Posted by Leah & Laura Tuesday, May 18, 2010 comments (0)

First, the good news... www.cookiezen.com 3.0 is up! It serves us well having one spouse in the equation who is a whiz at web development. Especially when said party is willing to take direction from multiple people (and not always delivered in the nicest way--hee hee it's a perk of being the wife--no need to sugar coat everything!). New photos, new layout, new copy...it's a transformation from the previous site that catered solely to our direct sales customers. Version 3.0 provides information for interested retailers and will also provide people in markets that don't carry our product ways to spread the word. Get it out there!! We're super excited for everyone to try our products be it our classic line-up of all-natural gourmet cookies or our awesome cookie and wine pairing boxes.

And speaking of cookie and wine pairing boxes, www.cookiesandcorks.com is also well underway and should go live by the end of the week. We've worked tirelessly to get our pairings just right and are currently training for our second half marathon to work off the experiments. There will be cookie and wine pairing matrices for people to consult, a forum for consumers to share their pairing experiments, and weekly wine pairing suggestions. The wine industry is constantly evolving and we're going to do our very best to try to keep up!

Hey...at least our hearts will be healthy from all the red wine we'll have to sample...

On the business front (i.e. the not so thrilling part of starting a business), we've had to deal with a lot of first time learning experiences. Hiccups, gliches, successes... the old adage of two steps forward one step back definitely applies to us. It once again makes us wonder how in the heck people do this! And do it successfully! And manage to avoid being one of the 95% of new specialty foods brands that don't quite make it. SCARY!!!

But we're doing well for the most part... Our new business cards are at the printers, the final reformulations from our food scientist should be arriving this week so we can move forward with the packaging for both the bulk cookies and the pairing boxes (which is just so incredibly awesome...thanks DINE!!), and funding is trickling in slowly but surely which enables us to sleep a little better at night. Oh the nightmares I've had about falling victim to this money pit called "starting your own business when mortgaging your house or selling your first born aren't options". Yikes.

Finally, our big PR launch will hopefully be in either late June or early July. Bring on the orders!!!

...or wait...at least until we secure our commercial kitchen rental (cross your fingers) and line up our ingredient distributors, a process completely dependant on having a commercial address. Ugh...these circular frustrations where you can't move forward without first achieving steps that are dependant on other steps is kind of ulcer inducing.

So yes...lots of wheels in motion...tons of exciting changes on the horizon...lots of work to be done...and one huge mama jama credit card bill. We're excited about it all.