Elevate Your Event Brand

Speaker 1: [Music] being able to come into a space that was something that I had imagined in my mind and is now a reality is a really beautiful thing and being able to constantly be creative and thinking outside of the box and really finding new ways to innovate not only within the cotton candy world but just as a business as a whole hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the sheb builted experience with Melanie join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in thank you for joining us Emily you are the founder and CEO of art of sucra which is such a fun product what led you to create and start your business oh man I feel we've got to go back several years to really explain the origin story and that's all the way back in 2016 I had just wrapped up my degree at University and was planning to go on to graduate school while simultaneously planning my wedding and throughout that that process I spent a lot of time on Pinterest I feel like most people who are getting married do and could not settle on a wedding favor I have no idea why but that was the most challenging part throughout the entire process for whatever reason and desserts kept coming up as an option and this was right in the peak of Instagram and really this evolution of upgrading classic desserts so sugar cookies doughnut walls cake pops and one option that kept popping up was cotton candy but the only choices were scary for lack of a better term it had that like red clown on it yeah and just really felt like for whatever reason cotton candy was being left behind in this really massive social media shift of all of these desserts and I couldn't let the idea go and so instead of going to graduate school I decided to start an events-based cotton candy business where I would go and spin cotton candy and unique flavor so it wasn't just that typical pink or blue that we're used to at the fair it was things like champagne and orange bbin and watermelon at all of these events and so I did events for four years until covid and then ended up transitioning into the consumer package good space where we are now it's so great that you listened to yourself and that you made that leap to launch your business instead of going to graduate school I mean look at what you've built and created for making that decision yeah and it's so funny because most people would get really nervous having to have that conversation with their loved ones of hey I just wrapped this fancy fouryear degree and was planning on to go do two to four more years depending on where things LED and now I'm going to spend cotton candy for a living can be a tough conversation depending on Dynamic so yeah definitely can relate to that and it's fun that you put that Twist on it so it's the like the champagne was there any champagne in it or was it champagne flavored you can really do it either way which is the beauty of our product today most of our glitter bombs which is what we're really known for is flavored champagne but there's no actual champagne in it it's all done through flavoring which means that it's safe for anybody of all ages those who can't consume alcohol but we do work with a lot of alcohol brands that ask us to actually Infuse their product into the cotton candy and we can do that too the alcohol just burns out so you wouldn't become intoxicated from it but you still get that flavor profile and that's so fun and it's fun that you can do that for any age just the champagne gummy bears with that little flavor exactly so tell us about Glitter bombs what are they and how can they elevate a party or event a cotton candy glitter bomb is a small fluff of flavored cotton candy like we mentioned traditionally champagne but honestly at this point we've expanded to do just about any flavor you could imagine anywhere from apple cider with which is some ones that just launched for fall or surle Temple if you're doing a costume order essentially this fluff of cotton candy has edible glitter on the inside you rip open the pouch drop it into your beverage that's clear and bubbly the cotton candy dissolves and edible glitter floats out making your drink nice and sparkly with just a little touch of extra sweetness and if you haven't seen any of your Instagram or Tik Tok it's so beautiful when the glitter goes into the drink and it just makes it feel like you're drinking some elevated and fun I deal with these obviously every day and I film all of our content to this day in house me and my team and I it's so fun it's so fun and it never gets old like every time that we're dropping in a new glitter color we're like oh my gosh I think this one's my favorite it is truly so mesmerizing and fun to watch it really doesn't get old I would want to do it too and I'm sure with all the new flavors those are really fun to taste and it's like disguise the limit with the flavor that you can create absolutely we own our own manufacturing which has been a huge gift a nightmare to to get started I won't lie about that but it's truly a huge gift because I'm sitting in our production facility I can literally walk out of my office down the hall and just step into the studio and say hey I had this idea for this really crazy flavor let's try to whip it up and create it so everything can happen very quickly inhouse in real time which is just chef's kiss from a business timeline perspective we're very lucky and that's so fun you have millions of followers on Tik Tok how does that feel for you and how has that helped your business TI to is the whole reason that we were able to Pivot obviously the world shut down in 2020 and it went from me doing events seven days a week being crazy to then just staying at home and cleaning a lot of linen closets which you can only do so many times there's only there's a limit to that I started posting on Tik Tok and this was before or Tik Tok is what it is now it was still just a lot of oh that's a kids app where people are dancing and we were literally stuck in the house and there was Trends going on that way so they just felt hey it was something to do I was enjoying the platform as a consumer and B I had really hadn't seen at the of their businesses pop on to this platform so started posting there and it happened looking back on it slowly and so quickly all at the same time I feel like time did a weird thing during that period of all of our lives anyways but it's it has changed my life and it has changed the business's life and I feel like I'm in a really unique position because the business has so many followers I do not personally so I sit in this weird in between of understanding what it's like to be a Creator almost for lack of a better term like an influencer in some ways just because we have such a large following then also being anonymous in some ways too it's a very weird but beautiful place to fall me in between and do you like that I do naturally I'm a pretty quiet and reserved person I'm much more introverted so it's really nice to have it not really be me it's there's that separation that is nice to be able to turn off a little bit more than I think I would be able to if the brand was more about me and you could have more of a private life and I it seems like that was great for you to not have to do events all the time when you had that shift oh my gosh my quality of life now is so much better I feel like I can have more of a social life and I get to be with my family on holidays and weekends and in the evenings and my husband and I are not working quite literally opposite schedules permanently anymore which is really great the business has scaled so much so I have so much more responsibility now and I have many more things on my plate but overall the quality of what I experience dayto day is so much better than it was events are hard I don't think people real that yeah and they take a lot of energy from you oh my goodness absolutely it's absolutely a grind and I think that can often be overlooked and speaking of responsibility and operations what do you think is the most important aspect of leadership as it relates to growing a business being willing to be in the thick of it is so important one thing that's been important to me from the beginning and remains that way is that I never feel too detached from any part part of my business as we continue to grow it is helpful because as I mentioned we own our manufacturing so I can hop into the studio and get behind a cotton candy cart and start spinning with the team if we need extra hands on deck and really understanding what it's like to be the main person in each category that we're in Now is really important to me so just staying grounded and helping my team to realize that I know the struggles of where you're at I've been there let's work through this together as opposed to not really understanding the pain points that they may have which would be really easy to do as you continue to grow I've heard that from a lot of entrepreneurs about understanding every aspect of the business they no longer do it but like you said they have an understanding and that just helps where you want the business to go as it relates to your teams and building your teams and I'm sure it gives your teams more confidence too to know that if needed you would step in absolutely and I like to joke that my title shouldn't be CEO I put out fires like I'm just a fire fighter that's literally that's the role in the company and it's hard to be that person if you don't understand the role in which you're putting out this fire it's really vital to keep a pulse on all of that that's so true and I know any entrepreneur listening is agreeing with you on the firefighting yeah what would you like to see next for your business growth and art of sura I feel like we're in this place now where we've locked in all of the big moving pieces from the pivot and it's taken two two and a half years to do that and I mean that from a logistic stpoint a product standpoint a packaging standpoint I feel like we have our team in place we've got the right vendors the right team members here in house and so to really take those things and now hone them to perfect the business but then also look and see where's their opportunity for growth the cool part of our product is that it really has so many different applications it can be direct to Consumer it can be in a store we can do the custom orders we can do the brand collaborations we can activate in person really looking at okay we want to Branch out into bars and restaurants and get on to menus how do we do that how do we start building up a team to make that happen and it feels really good to finally be in a place where it's not just scrambling to figure out okay how do we make this work now we know how it works how do we grow it and you have glitter bombs do you have other products

Speaker 1: on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy being able to come into a space that was something that I had imagined in my mind and is now a reality is a really beautiful thing and being able to constantly be creative and thinking outside of the box finding new ways to innovate not only even within the cotton candy world but is just a business as a whole brings me a lot of joy and makes all of the really hard moments and the long hours and the tears and and all of that worth it at the end of the day you've inspired us today to trust our instincts and I can't wait to try art of sucra at my next party or event it's so fun can you share with us how and where we can find you we made it very simple for you everything is at Art of sucra our website is occra.com thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello.com on our Sheil it website or @ Sheil it on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave