3. CovidCandies
Photo//2020
Amid the COVID lockdowns and California wildfires of 2020, my family was holed up in my parents bedroom for a week. As smoke from the wildfires drifted up to Oregon, sheltering in the only HEPA-filtered room in the house, one of us had tracked in COVID and it quickly spread to the whole family. Energy and morale was low.
I’d remembered the founder of Liquid Death, Mike Cessario, who had built a brand that was stark departure from typical brands, and the founders of AirBnB who created a limited run of cheeky politically-themed cereal to spark interest in their company. Considering my current condition, I began thinking why someone hadn’t done that for COVID? Well if done poorly, it could easily be seen as insensitive, and any form of product even hinting at the name “COVID” would be immediately taken down by big ad sites.
It sounded nearly impossible; it was perfect.
Photos//2021
Armed with my Liquid Death and AirBnB inspiration, I realized there’s no better way to turn a sour situation a little sweeter than with candy, and thus “CovidCandies” was born. At the foot of my parents bed, I created cartoons of Anthony Fauci, Pres. Biden, Trump, Xi Jinping, and Rosie the Riveter, all pointing at a window of candy in the center of a hand-sized bag. I found a perfect spiky/corona-shaped sugar candy called Konpeito and began negotiating with Alibaba manufacturers to ship a large order overseas. I called up the best engineer I knew, Ryan Westcott, and pitched him on the idea - he was in, and soon we had a semi-functional website and a bag printing contract underway.
I decided CovidCandies would be a 2,500 package limited edition brand, allowing us to sell bags at $12 each. Additionally I decided with whatever money we made, we’d donate 100% of the profits to top companies helping COVID research and healthcare workers - a point I made sure to include in the bag’s design.
But sooner or later I realized that our nascent enthusiasm would die without market validation, and so without an ability to run ads with the name “CovidCandies”, I emailed every news and radio station in Oregon, telling them my story and if they wanted to run it.
But sooner or later I realized that our nascent enthusiasm would die without market validation, and so without an ability to run ads with the name “CovidCandies”, I emailed every news and radio station in Oregon, telling them my story and if they wanted to run it.
Out of the 700 people I emailed, 50 responded, to which 10 interviewed me, and only 3 ran the story, but it was more than enough. Validation was secured, except we hadn’t set up our website as a smoke test and so orders flooded in, which gave us enough capital to order bags and candy.
As we began to fulfill orders with off the shelf Konpeito (our Alibaba candy from China had been delayed), we set up a Ford-like assembly line in Ryan’s garage, employing our friends to bag, seal, and ship our product. But after the news story aired, orders began to decline, and so my email outreach went back up. This time I emailed news reporters across the country, telling them about our success. After a story in Entrepreneur Magazine, we received a call from Good Morning America who ran our story only a month after we’d launched the website. Once again, orders from around the country (even Canada and Mexico) were pouring in, until we sold out.
In the end we were able to make national news, donate 100% of CovidCandies’ profits, and received a delayed shipment of 250 lbs of Konpeito (currently being sold on eBay), ironically making us still the largest Konpeito distributor in the US.