Kidz Confections is a Milwaukee based candy and confections company that has been in Milwaukee for over 25 years. They specialize in "confections" for kids and adults alike. Chris Nicolet, whom we spoke with, took over control of the company from his father, who founded Kidz Confections after years in the advertising industry.
Below is our interview with mr. Nicolet |
* All answers have been paraphrased. Full transcript and recording located at the bottom of this page.
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Could you just start off by describing the focus of Kidz Confections and what the company is all about?
We’re a candy factory focusing on confections, which are sugar items, manufactured here in Milwaukee.
What category of consumers do you say your business is focused towards?
We're focused towards kids probably the age of 15 and under.
Could you tell us how many people you currently employ?
We currently have 15 full-time and anywhere from 35-50 part-time.
What would you say your economic impact is on Milwaukee?
I'd say currently it's minimal with future expectations to be slightly better than minimal. Hopefully we can make an impact on Milwaukee's employment situation.
How big would you say is the overall market of your product?
The marketplace that we're playing in right now is about 325 million nationally. I could see our company could probably be up in the 50-100 employee range which would help Milwaukee's situation.
Could you just tell us, about how much of your sales goes to people in Milwaukee, and then throughout Wisconsin and the rest of the country respectively?
Yep, Milwaukee is a market that's dominated by pretty much one company, Roundy's Pick N'Save. We've sold to them in the past, but currently we're not in those stores, so the other direct buying that we have provide 1/10 of 1% or 2/10 of 1% of our sales for the whole country. Wisconsin in general is pretty much a smaller market for us.
Do you have any sales internationally and how would you compare that with the amount of customers in the United States?
We do have sales internationally: North/South America, some accounts in Asia, and one or two in Europe. In some years we can be up in the 25% range internationally. So 75% of our business is done in the States, maybe 25% done internationally.
Could you estimate your annual revenue growth over the past 5 years?
Yeah, we've seen a slight increase in revenue growth. The one issues that we have is that there's severe competition from overseas players affecting our ability to obtain larger contracts.
How would you say the Great Recession affected your company?
Financially it didn't affect it as much, but we did make some adjustments with negotiating in how we offer terms to some of companies since we felt some of them were having difficulty getting through the financial crisis. There were a few that just stopped paying us and we had to stop doing business with them. But overall it didn't affect our profit all that much.
Over the past 10, 15, 20 years we’ve definitely seen a major technological boom in this country, can you speak to how that affected your company maybe productivity-wise or if it helped or hurt you in keeping up with your competition?
I can't think of anything that we do in our facility that isn't affected by technology. It has helped us improve, but actually in some cases it makes the process a little bit longer, but more efficient eventually. One of the examples is the internet. For a lot of our customers for example, we don't even send them paperwork. The receiving is done online, the billing is done online, and in some cases the money is just put right into a checking account. So the internet helps with a lot of managing of information. At the sam time, it can get a little bit more complicated without a whole lot of documentation to send to your customer. You hoped that it makes you more efficient, but like I said sometimes it kind of slows you down a little bit. It's kind of a mixed bag.
Where do you see your company in 5, 10, 20 years, growth-wise?
Yeah, I'm hoping that we can continue to grow the business in Milwaukee. One of the issues that I see is that there's a lot of competition from overseas. They're always going to have a better price, and they're always going to beat us on that factor. If we're able to innovate and stay competitive with good customer service and quality business ethics, I think we can expand our company probably to 3 times the size we are today.
We’re a candy factory focusing on confections, which are sugar items, manufactured here in Milwaukee.
What category of consumers do you say your business is focused towards?
We're focused towards kids probably the age of 15 and under.
Could you tell us how many people you currently employ?
We currently have 15 full-time and anywhere from 35-50 part-time.
What would you say your economic impact is on Milwaukee?
I'd say currently it's minimal with future expectations to be slightly better than minimal. Hopefully we can make an impact on Milwaukee's employment situation.
How big would you say is the overall market of your product?
The marketplace that we're playing in right now is about 325 million nationally. I could see our company could probably be up in the 50-100 employee range which would help Milwaukee's situation.
Could you just tell us, about how much of your sales goes to people in Milwaukee, and then throughout Wisconsin and the rest of the country respectively?
Yep, Milwaukee is a market that's dominated by pretty much one company, Roundy's Pick N'Save. We've sold to them in the past, but currently we're not in those stores, so the other direct buying that we have provide 1/10 of 1% or 2/10 of 1% of our sales for the whole country. Wisconsin in general is pretty much a smaller market for us.
Do you have any sales internationally and how would you compare that with the amount of customers in the United States?
We do have sales internationally: North/South America, some accounts in Asia, and one or two in Europe. In some years we can be up in the 25% range internationally. So 75% of our business is done in the States, maybe 25% done internationally.
Could you estimate your annual revenue growth over the past 5 years?
Yeah, we've seen a slight increase in revenue growth. The one issues that we have is that there's severe competition from overseas players affecting our ability to obtain larger contracts.
How would you say the Great Recession affected your company?
Financially it didn't affect it as much, but we did make some adjustments with negotiating in how we offer terms to some of companies since we felt some of them were having difficulty getting through the financial crisis. There were a few that just stopped paying us and we had to stop doing business with them. But overall it didn't affect our profit all that much.
Over the past 10, 15, 20 years we’ve definitely seen a major technological boom in this country, can you speak to how that affected your company maybe productivity-wise or if it helped or hurt you in keeping up with your competition?
I can't think of anything that we do in our facility that isn't affected by technology. It has helped us improve, but actually in some cases it makes the process a little bit longer, but more efficient eventually. One of the examples is the internet. For a lot of our customers for example, we don't even send them paperwork. The receiving is done online, the billing is done online, and in some cases the money is just put right into a checking account. So the internet helps with a lot of managing of information. At the sam time, it can get a little bit more complicated without a whole lot of documentation to send to your customer. You hoped that it makes you more efficient, but like I said sometimes it kind of slows you down a little bit. It's kind of a mixed bag.
Where do you see your company in 5, 10, 20 years, growth-wise?
Yeah, I'm hoping that we can continue to grow the business in Milwaukee. One of the issues that I see is that there's a lot of competition from overseas. They're always going to have a better price, and they're always going to beat us on that factor. If we're able to innovate and stay competitive with good customer service and quality business ethics, I think we can expand our company probably to 3 times the size we are today.
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Biography Source: "Kidz Confections®." About Us Kidz. Kidz Confections. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
Logo Source: Kidz Confections. Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://www.kidzconfections.mx/uploads/1/4/0/6/14061851/1349806654.png>.