Beautiful Fall day here in Toronto. Not looking forward to the cold weather which is just around the corner. I had a couple of friend requests from
this site so I wanted to check it out. My name is Dan T, and I make a line of pepper sauces here in Canada. Started out in the early 90's with my own
recipe, in a bottle I designed... I'm a graphic designer by trade, but have always had an affinity for the kitchen and cooking. Art and food fit
so nicely together.
In 1990, I got up the nerve to get serious about a wing sauce I’d been serving to friends for years. I designed a label, scraped together some
money, bought some bottles and had them coated in matte black ceramic. Got a sauce packer interested in my concept, a hot cayenne sauce
called Dan T’s inferno, and had 250 cases filled. With the help of my wife and a good friend who was between careers, we sold the sauce to shops
in and around Toronto. We would fill our trunks and come back empty. It was quite exciting! The first time I saw my product on a store shelf, I felt
a pride and satisfaction that I’ve only felt again at the births of my three children - a little less screaming perhaps. Anyway, we plugged along for
about a year, building a thin, but influential customer base. My wife is a writer, and she got us lots of good, free PR in the local media. We
participated in Food shows and had a lot of fun travelling around promoting the product. It worked, and when our trunks were no longer
practical, we handed off the distribution to a medium size food distributor here in Ontario.
A few distributors later, our sauces -grown to a line of ten now - have been, at times, sold in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia,
and of course, the US. For a small company, foreign markets are hard, and expensive to maintain. For all of our initial exporting success,
I’ve more recently come to the conclusion that there’s no place like home. We currently distribute our sauces nationally in Canada, and to
some extent, in the US through online sales and some Club stores. We’re still every bit a small company and I think I like it that way.
Gives me time to go off on other creative tangents, which is what I really enjoy.
It would be interesting to hear from others who have taken the plunge into marketing a product.
this site so I wanted to check it out. My name is Dan T, and I make a line of pepper sauces here in Canada. Started out in the early 90's with my own
recipe, in a bottle I designed... I'm a graphic designer by trade, but have always had an affinity for the kitchen and cooking. Art and food fit
so nicely together.
In 1990, I got up the nerve to get serious about a wing sauce I’d been serving to friends for years. I designed a label, scraped together some
money, bought some bottles and had them coated in matte black ceramic. Got a sauce packer interested in my concept, a hot cayenne sauce
called Dan T’s inferno, and had 250 cases filled. With the help of my wife and a good friend who was between careers, we sold the sauce to shops
in and around Toronto. We would fill our trunks and come back empty. It was quite exciting! The first time I saw my product on a store shelf, I felt
a pride and satisfaction that I’ve only felt again at the births of my three children - a little less screaming perhaps. Anyway, we plugged along for
about a year, building a thin, but influential customer base. My wife is a writer, and she got us lots of good, free PR in the local media. We
participated in Food shows and had a lot of fun travelling around promoting the product. It worked, and when our trunks were no longer
practical, we handed off the distribution to a medium size food distributor here in Ontario.
A few distributors later, our sauces -grown to a line of ten now - have been, at times, sold in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia,
and of course, the US. For a small company, foreign markets are hard, and expensive to maintain. For all of our initial exporting success,
I’ve more recently come to the conclusion that there’s no place like home. We currently distribute our sauces nationally in Canada, and to
some extent, in the US through online sales and some Club stores. We’re still every bit a small company and I think I like it that way.
Gives me time to go off on other creative tangents, which is what I really enjoy.
It would be interesting to hear from others who have taken the plunge into marketing a product.
from Vermont.
