Cowgirl Chocolate

Cowgirl Chocolates

Statement of the Facts

Cowgirl chocolates was started by a woman, name Marilyn Lysohir, who was a ceramicist and lecturer. Her husband, a sculptor and professor, helped her get this business off the ground. They both worked on a magazine, High Ground, and had to find creative ways to find funding for it. They turned to chocolate because of Marilyn's love for the treat and she worked at a candy store when she was growing up. The idea of spicy chocolate was her thinking of health in chili and cayenne pepper and her brother had the idea of combining them. After testing out her recipes on her friends, she found a local candy company to make them in larger quantities.

There are different varieties of this spicy-sweet combination, as individually wrapped truffles, chocolate bars, and a dessert caramel sauce. Marilyn decided to set her chocolates apart as a status with different packaging. Her chocolate came in gift boxes, collectible tins, and in muslin bags with drawstrings. The variety of flavors it came in were plain chocolate, mint, orange, lime tequila, and espresso. She also decided to bring in a mild chocolate, to be able to get her brand on store shelves. She had done her research in the field of looking through the spicy food industry which indicated that only "15% of American consumers were currently eating hot and spicy foods and men were much more inclined to eat hot and spicy foods than were women."

Seattle Chocolates produced her Cowgirl Chocolates with their European-style chocolate wrapped elegantly for gifts; which had private labels for upscale stores such as Nordstrom and Nieman Marcus. They took Cowgirl on because they were very interested in the idea and wanted to see how they could help the owners out. They produced in half batches; which amounts to 150 pounds, of chocolate, which lasted for six months of their sales at 2000 sales rates. Marilyn continued to manage the wholesale side with aspirations that they would manage it in the future. Marilyn had to face production costs and as well as packaging costs. The gift boxes' sales didn't go as well as planned, but she hoped to bring those into the military PX stores; meanwhile, she kept the gift box sales primarily on her website

Marilyn's chocolates had won numerous awards in food competitions in taste and packaging. Although things were going fairly well, Marilyn had concerns about packaging accuracy and thoroughness. She brainstormed on how to cut costs while increasing this issues of accuracy and packaging. She also made the caramel sauce herself; which posed a problem of taking up an entire day to drive 2 Ð... hours for a commercial restaurant to help produce it. The cost per jar to produce were $2.50, which she decided to sell for a small increase of price at $2.75 per jar; however the company required a minimum order size of 72 cases with the added cost of delivery. Cowgirl's best wholesale customer was the local Moscow Food Co-op which accounted for 10%-15% of her annual sales. The popularity was high in her hometown with her chocolates also being sold at a women's clothing and antique shop, a bookstore, and an arts and crafts store. She faced the uncertainty of whether