Terry and the Chocolate Factory

Candy House's Terry Hicklin lets us through the gates of his sweet business success.

Forrest Gump’s mother was right: Life is like a box of chocolates. And entrepreneur Terry Hicklin is happy to agree. Hicklin and wife, Pat, are owners of Candy House Gourmet Chocolates stores in Joplin and Springfield.

“I’ve never had a business course in my life,” Hicklin says. “Pat and I were music majors at SMSU and performed opera, and I had never heard an opera until then. Life is just a series of events, and it’s been fun to see where the journey takes us.” Hicklin didn’t know a thing about candy either, when he bought Richardson’s Candy House in Reddings Mill, just outside Joplin, in 1999. But he did know sales and marketing, thanks to his 12-year role in his family’s Springfield-based food brokerage company, Hicklin Marketing Group. The Hicklins explored new career options and read an ad for a small candy store outside of Joplin. Richardson’s Candy House was founded in 1970 and housed in a quaint rock building that had once been the village tavern. “We saw this ad, and I was intrigued because the business was making money, so we came over to check it out, and three days later we owned a candy store,” Hicklin says.

Making the Business His Own

“It’s quite a fine art,” he says of chocolate-making, a skill he didn’t know before this venture. “And I am standing there stirring chocolate every day because everything was done by hand back then.” Not one to stand still for long, Hicklin got a little stir crazy–literally. “I thought, ‘I can either do this or get out and do what I know how to do, and that’s sell a product,’” he says. “But I had to know my product before I could really sell it.” As fate would have it, Retail Confectioners International was conducting their 15-day candy school a few weeks later. Hicklin says it was the most important thing he did to learn and build the business.

And build the business he did. Slowly. “The Candy House had been there for 30 years, and everyone told us ‘don’t change a thing,’” Hicklin says. “You have to have buy-in from the staff before you do anything, and so we’d ask them, ‘What could we do to make this more efficient for you?’” The Hicklins purchased automated equipment and moved the employee structure to a full-time and part-time one, rather than a seasonal one. With more efficient practices and his own Willy Wonka-type imagination, Hicklin began building his chocolate factory. “We opened a state-of-the-art store in Carthage in 2000,” Hicklin says. “And I was going to wait two years before I opened one in Springfield.”

 

Opening the Factory Gates

 

The Hicklins’ daughter, Bonnie, joined the company as district manager in 2001 to open the Carthage store and help design and manage the Springfield store’s opening—which arrived in Springfield’s Parkcrest Shopping Center on South Campbell Avenue in 2002. That location has become the No. 1 store in sales and offers a unique shopping and tourist opportunity for the Springfield area.

It soon became evident that more production space was needed in order to meet production demands. “I built an 8,400-square-foot factory in Joplin back in 2004,” Hicklin says. “We offered free candy apples to the first 100 customers, and there was a line wrapped around the building that morning. The team stopped me after I went through 500 apples.” Today the candy factory is host to hundreds of groups and visitors who tour the facility and watch the candy being made.

The Carthage store closed as a second Springfield store opened, and Hicklin started finding ways to up sales during slow months: Selling caramel apples in the fall and chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

Coming Around From A Naming Snag

A Pennsylvania candy mint company noticed the business name three years ago and informed Hicklin that they had the trademark on the name Richardson since 1924. “We couldn’t afford to fight it, and we changed the name to Candy House Gourmet Chocolates,” Hicklin says. “We ended up throwing away $70,000 dollars worth of old packaging.” Bouncing back, Hicklin set up a corporate gift program and sells products online and through Sam’s Clubs during the holiday season. Hicklin has also worked with Big Cedar Lodge to create a Big Cedar brand and developed a 1912 candy shop for Titanic Branson.

The business efforts recently garnered the Candy House the U.S. Chamber’s 2008 Blue Ribbon Award for business excellence. They are one of only 55 companies nationwide to receive the award and the first to receive it in the state of Missouri. The company has also been named 2003 Small Industry of the Year by the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce and received the 2004 Small Business of the Year award from them as well. The Springfield Chamber of Commerce bestowed the same honor in 2005.
 

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Get Growing

Are you ready to expand your own business? Terry Hicklin has some tips:

Have a long-range plan.
"You don't just get in the car and say, 'I want to go somewhere'" Hicklin says. "You have to have a plan and know where you're going. I am not a status quo person. You just have to cope with the present to get to the future."

Do a trademark search for your business name.
Avoid running into a name-change issue like Candy House did. Hicklin says that if you grow your business and then have this kind of issue, it can really hurt. "It took us a year to switch everything on our packaging and in our advertising and at a considerable cost," Hicklin says.

Have a professional website.
"Two years ago, we spend a lot of money updating our website, and it is paying off because more and more people are ordering gifts and products online," Hicklin says. "They can't get to one of the stores because they work long hours, so they buy off the Internet."

Let your team have their ideas.
"Get buy-in from your staff before you make any big changes in how you do business," Hicklin advises. "A lot of new owners and managers go in and try to make changes right away. You have to make it the employee's idea."

Delegate advertising planning.
"We hired an agency in our second year," Hicklin says. "Many times sales people sell what's good for them and not the customer, so our agency helps filter all that for us. We do a good job of getting free advertising, too. We work with anchors at KY3 when we go on and have them dipping strawberries to promote our strawberry festival in May. We always try to make these kinds of appearances fun and interesting."

Keep up with technology, and automate as much as possible.
When Hicklin purchased the Candy House, the product was sold by the piece from a candy case, and all of those pieces were hand-dipped. "We invested in new equipment that helped to automate the candy-making process and helped us become more efficient and productive," Hicklin says. "It made a difference."

Get involved in your trade/professional association.
Hicklin believes it is important to give back to the community. "The first year, I couldn't do much, but I don't think you can take from a community and not give back to it if you're a business," Hicklin says. "I'm on the board of Retail Confectioners International because of all they taught me in the beginning. It's just important to do those things."

Celebrate your accomplishments.
Just do it.