Reference no: EM131933488
We're taking the truck to Soho, in New York City. There are a lot of different stores down there: Prada, Louis Vuitton and Cookies n Cream. Cookies and Cream is really girls and money. The hidden meaning: Cookies mean girls, Cream means money. Cream is synonymous with you know New York City hip hop. It's an acronym for cash rules everything around me. but then it's also open to interpretations by different people. I mean we sometimes joke around with people that we have a sweet tooth and that's why it's called Cookies and Cream and you know maybe black and white unity.
Social media and the Internet is very important. We're very active on Facebook and Twitter so if you go to our twitter you see we or different things about the brand and if you go on the Facebook page as well you see that we also post the location and different things about the brand as well. When we make t-shirts in a line, so let's say for example we make a fall line of t-shirts and sweatshirts, if we print out let's say forty shirts, of those forty shirts we don't make them again. So if you're wearing a shirt it's like wearing a piece of art. You're wearing one of forty.
You're not going to see everybody walking down the street with your shirt on, you're going to be unique, you're one of a certain group of people that you know bought this shirt. It's still a business. We're not out here giving clothes away, we have a price point, we have quotas that we have to meet, we have sales, we have targets and we have long and short term goals. I'm an entrepreneur myself. I'm in sales. I do a lot of different ventures. Right now, the was the economy is, you can't really afford a 10 to 12 thousand dollar a month lease on a brick and mortar store. But you can drop $12,000 dollars on a truck like this and you're mobile. You can go to where people are. One of the reasons why we have this truck and more to come is because we want to present our clothing brand a certain way.
If you follow the traditional market and produce shirts and send them to a store, you're one t-shirt with a thousand other brands, a thousand other different brands. How's your stuff going to stand out? That's the reason we have the truck, because when you see the truck, this truck is synonymous with Cookies and Cream.
It stands out. I was sitting in my office one day and a bunch of us wanted cupcakes but nobody wanted to go to get them and I decided hey what about a cupcake truck? I'm here to get curbside cupcakes because they tweet and Facebook and everybody's talking about it. And I'm off and I need my cupcake. Red Velvet. And I was like would you buy a cupcake from a truck and people were like, hell yeah I would, so maybe I'm onto something. Sam, my husband came up with this. So it was his idea. He was working in a law firm and people wanted cupcakes and nobody felt like schlepping to a cupcake shop, and he had the idea.That's cookies and cream, that's strawberry, those are vanilla, that's regular chocolate, and that must be the peanut butter.
It's important to say that we had a plan. But we didn't write out a business plan per se. You know we really thought long and hard about first the product, and then the implementation, the operations and then the costs. We crunched the numbers in terms of what our price point was going to be for the cupcakes in terms of individuals and discounts for if you buy in bulk adding, a delivery service sometime in the future which we actually did, as well as the cost of the truck and how to finance the whole business. The weather is less than ideal. My wife follows Curbside Cupcakes on Twitter and she informs me that they're out front of my building. She emails me with her order and I come and pick it up and bring it home So every day we start at 10:30. Our first stop is at 10:30. We update Facebook and Twitter that we're on the way, we let people know where we're headed to. Thanks for saving me my two cupcakes. Mine was delicious. Oh, hey, that's great, enjoy it.
We love to hear what they think, what they like and sometimes what they don't like. Hey, you messed up my order. We're very sorry. We use the social media to stay in touch with them. It's immediate. It's immediate information in a way that print media or any other things aren't. These cupcakes are supposed to be amazing. I've never had them. People apparently - I was just told - watch in the windows and come on down as soon as they get here. They race each other down here for them. So apparently they're good. I want a lemon Which one do you want?
They only have a few red velvet, carrot, oatmeal raisin, and banana chocolate chip. You going to be here next Thursday? OK. Our vision for Curbside Cupcakes is a growth model. We're a year and a half in, standing in front of our second truck, and we have another truck on the way. Two red velvets. Challenges, ah you have regulatory challenges there's also there's always the challenge of going to your local government and trying to figure out if you can do this. And then if you can, how? What's the code that regulates your business? All of that is a big challenge.
Every day we know we need to sell a certain amount in order to break even and if we sell more than that amount, then we know that we have been profitable. So on a sellout day we usually make our mark. We sold out. Sorry ladies. I really need one. I'm so sorry. Next time. If you go on line you'll find our schedule for tomorrow. We'll be at Metro Center up at 12th and G. We hate to disappoint anybody of course. But, they get it.
It's the very end of the day. And then they have something to look forward to tomorrow.
View the dialog from the video on Cookies N Cream sold from a truck. Then, delve into the creative process behind this concept. Explain how it follows the sources for new ideas as well as the type of creativity it illustrates.