I am a mother of two young sons. Both my kids had some medical issues, as did my husband and myself. I turned to food to heal our family. In the process we went gluten free, dairy free, soy free, corn free and sugar free for over a year. During that time I had to keep saying "no" all the time. No we don't eat this or that. It felt so not fun! I didn't want my kids to equate a healthy lifestyle with negativity so one day I vowed to go in the kitchen and make the tastiest healthiest treat that I could.
So I pulled out all the things I could say "yes" to - nuts, seeds, honey, coconut butter, dark chocolate, tart cherries, etc - and created a snack that I knew they would say "yes" to. And that is how the YES bar was born. My kids loved it. My husband loved it. He started taking it on his bike rides, and his cycling buddies loved it. In fact, I had no idea just how many people would fall in love with it. Pretty soon it became obvious we needed to turn this into a business. And so we turned to Shopify.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our first sales came from friends and family. But pretty soon names showed up that we didn't recognize. And then from all over the country! And now we just got an order from England! Our largest single orders come from some of our wholesale clients, but we also have steady customers who come back again and again. We just started using mail chimp and love it. Such a great way to remind people just how much they love their YES bars!
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We use chimpified, lockdown, the facebook store, and order printer. We also just recently added store mapper, and the product reviews app which we love.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
Start a store! I had no idea what I was doing and I built ours all by myself. Seriously, it's fun and Shopify support is awesome. Best customer service ever.