Chocolate truffle maker uses multichannel recipe
Two former employees of the Direct Marketing Association have launched a business in Queens, New York, to fill the world with delicious chocolate truffles. In addition to the mail order business, El Eden Chocolates has added a retail channel and is also focusing on its e-commerce Web site.
El Eden began appropriately enough on a kitchen table, when Wai Chu left his job as a cook at the Russian Tea Room. He’d been selling the handmade chocolate truffles of his own recipe as a sideline business from his home. He launched the official company in July 2000.
In September, he was joined by Marjorie Dybec. The two had worked together at the DMA in the mid-1990s, she in the conference department, he in the councils section. For El Eden, Dybec handles sales and marketing and makes truffles when things get busy.
The name of the company comes from that of a run-down Spanish-language church in New York’s Lower East Side. “A lot of people associate chocolate with sinful goodness,” explains Chu.
“The way we want to grow the business is by having one or two retail outlets in Manhattan and focus more on Web and direct sales,” Dybec says, sitting at the metal table in the spare commercial kitchen.
The site (www.eledenchocolates .com) was created by independent designer Heather Musil and debuted last fall. In addition to boasting its regular truffles, it features El Eden’s special offerings such as custom truffles, corporate gifting, wedding platters and a Truffles-Every-Month Club auto-reorder service.
Though the company has only advertised locally, Dybec worked hard to appear on search engines. She subscribed to SubmitIt.com and got listed on many search sites. She’s thinking of paying to get the company to come up higher in the results. Chocolate is the most important search word, but truffle and gift are important too.
The company gets one to five orders a day on the Web site. “Considering we have no advertising,” Dybec says, “I think that’s pretty significant.” The site had 2,000 unique visitors in December and just under 1,500 in February.
“A little company can have a really big store online,” she observes.
El Eden’s direct mail efforts have so far been rudimentary. Chu had been sending out promotional cards to friends. A September letter to 400 people asked recipients to provide the names of six people they thought would be chocolate buyers in return for a free six-piece box of truffles. “That grew the list by another 100 names,” Dybec remarks. The in-house list now has 1,000 names from around the country.
In December, El Eden sent a four-color mail piece to 5,000 names from a ZIP code list, mostly to homeowners in Astoria, to drive traffic to the store. About 20 people came in as a result of the mailing. Roughly 800 mail pieces were sent as a test to two ZIP codes in Manhattan, Dybec says, but that only resulted in a few responses.
Wai has now developed a baker’s dozen of flavors-Almond Espresso, Champagne, Hazelnut, Tiramisu, Black Forest-in addition to some seasonal ones. Boxes range in size from four to 50 pieces and in price from $6.50 to $45. In December, the company sold 11,000 truffles, though most months sales are in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, Dybec says.
At press time Chu was working up a new flavor for Mother’s Day.
This article is featured in the May 1, 2001, issue of Direct.com.
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