How We Grew Our TikTok Presence And Plan To Hit $3M In Sales This Year

Krik Angacian

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Published: January 31st, 2022

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Krik Angacian

Founder, CandyCan

$15K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

CandyCan

https://eatcandycan.com/

from New York, USA

started August 2021

$15,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Krik recommends to grow your business!

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuou... Eric Ries

Want more updates on CandyCan? Check out these stories:

1. How I Started A Protein Snacks Company (2019) ➜

Note: This business is no longer running. It was started in 2021 and ended in 2023. Reason for closure: Shut down.

This is a follow up story for CandyCan. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 5 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

I’m Krik, co-Founder and CEO of CandyCan. We make premium functional keto candy! In a past life, I was an investment banker covering the food space, after a few years of buying and selling other people’s companies I decided to start my own. About 7 years ago I started the world’s first protein chip and popcorn company. We built that business up and were distributed to over 12,000 retail stores nationwide as well as ~10 countries globally. We’ve since moved on from that company, but my business partner and I decided to team up again and create the world’s first snackable gummy vitamin.

Our gummy snacks are low in sugar, keto, have no sugar alcohols, are plant-based, taste great, and all provide efficacious dosing for functionality. We currently have both a SLEEP and FOCUS line of gummy snacks with IMMUNITY coming out in a few weeks. The concept for this company came about while I was munching on another brand’s gummy vitamins. I was eating them like candy and of course, overdoing it. We realized right then and there that other consumers must be overeating these delicious functional sweets, and if we were to snackify the gummies in a clean label healthy format (most vitamin gummies have a ton of sugar and use gelatin) then we’d be on to something.

It took us about 2 years of R&D, investor financing, copacker negotiations, and pre-launch endeavors, but we recently launched in August of 2021 and are currently doing $15k/month in sales solely from our website and are tracking +$3 MM in sales for 2022.

on-pivoting-towards-tiktok-and-increased-website-visits

Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

Our initial plan was to follow Eric Ries's book Lean Startup, start small, take in feedback, pivot/adjust, and relaunch and reassess. We did that the first three months to understand our 3PL logistics, foster a copacker relationship, and gain customer feedback on the product efficacy and taste. We also wanted to test out our marketing plan which included Instagram influencer outreach as well as paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram.

After reaching out and partnering with ~100 influencers on Instagram and not seeing a tangible lift, as we did with our past company, we decided to pivot towards TikTok. Since that pivot, we’ve seen a huge uptick in engagement and website visits. We’re continually exploring engaging with that platform both through paid advertisements as well as through the internal TikTok Creator Marketplace.

We’re also actively partnering with other like-minded brands to co-brand either through social media giveaways or giveaways for email capture partnerships. This way we’re able to leverage each brand's followings but also give back to respective communities with free products.

At the end of the day for a consumer brand, it’s all about community and customer satisfaction. We constantly engage with our customers via social media, in email, and more recently send handwritten notes to repeat purchasers of our products. All of this goes a long way in developing that special customer relationship.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

There were a few major learnings we’ve had since launch and we’re pivoting now to optimize and improve our performance going forward. The biggest finding was that we launched with a 12 pack with a minimum order price of $49, which although brings your AOV to a nice amount, is too high for most first-time purchasers of a new product. We have an 8 pack single SKU ($33) coming out in a few weeks as well as a 6 pack variety pack ($25), both of which should help improve online store conversion.

Although having a well-thought-out plan and strategy is important, it’s also important to get moving and start selling a product.

We also hired a Facebook marketing company which didn’t perform well. We now realize that although they work with some major players in the industry, because our ad spend wasn’t at a significant level for them they decided not to prioritize our account. We’ve since let them go and have onboarded another group that has been performing much better.

We’ve also learned that although influencers remain an important marketing channel, it’s no longer as vital as it once was and especially less so on Instagram. The goal in the future is to grow our presence on TikTok with native influencer content as well as in-house content.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

Next year the plan is to continue to expand our product offering with IMMUNITY launch in early Q1. From there we’ll look into CALM, BEAUTY, KIDS, etc. We’ll also be looking at expanding our sales channels including Amazon and other 3rd party online retailers. In mid-2022 we expect to venture into retail and distribution as well.

The goal in the future is to grow our presence on TikTok with native influencer content as well as in-house content.

In the long term, we may look at other candy categories to remove the sugar as well as include functional nutrition.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

I often find startup entrepreneurs get stuck in a cycle of overthinking every detail of their business.

Although having a well-thought-out plan and strategy is important, it’s also important to get moving and start selling a product. From that point forward, you’re able to gather data and shift and pivot as needed. Before the actual selling point, don’t get stuck in a feedback loop of your own doing. You need to be in the market to adjust to the market, otherwise, you’ll never actually launch.

Where can we go to learn more?

If you’d like to learn more please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at @eatcandycan or on our website. If you’d like to reach out, feel free to shoot us an email.

Lastly, if you’d like to try out our products feel free to use the code SAMPLER at checkout for 20% off your first order! Hope you enjoy it.