If You Give Them Free Candy, They Will Come!
Dec 9th 2008
Actor Kevin Costner was popular for his role in the movie Field of Dreams, perhaps known most for it’s famous tagline, "If you build it, they will come." At Blair Candy, we enjoyed our own sweet success with our own concoction of that line: "If you give them free candy, they will come, too!”
Our big event wasn't a look back at famous baseball players-- our main event was the start of the Holiday shopping season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. No, we didn't have Shoeless Joe Jackson or Archie Graham walking out of a cornfield, but all Black Friday weekend, we did have our hard working employees walking in and out of our warehouse doors. Plus, our shipping company, UPS, pitched in and gave a hand as well, just so our customers could enjoy a little old fashioned candy game of speedy great customer service-- our team’s trademark for the 70-plus years we’ve been in the candy business!
The cheering in our stands erupted from the free candy we gave away those days to all of our previous customers, and even many new ones that found out about the promotion through our Advertising work done by Solid Cactus. All our customers had to do was place any candy order that crucial holiday shopping week and we'd take 10% off their order, plus throw in some free candyto help fill their stockings. It was a homerun!
The first group up to bat got a free box of the new Jr. Mints Peppermint crunch candies; the second group got a free Hershey's Milk Chocolate large holiday bar, and the third got a free box of Cowtails. These free candy items might not be what you usually order when you sit down to enjoy a live baseball game, but they sure did make the holidays a little sweeter on the wallets of over a thousand of our customers!
With all the excitement this free offer generated, it of course also generated a lot of work from our employees and our shipping company, UPS. Not only did UPS pitch in and help with the excessive amount of packages to be shipped across the nation, but our dedicated employees stepped up to the plate as well. We might not have had Kevin Costner lending a hand to make this all happen, but we did have our company vice president, Terry, pull himself away from his computer and speadsheets to pitch in and help get us to the 9th inning.
This was the first time ever I had to make a S.O.S call to our UPS rep, Steve, on a weekend. I explained to him that first thing Monday morning, we needed a BIG empty brown truck. Without a hitch, first thing Cyber Monday morning, UPS was parked in our warehouse parking lot ready to take away all of the orders. But Steve didn’t just send a big truck, the normal UPS brown trucks most of you see, but a bigger model. As in TRACTOR-TRAILER. It may be hard for a lot of you to understand the kind of space all these different sizes of packed-up candy can take, but let me just say, they all would have covered that entire baseball field of dreams, way out there in Iowa!
A special thank you to UPS and their team, who helped us out, plus our own employees, too, who gave up their holiday weekend away from family and friends to work from dawn to dusk so our customers would be happy! Also a special thank you to all of our customers for continuously choosing us. We appreciate all the business and effort everyone gave.