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Chocolate Business Grows with the Help of IT

Coco-Luxe Confections | Taking the Pulse

Coco-Luxe Confections is a wholesale chocolate maker with a new retail store in San Francisco. The small business is run by Stepanie Marcon a culinary entrepreneur who has gradually implemented IT to help manage inventory and grow operations. Correspondent Sumi Das takes a tour of her kitchen and candy shop and talks to Marcon about the challenges of running IT inside a small business. Marcon also demos graphics software that aids her in product development and a new e-commerce web site that she created to help sell her candy treats throughout the U.S.

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Tags: Information Technology, Small Business, Candy, Chocolate Business, Coco-Luxe Confections, Product Development, Strategy, Research & Development, Business Operations, Management

 

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Chocolate Business Grows with the Help of IT

Coco-Luxe Confections is a wholesale chocolate maker with a new retail store in San Francisco. The small business is run by Stepanie Marcon a culinary entrepreneur who has gradually implemented IT to help manage inventory and grow operations. Correspondent Sumi Das takes a tour of her kitchen and candy shop and talks to Marcon about the challenges of running IT inside a small business. Marcon also demos graphics software that aids her in product development and a new e-commerce web site that she created to help sell her candy treats throughout the U.S.

>> Stephanie Marcon: In my experience, milk chocolate is the most difficult to work with. Milk solids will absorb moisture, there's more opportunity for what they call blooming in chocolate.

>> Sumy Doss: Stephanie Marcon knows a lot about chocolate. She's the owner of Coco-luxe confections, a small business that makes and sells chocolate candy.

>> Stephanie Marcon: It's a combination between a candy counter and a hot cocoa bar.

>> Sumy Doss: She's also an entrepreneur with sweet dreams.

>> Stephanie Marcon: I just opened my first store 2 and a half months ago and my vision would be to open a few more stores.

>> Sumy Doss: It appears Marcon is on the right track, and she's hoping business technology will help her along the way. Marcon has a small kitchen where she makes her candy treats.

>> Stephanie Marcon: You want to check the flow...

>> Sumy Doss: And any retail store where she sells them. For Marcon, it's a business idea she's had since her days in culinary school.

>> Stephanie Marcon: I love chocolate, I love working with chocolate.

>> Sumy Doss: Since getting started, Coco-luxe has slowly implemented IT to help manage operations... such as buying financial software to analyze expenses, and installing a point of sale system to track inventory.

>> Stephanie Marcon: That helps us understand how much inventory for example, how much hot cocoa we're going through, or if we need to order more coffee, if our gingerbread truffles are doing better than our devil's food. background conversations IT touches many parts of Coco-luxe, but getting technology to work for the business hasn't always been easy. We don't have an IT department to help us out, so it's kind of a trial and error. If something goes wrong we don't have anyone to turn to, we have to solve that problem ourselves. So that can be extremely frustrating.

>> You're doing the troubleshooting yourself? You're the IT person?

>> Stephanie Marcon: Yes, I am the IT person.

>> Sumy Doss: Still that hasn't slowed her down. Recently Coco-luxe decided to branch out, building their website so everyone could try their chocolates. Today they're selling their treats all over the country.

>> Stephanie Marcon: Here is our actual e-commerce site where we have gifts, truffles, chocolate bars... Julia let's take this order here and may want to process this.

>> Okay.

>> Looks like it's just gonna do out today.

>> Sumy Doss: When an order comes in, the system is automated so it can process the order and match it with the packing slips to be shipped out for delivery. The difficult part is working with a product with a short shelf life.

>> Stephanie Marcon: The challenges with doing the e-commerce website for us, because we have a perishable product, is not so much the e-commerce segment, it's the fulfillment process. So we had to make sure that we could figure out having things in stock that had a short shelf like, and being able to fulfill orders that came in.

>> Sumy Doss: Coco-luxe also uses graphics software in the design of it's chocolates.

>> How about caffeine? Do you like caffeine?

>> Sumy Doss: The images on top hint at the flavor inside. For corporate clients, Coco-luxe personalizes it's candies too.

>> Stephanie Marcon: What will happen is a customer will send in their design that they want on a chocolate, so this is an example of a customer that wanted this design on a chocolate with their name. They choose what they want, and in this case they chose this design. And when we produce the chocolates we set these on top, and it melts into the chocolate. So this is the final product here.

>> Sumy Doss: Today Marcon is forging ahead with her vision. After 3 years in business, Coco-luxe has yet to reach profitability. Still she continues to invest up to 15 percent annually on IT. Marcon says she's up for the demands of running a small business, even though it means wearing many different hats.

>> Stephanie Marcon: Everything from being a financial analyst to a inventory manager, store clerk, sales and marketing, and then just kind of strategy and looking forward, what you want to do, how you're gonna accomplish that.

>> Sumy Doss: For BNET, I'm Sumy Doss.