Hands-On R&D; Brings Sweet Success

Large companies and those with substantial start-up capital spend time and money on product development, industry research and test marketing. Many small companies don’t have that luxury. When Alfonso Porras, 37, and his wife, Alejandra, 34, decided to make their longtime dream of opening a candy shop come true, they had to learn their business on the fly. It turns out there’s no better teaching tool for entrepreneurs than constant feedback from customers, Porras said. He was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

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Growing up in Mexico City, I always had a sweet tooth. I learned all about making candy and candied nuts from a friend of my family, Walter W. Zittle, a master candy maker. When he found out that I wanted to be a candy maker, he shared his secret recipes with me.

I started making chocolate-covered cornflake bars and truffles. Before he died, he sent me his old books on the art of candy making, in hopes I would be inspired to master the skill.

When I moved my family to Pasadena in 1987, I worked all kinds of jobs: construction, gardening, cooking, Price Club clerk. I still work full time selling cleaning and janitorial supplies while my wife runs the store during the day. Little by little we saved some money, and after 10 years we had enough to buy a small trailer and some industrial kitchen equipment.

During that time, I was developing recipes for candied nuts that use all-natural flavorings and no added butter or oil. One week we took some batches to the Monrovia street fair and handed out samples to see if people liked them. They did, so we applied for a space at the fair and started selling the nuts out of our trailer.

Pretty soon we were invited to sell at other street fairs and farmers markets. We took the trailer to San Dimas, Riverside, Montrose, Santa Monica, Westwood and Northridge. I worked all day while Alejandra got the product ready and loaded up the trailer.

After work, I’d change into a T-shirt and jeans and start working the fair. Our overhead was low because we paid a percentage of our sales at each event as a space rental fee. If it rained or the crowds were light, we weren’t out a lot of money.

We researched our recipes and tested techniques as we went. As we tried new ideas, we got a good feel for the market--what was popular, what wasn’t, what people wanted to buy. For instance, we tried making candied walnuts, but we could never get the recipe right. We started out with unsalted peanuts, but they never sold well. Once we added salt to them they were a hit.

As we built our business, we also learned how to achieve consistency in our product. People would bring back certain batches and tell us they were too hard or they tasted burnt and we’d replace them. In the beginning we were making one bad batch for every four good ones. We had to perfect the technique so we knew how to make them good every time.

We also had to find the right suppliers and vendors and learn how to negotiate with them. We realized that we needed to make a better presentation of our product--just selling bags of nuts out of a trailer wasn’t much fun.

So we set up candy kettles and a booth and started cooking the nuts right there, where people could see and smell them being roasted. Our sales spiked. Big companies have the money to finance this kind of testing and research. We didn’t. We had to finance our business education by selling our products.

We met people who asked us if we were wholesaling and told us about industry trade shows we should attend. As the business got more popular, we were able to afford some trips to confectionary, craft and gift shows, where we learned about the industry; joined associations; and subscribed to trade magazines.

We made contacts with retailers and large companies and started selling the nuts wholesale. A supplier of fancy gift boxes and packaging took us under his wing and helped us get corporate gift contracts.

At the gift shows we were able to tell business contacts which items were our big sellers and give them feedback from real people because we heard it firsthand every week. Customers at street fairs and festivals kept asking us where our store was.

We knew the demand for a retail location was there, but we took it slow and decided to do our homework, develop unique products that weren’t being sold anywhere else and establish multiple revenue sources, since retail sales can’t bring in enough to cover the overhead.

About a year ago, we got some family members to chip in with funding and we decided on downtown Monrovia as a location, where we had started at the first street fair and a lot of customers knew us. There’s a new multiscreen movie theater here, the walk-in traffic is good, and the area is booming. With some help from friends, we designed a classy store that can be duplicated in the future.

Our name, Sir Walter, is a tribute to the candy maker who got me started in the business, and we use his signature for our logo. His wife sent me $1,000 and a nice watch when she heard we were opening the store.

We want to stay with products that can’t be found anywhere else, at good prices, so our customers know we’re giving them value.

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If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016 or at kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.

AT A GLANCE

* Company: Sir Walter candy shop

* Owner: Alfonso and Alejandra Porras

* Nature of business: Candy and nut sales

* Location: 520 S. Myrtle Ave., Monrovia

* Founded: 1997

* Employees: 5

* Annual revenue: $150,000