Cowgirl Cohcolates

Cowgirl Chocolates

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

        Cowgirl chocolates were designed by Marilyn Lysohir and her husband, Ross Coates in 1997. Marilyn was a ceramicist and lecturer who is internationally known and has a successful ceramic art business. Ross is a sculptor and a professor of fine arts at a nearby university. Marilyn and Ross began publishing a once a year arts magazine called High Ground. It was more a multimedia product than a magazine, the 600 copy production of this product does not pay for itself, so Marilyn an Ross have looked for other ways to provide income to cover the costs of production for High Ground. Cowgirl Chocolates began as one of those ways. “Cowgirl Chocolates” offer three types of products; chocolate bars, truffles, and hot caramel dessert, which all come in a variety of flavors.  

Situation Analysis

INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

        Since the invention of the spicy chocolate recipe, Marilyn Lysohir and Ross Coates have been striving to grow a profitable business in the chocolate industry. Each year Marilyn has loaned the company money to keep it running. Cowgirl Chocolates, primarily run by Marilyn, with help from her family and art associates was marked based on the concept that chocolate lovers are fun and adventurers in spirit. Cowgirl chocolates cater to both chocolate lovers and spicy food fans.

They have had award winning packaging designs and a high quality chocolate, but many consumers and retailers hesitate to purchase the product. Consumers and potential retailers have mentioned that the chocolates are too spicy. Since majority thinks this way Marilyn has created a non-spicy chocolate and calls it mild-mannered. Also the average consumer of spicy foods is mostly men, but Marilyn’s target market is women. Marilyn had lost more than $6,000 on operations before taxes and had an inventory build-up of $16,848, which was a lot more than she had expected.

CUSTOMER ENVIRONMENT

The chocolate industry is a growing one but with the addition of hot and spicy chocolates, this product becomes a thriving market. There are problems that come about from their “spicy chocolate” concept. Not everyone likes spicy food, especially mixed with a candy. Marilyn needs to be more conscious of her businesses finances in order to become as cost efficient as possible. Marilyn should seek business advice from professionals.

One of the primary problems of Cowgirl Chocolates is that the company has not established a target market for its product and identified its customers. According to the company owner, only about 15% of Americans are consuming hot and spicy foods. Some demographic are missing. Her product development was based on the input of her friends and family, which is a small percent of the population. I believe she is cutting out a portion of her target market by naming it Cowgirl Chocolates and making the brand label May Lillie. Because of this the branding is not appealing to men, which could be the biggest part of her target market. She needs to define her target market before spending money on advertising. If she does not do this it would be inefficient and would wastes company resources.