Good evening its Todd Paton
with dominate my industry on 880 The Biz and we have a special show
today we have with us the founder, the president, CEO of Spark &
Spark and we're going to learn all about this incredible business
and this incredible business woman. So welcome Jessica to tonight’s
show!
Jessica: Thank you Todd,
it’s a pleasure to be here with you.
It’s great to have you and
I can’t wait to learn about your company Spark & Spark and how
you got started and about you so tell us about Spark & Spark,
what is Spark & Spark?
Jessica: Well Spark &
Spark is a company by myself and my business partner Bailey and we
produce personalized products for children and adults. We have a
fantastic selection of journals, plates and all kinds of gifts that
moms and kids absolutely love.
Todd: So when you say kids,
I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old, what’s the age limit?
Jessica: Our age range can
go from as little as a baby to all the way to teens. There’s really
no age limit on our products. We produce sippy cuppies for babies, as
well as notebooks and cellphone cases for teenagers. We really have
many types of products for all kinds of ages.
How Spark & Spark
Began
Great! what made you start,
how long did you start Spark&Spark?
Jessica: Well let me tell
you a little bit about me, I’m originally born and raised in
Venezuela and I came here about 16 years ago, so I think at some part
in my life I’m going to be more American than Venezuelan. I
actually was in the telecommunications industry for many years. I
worked mainly in the purchasing and logistics, and at one point I
decided that I no longer wanted to be a part of the
telecommunications industry and I wanted to go more into something
that was fun creative and that I can still use my business background
in. Luckily, I have a great friend who’s a graphic designer, my
partner Bailey. So both of us, she’s the head and I’m the body of
the company, decided to start our company that allows us to use some
of our best qualities in the business world.
When did you meet Bailey?
Jessica: We actually met
here in the states she’s also Venezuelan
Were you working the
telecoms industry when you met?
Jessica: Yes! She was
actually was really good friends with my brother, and that’s how we
knew each other. But we became really good friends because of our
love of music; we all love this band from Venezuela called Guacos and
that’s kind of our connection. Bailey and I instantly clicked we’ve
been great friends. I use to see her work and I use to admire it, I
use to tell her I could picture her designing so many types of
products and she will always tells me “No, I don’t think so, let
me just stick to doing my holiday cards my very small production.”
She was self-employed at the
time?
Jessica: Yes, she was. She
deigned holiday cards.
She was doing her own like a
freelancer
Jessica: Yeah like a
freelancer
And your working still at
the telecom company?
Jessica: I was still working
at the telecom company, then when I finished with that, I was stuck
deciding what to do if I did open a company maybe it would be
something with event planning which combine both my love for
logistics and decoration. But, I was involved with a very complicated
pregnancy and then decided that event planning was too stressful and
especially with a new born my husband told me my schedule will be
crazy. So during my transitional period, my partner Bailey just so
happen to invite me to lunch and she told m that she was going to
take me up on my offer and wanted o partner up. In 2011 we joined
forces; we came up with the name Spark&Spark from Bailey's
company because it use to be called Chispa, which is Spark in
Spanish.
Todd: You know I love that
about business owners and entrepreneurs when they have a story like
this where there is reason behind it, its not just Spark&Spark.
You might hear that now we know the story behind Spark&Spark
that’s awesome, that’s a great story. So 2011 you open the doors
and was the business module similar to what it is now?
How Spark & Spark
Grew
Jessica: Yes it was, but it
was obviously a lot smaller at that point. When I first joined, it
took me awhile to understand the industry because it was different
than anything I had ever done before. But I knew if I wanted this
business to be successful, I would have to learn everything I can
about it. So the first year I want to say was more like a learning
curve in organizing the company in getting it structured to be the
right company for long-term success and growth. The first year was
unbelievable! Bailey and I were able to go to a tradeshow in New York
and we were able to have a fantastic booth setup for the event. When
I first walked in to the tradeshow I fell in love with everything in
the industry. I’m glad that I’m able to say that this is what I
want to do, I’m happy doing it, and that I’m surrounded by woman
that are loving what they’re doing. Ever since then, we’ve been
able to grow tremendously and I must say that it’s between a
100-200% growth every year. So you can just imagine how overwhelming
and how much of a challenge it is to cope with the growth, how to
work really efficiently and be able to deliver all of the products
that we have.
Our Biggest Critics
Todd: But you know, it’s a
great problem to have. Like Dr. Steven Covey mentioned, you have
begin with the end in mind and a lot of business owners, small
business owners specifically, don’t do that. They just start a
business and they really don’t know what it’ll look like 5 to 10
years from now and that’s an important thing, so any of the
entrepreneurs that are listening to us today, because when you are
starting a business make sure you begin with end in mind what does it
look like and that’s what Jessica is talking about now. You know
when you start a business you don’t expect a 100% growth year end I
mean that’s incredible, but now when your there how big do you want
to get do you want to sell your company? What does it look like,
because a lot of the systems and processes you do today are going to
affect that down the road, so that’s great, that’s really
interesting so now today lets fast forward to that was in 2011 back
when you started, today you’re not looking back at telecom I take
it?
Jessica: No that for sure
not! I haven’t looked back since. I really love our creative
process is really so amazing its really so fun, we have... you know I
have a 4 year old and Bailey has a 5year old and they are our best
critics. These guys, we literally we show them our design and they
literally show thumbs up or thumbs down or they rip it apart or they
say it looks ugly. We love designing for kids, because we have kids
and we've notice actually that one of the funniest things is that
every month or half of the year we change the product line based on
the demands for our kids. For example, my daughter is now learning to
write so we came up with writing journals and we actually just sold
over 200 of them in just one sale in 3 days, so it’s kind of a fun
to create products are begin used and begin used by your immediate
family and your immediate friends.
Todd: Yeah absolutely that’s
a really great story! So your 4 year old do you video tape any of
that?
Jessica: Oh absolutely! We
started it to help it with our SEO and trying to get the help of our
website to be known. And one of the key factors we were told is
video, you know publishing video content on our website. So we
started actually doing video clips of our products and trying to
explain the features and the different designs that we have and I
recorded a video of my daughter that was hilarious it’s on our
website now under “Baby and Kids” on our websites Spark&Spark.com
Spark & Spark
Operations
Todd: That’s great! Like
mom that’s great! So now today tell me how in the 4 years or 3 and
a half years or so that you’ve been in business how you mentioned
the growth but how has your day to day operations yours personally
changed, obviously when you were just starting out you where probably
thinking sales and how do we bring another new business in it, has it
shifted to more of corporate where you are sitting back and
strategising or its still sales.
Jessica: Well if you asked
this question to my husband, first off “She’s working 24hrs a day
and if they were 36hrs a day she would work those too.” In the
beginning, when the company first started he had a point. Like you
said in the beginning I’m the CEO, the President, the cleaner, the
sales person, so it’s a little bit of everything. Luckily you know
I have a great partner, we’re both in sync and when it comes to
design and deciding features about the company or the goals about the
company we are right on target very quickly decisions.
How we are coping with
growth? We've been lucky to hire a person that come in to the office
and helping me relieving the administrative part and now this coming
year we going to be focused towards sales and increasing our
clientele, we've been fortunate that we have fantastic clients
already, we do both wholesale and retail but this coming year we want
to focus more on the retail end and the customer we feel that its so
much more rewarding to actually dealing with the end customers that
are giving us the feedbacks telling us I love that my kids are eating
on your plates and they love the design or I love that my kid just
learn to write on your journals so we love that connection and thats
kind of what where we’re going!
Spark & Spark – How
We Can Improve Your Business
Todd: It’s almost like
quantity vs. the quality you can get a lot of sales going wholesale
or for you it sounds like the perfect personal touch of dealing with
and making that client happy. That’s awesome! That’s really great
to hear. That’s what an entrepreneur is. That’s what the heart of
what an entrepreneur is so lest talk a little bit about the type of
client. Obviously, the first thing that comes to my mind is a young
mother who has a young child, you mentioned 4 or 5, 3 year old or
there any other types of clients if our audience is listening their
all going to go on to see Spark&Spark.com to see that video cause
I can’t wait to go see it when we get off the show but is there any
other type of client that your targeting?
Jessica: Absolutely, we also
have actually today and hopefully we're going to target more and more
its our business clients so we have a lot of stationary that’s
fantastic as a gift for Christmas, you know we’ve had a lot of
corporate offices that has bought our products and giving them to our
special clients because, remember Todd, most of our products are
personalized so if you want your company logo, if you want specific
clients name on our products we will do that and companies have found
that their clients are a bit more impressed when they are given are
really special gift that has the clients name or the companies name
of logo comparing to just buying something off the shelf. It shows
that the company went above and beyond in choosing that right gift as
a corporate gift.
Todd: Great so if we're a
business owner and we have 10 employees a medium size small business
they can go to Spark&Spark and find something...Excellent!
Jessica: And if you for
example. If you find that the pricing might be too high then we can
do something about it.
Todd: So that was a really
great story that you told us , we finished a little bit talking about
the type of client and we mentioned the standard the mother or father
of any young child or actually any child, but what I want to know is
on the larger scale if there's let’s say somebody right now at
home listening to our radio station and they hear about this and say
you know what I can sell this I like Jessica 1st, I went to the
website I loved the video of her daughter but I think I can sell this
, Is there an opportunity for people that could be resellers of
yours?
Jessica: Absolutely, so as I
mentioned earlier we have two ways of selling our products, we have a
wholesale and we have retail so in the wholesale structure we can
definitely pass on that wholesale structure to and the company or the
individual interested can go ahead and resell our products. Obviously
we do have some guidelines: don’t under sale our products, don’t
go below the MSRP also we can work based on commissions. If you feel
that you don’t want to probably be tied down with our branded
exclusively or something like this we can go ahead and do it based on
commissions.
