Chocolatier’s Success Smells Sweet : Sales: Businesswomen survived sexism, skepticism--and some mistakes of her own.

NEWPORT BEACH —  The place is hardly what you would expect. Plain as vanilla on the surface, it is set in a boxy Newport Beach office park. Nothing special.

But inside it is a fairy-tale gingerbread house filled with white-chocolate ghosts, spools of colorful ribbon, chrome-colored, candy-coated almonds and gingham-covered furniture.

This is the home of Golda & I, a fledgling Newport Beach chocolatier who creates edible gifts, exotic sculptured centerpieces and even unusual calling cards for businesses.

“Have a taste of anything,” proprietor Golda Imbernino says as she sweeps her arm toward shelves of jellybeans, hard candy and chocolates.

But don’t let this disarming woman in fringed denim overalls fool you. She is a serious businesswoman. Her firm expects to hit $250,000 in sales this year and report its first profit since its founding four years ago.

Golda & I is a small-business success story that demonstrates how creative energy properly directed can produce results. And it shows how one middle-aged woman with little business experience overcame skepticism with determination and more than a little nerve.

The company is one of a handful of local custom chocolatiers. What sets Golda & I apart is Imbernino’s personal style. Mother of three children and stepmother of three others, she once telephoned a client’s mother in New York to tell her what a polite son she had.

Imbernino, a Los Angeles native, worked in interior design for 12 years. She has also taught doll-making and cooking locally and holds a certificate from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in London.

Four years ago, at age 48, she applied for a start-up business loan from a local bank. Her husband, Robert, an anesthesiologist, said she would never get it. She didn’t own anything and had no experience running a business.

Within a week, the $10,000 check was in her hands. “I thought, well, that was easy,” Imbernino said.

But two weeks later, the banker called to ask why her husband’s name was not on the loan. After 45 minutes of polite talk, the banker gave her the bottom line--she would have to give the money back.

“I told him that my bottom line was that I had already spent it,” Imbernino recalled.

That’s the first anecdote she tells about sexist attitudes she overcame to establish her business. The second is about a bid invitation she received from a local company. The letter began: “Dear Minority Business Owner.”

“I wondered which minority I was,” she said, “Short, red-haired, Jewish or female.”

Imbernino started the business with her younger sister, Irene--the “I” in the firm’s name. But her sister left after a year because of financial worries. At the same time, Imbernino upped the ante by signing a three-year lease for $70,000.

There were early mistakes. She underbid her first big project, a charity dinner for more than 1,200 people at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and lost $1,200. There were other pricing mistakes, so she hired an accountant to teach her about pricing.

A year later, she turned over the bookkeeping to the company’s controller, Carolyn Carpenter of Carpenter & Co. in Costa Mesa. Carpenter said orders from Golda & I have grown rapidly in the past two years. Orders of $5,000 to $15,000 are normal.

The business operated at a loss for the first three years before turning the corner this year. Revenue is up 150%, and Golda & I expects to sell more than 5,000 pounds of chocolate this year.

Imbernino sells to upscale retailers, including Neiman Marcus, and to wealthy private customers, such as singer Randy Newman. But she also gives some of her product to those in need of help, including a nearby halfway house.

Golda & I recently began making promotional and advertising items. Last week, she took an order for 5,000 heart-shaped chocolates with bows, which will carry a vial of a new perfume by retailer Escada AG of Munich, the 80% owner of St. John Knits of Irvine.

The chocolatier is now gearing up for the Christmas season, its busiest time of the year. One customer recently requested a life-sized chocolate sleigh and reindeer at a cost of at least $700.

Imbernino receives such an elaborate order about once a month. The rest of her revenue comes from centerpieces and party favors, from firms sending gifts to clients, and--on occasion--chocolate calling cards. One company in Irvine uses milk chocolate bars in the shape of feet to “get a foot in the door” on cold sales calls.

She makes big things, such as the 4-foot tepee and life-size chocolate turkeys that adorned the Thanksgiving table of Security Pacific Bank last year. And she makes small things: tiny chocolate computers for MacWorld magazine of Irvine.

Some plastic molds for the chocolate come ready-made from a Garden Grove supplier. When the item is unusual--say, the 6-inch replica of a Miata two-seater that Golda & I recently made for Mazda--Imbernino has a model-maker craft it in clay.

She uses a domestic chocolate from a supplier in Massachusetts, flavored with secret ingredients. The chocolate is poured into the mold and hardens in an hour in the kitchen’s refrigerator.

The four-member kitchen staff trims off any excess chocolate with a medical scalpel. When the order requires tied ribbons or other time-consuming packaging, Imbernino calls on a group of 10 part-time workers who can work at home.

The growth is cramping Imbernino’s kitchen, where she is now running two shifts, from about 8 a.m. to midnight. She is considering leasing a larger kitchen or employing people to make the chocolates in their homes using microwave ovens.

One dream Imbernino has for the business is to open a larger kitchen in a mall where people could come to press their noses against the glass and watch the candies being made, such as Willy Wonka’s operation in the Roald Dahl book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“It would be a place for people to come and feel good,” she said. “I love to see the kid come out in people.”