of artisan sweets carefully chosen from a select group of independent vendors like Carla Hall, Lillie Belle Farms and other brands of small-batch candy bars, cookies, popcorns, taffy and much more.

The idea for the box came from a simple case of too many choices. Like many great concepts, it was born out of a moment of frustration. While searching for treats for his wife, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Keith Hoelzeman became overwhelmed with Google search results – so much so that he made no purchase at all.

While he didn’t score sweets for his sweetie that day, the entrepreneurial Hoelzeman found inspiration to create a better way – namely, easier access (with fewer decisions) to purchasing high-end sweets. Having grown up in an entrepreneurial family, Hoelzeman had a history of bringing ideas to fruition. “From a young age, I was thinking out concepts,” he recalls. “In college, I discovered that I could sell regional soft drinks through online marketplaces and make a nice profit. I’ve been hooked [on entrepreneurship] since. It’s about taking risks to do things that you believe you can do better than anyone else.”

Three years later, Hoelzeman’s risks are paying off as Treatsie.com has made the hunt for treats easier for shoppers in a number of satisfying ways.

In addition to delivering a cutely packaged box of surprise sweets to consumers’ doors each month, Treatsie is an e-commerce marketplace. From Treatsie.com, customers can repurchase their favorite box items, as well as seasonal and limited run items (such as a deluxe s’mores kit). Custom business gift boxes are available, too (call 888-544-3032 for information).

“We use all available data to learn what customers want so we can put it in front of them,” says Hoelzeman. “We work hard to stay on top of customer taste preferences and purchase behaviors, and from that point, we have a team that seeks out and tries many samples before finding the right products. We say ‘no’ to a lot more than we say ‘yes’ to.”

Treatsie is tech savvy. Yes, there is innovative technology at work behind those fun, monthly boxes and the company’s posh, appetizing emails.

The company’s study of behavior patterns, buying patterns and purchase activity is enabling them to match each sweet, if you will, to its rightful tooth. Along those lines, Hoelzeman and Walden are developing solution-oriented market research capabilities that, in the future, may lead to new Treatsie products. Again, it’s a search for a better way.

New products, Hoelzeman describes, are traditionally created and marketed along a trajectory that can be cumbersome and includes an idea phase, focus panels, feedback sessions, test markets, more development, retail test markets and repeats as necessary to figure out what will sell. “There are a lot of flaws in that model,” he says. “Instead, we find early adopters in different states who will sign up for our service. We send them – the actual consumer – a test product to offer feedback on. Through actual consumer behaviors, we can see what products customers truly want. It’s not, do they say they’ll buy it, it’s do they buy it.”

Based on the subscriber data they are gathering, Hoelzeman and Walden are excited to be in the early stages of bringing the company into the consumer packaged goods (CPGs) industry. “The CPG industry is beginning to understand the power of a company such as Treatsie that can match taste preferences, customer feedback and customer purchase behavior with national and regional market needs,” adds Walden. “Treatsie will be uniquely positioned to provide these products based on the data that we’re able to assemble. As for our own data, we don’t sell it to anybody else. We use it for refining and making our products better.”

THE MARKETING TEAM
As company reach has expanded, so has customer expectations – and the need for more square footage. Since first fulfilling orders out of Keith’s home and church, Treatsie is now pushing full capacity in its 5,000-square-foot downtown Little Rock location. “It’s hard to describe all the changes,” reflects Hoelzeman. “It is surreal. We try to stay lean to be able to move fast, but by year’s end, we may outgrow our current space as well.”

With all of that square footage, the company’s team has also grown and now includes eight full-time professionals. Around 80% of the company’s marketing is Web-based and includes pay-per-click marketing, Facebook advertising and Google ads. Treatsie relies most heavily on one primary component to promote its products – fantastic content and photography that people want to consume and share.

“There aren’t really any tricks anymore,” says Walden. “You have to create quality content and then use proper channels to distribute that content … once you create a great piece of content and it is shared around the Internet, it is evergreen. You’ll continue to have inbound traffic from that piece, whereas your ads with Facebook, Instagram, etc., are transient. We see Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a real way to diversify our marketing this year.”

To help Treatsie create ideal content, the company recently hired Kelli Marks, former head of Sweet Love Bakery and former copywriter for CJRW. “Kelli can write and create amazing pieces, and we’ve put her in charge of our social engagement aspect,” praised Walden. Other talented team members include Kelsey Felberg, graphic designer, and Tim Luff, the company’s email marketing manager who hones in on hard data and consumer behavior patterns.

THE BUSINESS OF LEARNING
As Treatsie continues to grow, Hoelzeman and Walden encourage others to pursue their own sweet ideas. They recommend that young entrepreneurs get out and talk to others about their business ideas.

“When we first tried to do Facebook marketing, it didn’t work for us,” says Walden, giving a case in point of how the two learned from others. “We were shooting in the dark until we talked to people who knew a lot more about it than we did. Since then, it has quickly became our number one marketing channel.”

As for where and when to network, Arkansas has a growing number of options. “The Startup Arkansas Conference was a big help to us in the beginning,” says Hoelzeman. “Places like the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, Venture Center, the Innovation Hub, and Innovate Arkansas are great sources of information. Arkansas loves to cheer on its own. People are willing to help you if you are willing to get out and try to make it happen.”

Making it happen for your own business can be a tasty reward, but it takes hard work and time. “You have to stay focused every day,” says Hoelzeman. “Guard your time. Little distractions can derail you in a big way.”

That’s not to say an occasional treat – or Google search – is always a waste of time.