361 | Living Inside Your Business to Unlock Growth | with Dan Abel Jr.
Dan Abel Jr. is the Chief Chocolate Officer of two beloved St. Louis-based companies: Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company and Bissinger’s Handcrafted Chocolatier. Dan occasionally goes by another nickname: “Willy Wonka of the Midwest.”
But no matter what you call him, he’ll never forget his roots. Dan is a 2nd Generation Chocolatier & son of the founder of Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company. Along with his two siblings, Dan oversees the operations of both Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company and Bissinger’s Handcrafted Chocolatier. Manufacturing, distribution, national sales channel and product development are the key areas to Dan’s focus.
Currently the Abel family is expanding its manufacturing facility, adding a bar and a café – and Dan is very instrumental in the construction management and development of both concepts while continuing to push growth. Dan is married with three children –enjoys playing golf, gardening with his young children and spending time with his family.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- [00:00] Intro
- [00:32] Sponsor: Taboola
- [01:48] Growing ventures through deep personal ties
- [03:01] Finding purpose through early hands-on work
- [04:29] Optimizing small resources for maximum impact
- [05:53] Building presence through hands-on outreach
- [07:56] Leveraging sampling to win customer trust
- [09:00] Sponsor: Next Insurance
- [10:12] Creating impact with hands-on marketing
- [15:18] Callouts
- [15:28] Attending trade shows to drive direct sales
- [16:35] Sponsor: Electric Eye
- [17:44] Sponsor: Freight Fright
- [19:44] Acquiring companies to accelerate growth
- [26:11] Delivering customer value despite COVID pressure
- [30:25] Creating connection through thoughtful service
- [31:41] Reinvesting in technology to enhance experience
- [34:34] Experimenting with old and new strategies
- [35:25] Solving problems through direct involvement
Resources:
- Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
- Handcrafted Artisan Chocolates chocolatechocolate.com/
- Handcrafted Chocolatier bissingers.com/
- Follow Dan Abel Jr. linkedin.com/in/dan-abel-jr-15541765
- Reach your best audience at the lowest cost! discover.taboola.com/honest/
- Easy, affordable coverage that grows with your business nextinsurance.com/honest/
- Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
- Turn your domestic business into an international business freightright.com/honest
If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!
Transcript
Chase Clymer
It was scary. But I think that the growth and the chaos gave you something to focus your energy on.
Dan Abel Jr.
100%. 100%.
Chase Clymer
A lot of us, especially the entrepreneurial ones in us are just like, we're just going to find a way to get through this and make the best of a bad situation. I think a lot of people did that. And a lot of people did find that success.
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.
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Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I am welcoming to the show the Willy Wonka of the Midwest. I've got Dan Abel Jr. He's the chief chocolate officer at two beloved St. Louis based companies. We've got Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company and Bissinger's Handcaptured Chocolatier. Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Abel Jr.
Thank you so much for having me, Chase.
Chase Clymer
I'm not gonna lie. I do love the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company. That's just such a great name for a business.
Dan Abel Jr.
Me too. It's our baby. We've been around Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate my entire life and then Bissinger's for 6 years now. So it's like having 2 kids and you don't have a favorite. You just love them both.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now, I guess quickly for the audience that doesn't know. I know this because we've spoken before, but you've been in chocolate almost your entire life.
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah. My parents started a Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company in 1981. And it was for the first decade of my life or 15 years of my life, they were the two full-time employees, they were involved in it. So we would help out on the weekends and we would talk [about] chocolate at the dinner table. And it was everything. The family business and the family were intertwined in one.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. And then when did... Obviously, if it's a family business, you're always weaving and bobbing in and out and helping out. When did it become, all right, I think I'm going [to] take this more seriously. I'm going [to] start taking on more responsibility and I'm really going to help this thing grow?
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah, I really loved it from day one. [I] mean, if you go back to my scrapbook from second grade, “What do [you] want to be when you grow up? I wanted to be a candy maker.” And my sister and brother got into the business later on. And I don't you know, I don't know if they always wanted to go into it. They tried other things and really kind of all gravitated towards the business.
But, you know, for me, I wanted to be involved. We're helping my dad out wherever I could. So it was, if sweeping the floor in the candy kitchen was the only job then and that got me in the kitchen, then I would do it. And then in high school, we started to work more in the retail stores and we started opening more locations. So [it] was kind of all hands on deck and let's collaborate.
You know, “Everyone, bring your ideas to the table and we'll see which one sticks.” And then definitely, you know, college, I worked through the summers and then post college. My dad was very clear with my sister and I. We went to college, four years. We came out with a degree and he said, here's $10 an hour. And if you want to make more money, you have to find growth in the business because we're not just going to go pay you the salary you want.
And so that was a very strong motivator.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And I guess taking us back to then post-college. What were some of those ways that you were trying to find growth in the business back then? Also, can we put a date on this just for the audience?
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah. So 2008. So great timing, right? Coming out of college, [a] big market downturn. But you're fearless at that time. And I still feel fearless in a way. I didn't care. was just like, whatever, we'll figure it out. And so right in 2008, the first three things. So there's a very strict rule. My dad didn't say, “Oh, here's money to go open stores and then play around and figure it out.”
It was, we're going to work with what we have. We're not going to put major capital investment into the business. We have to grow into that. So our things that we could do in our current operation, which was the candy kitchen at the time connected to the main retail store, was Ecommerce and wholesale. Things we could have done from the main facility.
And so we redid the Ecommerce website, brought it to [the] kind of a newer technology of the 2008 technology at the time. I learned HTML, learned web design, I learned how to connect a merchant account. Everything. Some of it was night school and some of it was just tutorials. And then I set up our first e-comm site. [I] did my first Google AdWords and we used to get coupons in the mail for Google and I would apply them every time.
Just like everything you could think of from just a bootstrapping mentality. And then for wholesale, we would just go out and knock on doors. We started the local tourist attractions and it was literally cold calling, knocking on doors. But we had a hook. We would bring chocolate samples.
So it wasn't just like an insurance salesman that wants to come and talk about healthcare or health insurance or property casualty insurance. I would always call this, “My name is Dan Abel. I'm from Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate Company. And we'd love to bring you some chocolate samples for you to review and see if they'd fit for you.”
Chase Clymer
I want to pause this right there. And if you have a delicious company. I'm talking to you listeners. You can and should be sampling your product to anyone you want to be a partner, be it wholesale or whatever. That's an immediate way to get more people to actually listen to you. Even though they might be doing it just like, I'm going to ignore this guy after I get this sample. But the sample is pretty good. It does open a lot more doors.
Dan Abel Jr.
I think so too. Fast forward to 2025, we're opening boutiques in new markets right now. We just came back from the Palm Beach, Florida opening.
And I was asked the question the other day, they said, “Obviously you're very well known in St. Louis and how is it work[ing] in these new markets?” And I said, we're just going to expect that nobody knows us, which people do because we have an online business and our wholesale business, but let's expect that every person that walks in the door has no idea who we are.
And so we need to, we need to sample and we need every customer that walks in the door, we need to offer samples. We need to make sure that store is beautiful and well-merchandised and cleaned. And we need to make sure that the packaging is exceptional. And so we have to work twice as hard in a new market.
But I absolutely love that. The challenge of it. Because if you work twice as hard in a new market, then your existing market does twice as good. Because it reaps the benefits of that. So I felt that way in 2008. And I feel this is the exact same business model we have in, you know, new retail boutiques in 2025.
Chase Clymer
I think with products like food, where they typically lend to a higher margin and you can't afford the sampling. I had a gentleman on the podcast about a year ago and it's driving me crazy that I can't remember his name.
But he thinks since starting the business that he has sampled over a million cups of his coffee between the various places where he has done events. And he almost attributes that to why his company is successful. It's just boots on the ground, getting people to experience the coffee, to talk about the coffee, and start winning people over one at a time.
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah. And so we could talk about an Ecommerce customer acquisition cost. I guarantee it's significantly higher than giving them a free sample of coffee. Yeah. Significantly higher. If I can go give everyone a free chocolate truffle, I don't have to do Google Ads Advert anymore. I don't have to do MetaMarket. So from that perspective, the sampling perspective is worth its weight in gold.
Chase Clymer
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Some of the growth levers that you were pulling back in 2008 were wholesale and Ecommerce. Let's fast forward a bit from there. What were some of the wins in the 2010s and maybe some of the learnings within those times?
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah, absolutely. So Ecommerce we set up and, you know, as you know, it's about getting the product on there, getting everything set. There's a lot of front loading and then you kind of just let it run. Of course, you have to feed it with advertising and marketing. But so once we front loaded that and spent a lot of time getting the Ecommerce site up and running and then the seasonal pages built out, we then started to go knock on doors for wholesale.
And quite frankly, wholesale, which was at zero dollars at the time or very little exploded. I mean, we had, it was not easy. And then we started with every tourist attraction in town. And then we made some really good friends because the buyer at this tourist gift shop knew this tourist gift shop and they loved it.
And they said, “Oh, you've got to call so and so.” And, some people got their cell phone out right in [the] middle of [the] meeting and said, you know, “Tommy, I need you to, you know, Dan really wants to come out and bring samples by, I just tried it, it's amazing.” So that was such, we had so many wins and you know, the people that helped us out in the beginning.
They did more for us than they can ever imagine. That $200 sale they got us gave us the confidence to go to the next one. Cause you hear no so much and it just is, you know, fresh out of college, you're young. The difference between doing something for 10 years or 30 years, that experience kind of hardens you a little bit, but when you're fresh, it stings every no you take really personally.
And so, [the] kind of help we got from [a] few buyers was really good. And then we had our first out of town customer that I remember and that was like this, oh my gosh factor. Like how do we even ship the product? Like we have a UPS account set up, like all of these things. And I was like, we can do it. We can do it. We'll figure it out.
And of course, I think half of it arrived damaged and the customer called us to reship it for free. It was, you know, it was a really good education on how to ship products very successfully. And then we did it again and packed it better, insulated it better, and then we figured it out. So I said, okay, let's go find the next one, find the next one.
Because St. Louis is an amazing market. But the whole country is an even bigger market. And there was, came down to a trade show. Now, we've done a lot of trade shows and some of our trade shows have become major investments, 20, 30 plus thousand dollars between airfare and the booth rental and the hotel, product sampling and whatnot.
But the first one was $1,000. And that was the hardest I've had to work to convince my parents to go spend this $1,000 on this trade show. It was up in Philly at the time. It was a regional candy show. And it was a little bit more than 1,000 because you still had airfare and hotel. So say it was $2,500 in that for everything.
I've never had to work so hard. I can write a business plan with my eyes closed now because of how I was able to sell them on that one.
And you're saying it was hard to get the buy-in from...
Dan Abel Jr.
From the family.
Chase Clymer
The team to go to this event.
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah.
Chase Clymer
Now...
Dan Abel Jr.
Yeah.
I'm assuming that there is... I'll just let you continue.
Dan Abel Jr.
So it was, I mean, I had become a Photoshop, self-taught Photoshop, and I did some night school. I designed the banner and the art. I did the photos. I designed the banner. I had them printed. I built the fixtures for the booth. I shipped it all up, put it together, [and] flew up. I think my dad and sister went with me. So the three of us [were] in this booth and then it was very, I mean, it looked good, but like when I look back today, I'm like, “Oh my gosh. The first trade show.”
You know, it's like, if you see that the original Jeff Bezos you know, picture of him with a sign in like a small office and it's just an Amazon written in like a Sharpie. That's how we found our first trade show was. But we gained customers and it's a thrill. I mean, it really is. It was a thrill at the time because we, you know, we left with no customers or one or two customers out of state and we came back with orders.
We came back with more orders than, more orders and value than the cost of the show. And I was just like, “Let's find the next Rachel. Find the next.” And so to me it was like a drug and that's always been my drug is the growth in this, in this, you the next sale, my next sale. And, uh, and meanwhile, Ecom was just kind of in the background.
Like we kept, I'd spend 20, 30 minutes a day tweaking it. And then the orders would come in and someone in the warehouse would pick and pack them and we continuously make it. But it was, you know, very big at the holidays, but it trickled in where these wholesale orders were these $500,000 hits at a time.
And it was unbelievable. And that's what built the whole business was the wholesale expansion.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week. So don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
I always talk on these shows about the power of going not only to trade shows, but to conferences. And so the way that I see it in my head is conferences are education-based and trade shows are straight up sales based. There [are] people there. There are buyers there looking to spend money and there are sellers there looking to sell stuff.
And so when you find those trade shows that really align with your product and where people will be buying things for your ICP at the end of the day, you should be there as long as you got a validated concept. You should be in those rooms.
Dan Abel Jr.
Oh yeah. And I worked. We probably did 6 a year at the peak. I worked [on] them and then usually we would have a client dinner. There usually would be an event and it's a business card exchange. I mean, [it] was 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., three, four days in a row.
And then you had to take the thing down and ship it back and either fly home or drive home depending on the location. It was tough. It was tough work. They always talk about the blood, sweat and tears that built the business. That was the trade shows at the time.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
You've alluded to it a bit here, that Ecommerce was, it's kind of on autopilot this whole time. And wholesale is really what built the business. And then there was, I know this, but there was a shift at a certain point.
Dan Abel Jr.
Yes.
Chase Clymer
Is this a good time to pivot?
Dan Abel Jr.
Over the years, [we] have, our focus has changed only because we really try to follow what the market, the consumer wants. So we built our wholesale business up where we built this big factory. And then we started getting some really big customers that were ordering thousand dollar orders. Still, I still love [a] thousand dollars. But everything was [a] thousand dollars orders or $500.
And then we were getting hundred thousand dollars and quarter million dollars from big department stores. And some of it was branded products. Some of it was private label, but it allowed us to continuously reinvest into the business. And you know, so, automated equipment, high speed wrapping equipment, chocolate production lines. Some of them are half a million, a million bucks a piece.
And so you, it's hard to do unless you have deep financing, which we don't. So everything we do is we, you know, we finance and turn. [We] don't have any outside investors. And so a big customer comes on board and says, “Hey, can you, we would like to take this little chocolate square.” And, you know, 25 million of them next year, they're visually wrapped.
So we'd give them the price. And then as that revenue comes in, we buy the wrapping line to support it. And then not only can we run their product on it, we can run our product on it. And so we really built out the entire infrastructure of the factory on this big growth trajectory. So we were never, you know, taking and banking the money. It was always continuously reinvesting for the future.
And we were, you know, my brother, sister and I were all young, fresh out of college. And so it was just this nonstop grind. Well, as that matured, we built this big infrastructure and this big business. And we were actually at a trade show, national show in San Francisco. And we found out that the other company in St. Louis was for sale.
And it was the morning of the trade show and that was a Saturday. The show started on Sunday, but then by Tuesday afternoon, I was in conversations with the owner, trying to work a deal out there. And they were very much like, well, we're not ready to have a deal over, you know, over the phone because they were back in St. Louis still.
And we were in San Francisco. And I said, “OK, well, fine. We get back to Tuesday night. How's Wednesday morning?” And they're like, “No, we want a little bit more time. We're putting together everything.” And so I knew it was Bissinger's and I just thought that it was such a great fit for us. It's just, a lot of former candy makers and staff from Bissinger's came over to our company over the years.
And we really believed in, you know, crafting handmade chocolates and Bissinger's really believed in crafting handmade chocolate. So just the two fit so well. And I was definitely like the cheerleader for the family. Like we have to make this transaction because it's the next great thing for us to do. And I feel like we've been training our entire lives for this.
And so it started there. 2019, all of 2019 was either negotiating the sale of the company, buying the company, or moving the company. And then they were like the first chocolate cataloger in the United States. So [it] started [in] early 70s, started printing a chocolate catalog. The chocolate catalog has become a lot of names over the years.
It's been called mail orders, it's been called catalog, it's been called, now it's kind of umbrellaed and direct to consumers. So our catalog is still, we still print and produce seven catalogs a year. But it really is kind of a catalyst to bring people to the Ecommerce website.
And without their former marketing team had left in the transition. So by myself with our team, I had to learn how to make a catalog for Thanksgiving just 60 days into the ownership of the company. And we were excited to pull it off. And then we had to do the Christmas catalog. And we were excited to pull that off.
And then in January of 2020, I took a sigh of relief and said, we just integrated this company. We had a great Christmas. The consumers at the retail stores and online were happy. [We] didn't really upset anybody with the truth. We didn't really make any mistakes. I said, now I feel like we can actually go and do what we wanted to do is really go build this wholesale business up. And, you know, and then the catalog business was kind of just there.
It wasn't the primary focus, it [was] the secondary because we really thought that Bissinger's wholesale division was going to be the biggest growth trajectory. So we went out to that big national trade show again in San Francisco and we met a lot of people. A lot of excitement with the new products we launched for Bissinger's. And we get back to St. Louis.
And we hear on the news that the state of Illinois has decided to shut down and have a shelter in place because of a new virus coming over from China. And the rest is history. So everything changed the day we got back from that trade show. And we realized that we are not in the wholesale business at this point of our life anymore because the department stores and some of our biggest accounts had to close temporarily, of course.
It's sad. [I] had shipped in pallets of Easter products to a retailer and they had to destroy it all because they were closed all the way through June or July. So what worked was Ecommerce. And I kind of dipped my toe in Ecommerce learning how to do a catalog and working on our website. But literally six of the 10 hours a day that I'm at work went to dedicate it to that website. And I learned I think 2 years worth of education in like 6 weeks.
Chase Clymer
And now was this for both Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate and Bissinger's? You were now...
Dan Abel Jr.
It was for both. But I would say 95 % of the revenue was coming through Bissinger's because they had the customer service team in place already. They had a mail order system in place. They had the catalog customer. They had 10s of thousands of customers already in ecommerce. We doubled that in 2020 and have grown it since then.
But it was, we were, Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate dot com was a small business that got a little bit bigger, but still small. Bissenders.com was a good size. It was a 7-figure model that got a lot bigger.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Let's talk about some of those things that you did during the pandemic that... The right choices, if you made any wrong choices. But how did you sustain the growth? Because I know a lot of businesses had great success during the pandemic just because their product aligned with some of the... There's basically Maslow's hierarchy of needs at that point.
Some of them didn't sustain that growth and some have gone out of business because of bad bets they made during that growth.
Dan Abel Jr.
It was right on Easter and everybody shut down. So Easter is such a traditional holiday. And I would assume that if you go get Easter candy, you're probably going to get it locally. You may have your favorite chocolate here that you buy corporate gifts for. But you may buy your family or kids or whoever Easter bunny is from your local chocolatier.
All of those retail stores, those independent retailers across the country, we had to close, including our own boutiques in St. Louis. And we were out there with Chocolate Easter Bunnies and carrot cake petit fours and all our entire Easter line online, ready to go. And our marketing team was, “We can increase our Google ad spend and we can increase our meta ad spend to get more customers. You can send out emails.”
And so we took, our stores were closed. Our managers came in and worked the phones, the truffle decorating team and the candy. Everyone went to make chocolate Easter bunnies. I helped out in the warehouse shipping orders. I was putting bows on Easter baskets and everything I could because we grew the Easter business. We added a million extra dollars of business in five weeks.
And it was, it was insane because everybody was closing and people, “Do you have chocolate Easter?” It was like, I felt like we were selling a black market item. Like, “Do you have the bunnies? Do you have the stuff?” And we're making them from four in the morning because chocolate bunnies, it's a lot of massive chocolate. It's 15 ounces, our large one. So it has to cool and, you know, for liquid chocolate to when you're molding it.
Each round of bunnies takes an hour. So you can't just press a button and go make 10,000 more bunnies. Like it takes, there's a cooling time and we didn't have [more molds]. I couldn't go to Germany and get more molds within two weeks. So we'd work with what we could. And so we just put more hours into it.
And of course we're learning social distancing at the time. We put like, we took the middle of our production lines and for example, we used to do factory tours. We had to suspend factory tours for three months. So we took the tour routes and set up chocolate bunny making stations in factory tour routes. Cause we suspended and it was just, it was like the most fun chaos ever.
Like the chaos, it was scary in a way. Cause you know, we were like, “Well, what if someone gets sick.” But every day it was like this adrenaline, like, “Okay, let's figure this out.” And let’s make packed boxes of chocolates at our retail stores because the retail stores have to close and we have retail. So everything was kind of this adventure to get product out the door.
But when, when that ended, March of 2020 or April, 20, it was over. was like, Oh my gosh, it's over. I hope that [the] cash injection that we got will sustain us through the summer because we just bought this company. We have more debt. We have more employees. [I] don't want to lay anyone off. Like I'm, we were really dealing with these big decisions in real time.
And I was nervous. We hadn't talked to our bank yet, the PPP money, all of that hadn't been talked about yet. So we were just trying to figure out, “What are we going to do?” But then all of sudden, a week goes by and the phones go quiet. But they just started exploding again because families, you know, siblings and kids, no one wanted to go see their mother on Mother's Day. Because they didn't want to infect their mother with this potential virus.
So our Mother's Day box chocolate business exploded. And the gift messages for like, “Sorry, we couldn't come visit. Here's a box of Bissinger's as a gift.” So we were making truffles and caramels around the clock. And satisfying, trying to bring comfort to fix a Mother's Day that went bad. And so that in such a small way, we made Mother's Day of 2020 a little bit better for the bad situation that people inherited.
Because they were, “What if we're asymptomatic? What happens if we infect our [family].” So they would send a box of Bissinger's instead. And so we were there for them on that. Then this kind of rolled into summertime and we just kept, we would send our photographer like different products. For like, “Hey, we think this is a great new product. Let's take a photo, put it online, send an email out. See if it works.”
And we just got really creative. And I think because we supported customers in such a way on Easter and through Mother's Day, and we did the same through Father's Day, that the customer base that came to us in 2020 and 2021, they haven't left us.
And where other brands had that COVID direct-to-consumer surge. But then they went back to their other brand that they would get brick and mortar or locally because there was no emotional connection that they had to the brand in that process.
Chase Clymer
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, there was definitely some learning to be had by everybody on that. It's something you said that I agreed with those. During that time, it was scary but I think that the growth and the chaos gave you something to focus your energy on and...
Dan Abel Jr.
100%.
Chase Clymer
And a lot of us, especially the entrepreneurial ones in us are just like, we're just going to find a way to get through this and make the best of a bad situation. I think a lot of people did that and a lot of people did find that success. Now, fast forward to now, obviously, [the] pandemic is behind us. And you said that you have kept that relationship with those customers.
There are a lot of folks listening now that definitely they probably had some decent pandemic as well. You mentioned email marketing, obviously, things like that. But if you were at a dinner with another Ecommerce brand owner and they're like, “So what's your marketing? Not the play-by-play. But what's your overarching marketing strategy for the direct-to-consumer business these days in 2025?
Dan Abel Jr.
We did everything. And it was all about continuously reinvesting into the brand. And so from 2020 to where we're at today, we started text marketing. And that, it still is well today. But it was definitely much stronger [in] 2020, 2021, and 2022. We created a Bissinger mobile app so you can download the app on your iPhone. You can literally click on a product and if you have Apple Play enabled, you can buy something and ship it to yourself in like 10 seconds.
It's actually scary fast. So the mobile app was developed and that's still at about 10 to 12 percent of our entire e-com business comes from the app now. So it's a big part of our world. We did a complete overhaul of our website, we took, we scrapped our order management system, we scrapped our ERP system, we scrapped our e-com provider and started over with everything.
So we went to the Shopify platform and then NetSuite for our new ERP system and then integration tools to integrate it. So from, if you place an order and say you're an email or text subscriber, right away you get an email that confirms your order. When it ships. You get tracking. When it gets to your door.
Which is great because we're a perishable product most of the time and a lot of times it's hot outside. You get a text the second it's delivered. And I've had people tell me like, “Oh my gosh, I got a text the second it was delivered. I went to my front door and got it out of the heat.” So we're connected so much more with our tech stack.
And literally we threw everything out to try to make it more customer focused. We put multiple level shipping in so you can order five gifts at one time and do multi-ship. We just continuously shop [on] our own site, did complete packaging overhaul and new photography. And we're trying to get from that point A to point B in real time.
Because back in the day, [it] was just like we were on a platform. And whatever the platform did, however it acted, all we could do is put our logo and our products on it. Now we just build everything out. We take these really great enterprise systems and then build everything out and customize it as needed. And so from where we started to where we're at today.
And then I'll try anything. Like my marketing team is always like, “Hey, there's this new whatever.” [I’m] like, “Yeah, let's throw a couple of thousand bucks at it and see.” And then we just have this really good attribution measuring tool now that we measure everything in real time. And so we can monitor and see if there's, you know, see if there's conversion. And if there is, we just throw more money at it. If there's not, we just pull the plug.
So I'm very, I don't think what we did yesterday is going to be necessarily what's successful tomorrow. There are some things that will be. But we're going back to catalog prospecting of the 90s, [it] has been successful for Bissinger's. And who would have thought that was something in 2025. We're doing a big catalog prospecting campaign because it was very successful in the post-COVID days. It’s successful in 2023 and 2024.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience?
Dan Abel Jr.
I always believe that you need to be really hands-on [on] the business. I was like, I was just interviewed by someone yesterday on a radio show and someone I really liked. And he's just a good guy. He came in and he made candy with us for the day and they did a sampling. And so he's been in the candy kitchen a few times. And his comment to me was that, “I met your brother and I saw you and like, you guys live in your business. You live in your factory. And you know, your brother's stirring a kettle and you're down on the production line.”
And he goes, “I don't know. I just thought like business owners go down on yachts and count their money.” And he goes. I actually just, that'd be fun. But like, I love being, I start my morning with a standing call with our retail team. And I talk to our shipping department. And I hear what's going on with customer service. And I literally review every single complaint and comment and then just try to take all that data.
And so my biggest advice I can give is just live in your business. And if you're an Ecommerce company, connect. See [and] analyze the data if you're making the product beyond the production floor. If you're shipping the product, be with your team and shipping. I mean, we do 3 a.m. starts.
My brother's sister and I go help the warehouse team at the holidays for really from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We get in there at 3 a.m. work till seven and then go do our seven to five, you know, normal office schedule. And that takes adrenaline. But really, you see where the product is shipping. You see how we're packing the orders. And sometimes you find better ways to do it. I was able to speed up our shipping.
[I] mean, one year in COVID, we had so many gifts that our gift printer just could not keep up because it used to be like 25% of our orders had a gift message. COVID, everybody was sending a gift. It was 70%. So we would just handwrite gift cards for people because the gift card printer was slowing down the order process.
And so we would have the gift card printer running. And then we would have a team of three people just sitting in the warehouse, handwrite the gift message on a card for people just to get the pick ticket in the gift card to the order pickers faster.
Chase Clymer
Was that a situation? “Who has the nicest handwriting here?”
Dan Abel Jr.
Oh, for sure. Our quality manager helped out because she had great [handwriting]. And so that's probably something she never thought she'd be signed up for. And the only way we would figure that out is we were on the floor. We were learning the process. So that's my biggest advice. And I think that you'll find the path once you're inside the business. If you're a thousand feet in the air, it's really hard to find details.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now, for the listeners that do enjoy themselves [with] some chocolate, where should they go? What should they do?
Dan Abel Jr.
We have a lot of great options, either Bissinge's.com.Cchocolatechocolate.com. Or for Bissinger's, we're in all the Barnes & Nobles nationwide. And we have retail stores here in St. Louis. But we're also excited that we're opening new flagship boutiques across the country. So this year, we just opened our store in Palm Beach, Florida.
In a few weeks, we're about to open the store in Nashville. And then we're opening the mothership location in Manhattan at the Macy's Herald Square department store on 34th Street this October as well.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing, Dan. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Dan Abel Jr.
Thanks so much for having me.
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