Jakijuju Freeze Dried Sweets
The Complex World of E-Commerce
If the pandemic highlighted one thing to smaller retail businesses, it was the need to have at least some kind of foothold in the online retail space. As we came in and out of lockdowns, businesses that weren’t already online had to quickly adapt and find new ways of selling their products to their customers.
Working for a boutique web design agency in East Sussex, we were contacted by a number of businesses looking for a quick way to start selling their products online.
E-Commerce websites are complex, they normally require a lot more thought than simply chucking all your products on the website and waiting for the orders to flood in. We found that almost every E-Commerce website we worked on over this period had different needs to cater for. How would the products be delivered? what payments would you take? how heavy are the products and would certain products need a higher delivery cost? How would you keep track of the stock you had?
It’s all a steep learning curve when you’re used to scanning a barcode into the till and handing the product over.
The team at Sokada had always wanted to try selling something, it would give us more of an insight into the running of an online store, so we were better equipped to help customers get their feet on the ladder in the world of online retail.
We originally came up with the idea of selling American Sweets – we could buy them from a wholesaler nearby, pop them online and sell them, putting our online marketing knowledge to the test.
We also wanted to try selling Pick’n’Mix online, so we bought a number of family favourites and started working out how to sell them online.
Freeze Dried Sweets
It was at this point that we discovered Freeze Dried Sweets, something that seems to be really growing in popularity in the US, and something bound to take hold on this side of the pond too.
A freeze drier will first go through a freezing process, making all the water in the sweet expand. The next process is creating a vacuum and removing all of the water from the sweet, this then changes the texture of the sweet, often making it crunchier. As the water is removed, it also makes the flavour much more intense, so basically what you get is a bigger, tastier treat!
After importing a freeze dryer from the US, we set about freeze-drying lots and lots of sweets.