EnTrends

For all of you caffeine junkies out
there, there's a new candy that is
proving to be an "utterly" new
experience. They're called Moovitz
and they come individually wrapped
in milk chocolate or coffee flavors.
The candies offer the same caffeine
as coffee, but in a more convenient
form.

The Moovitz story begins in 1997,
when Tom Moffit graduated with a
Bachelor's Degree in Microbiology
from Colby College in Waterville,
Maine. He went to work for the state
of Massachusetts helping small
businesses become more efficient by
reducing waste. The job sparked an
interest in him for entrepreneurship.
Moffit decided to go back to school
and moved to Wisconsin where he
intended to earn a Ph.D. in
Microbiology from the University of
Wisconsin at Madison.

Two weeks into the Ph.D. program,
Moffit realized that he did not want
to spend the rest of his life in a lab
doing research. He started taking
small business classes and switched
into a Masters program for
Microbiology. He concurrently
began taking courses from UWM's
MBA program.

While working towards his graduate
degree, Moffit worked in the food
industry. "People joke that I have the
perfect resume for working in
Wisconsin because I worked for
both a cheese and beer company
while attending graduate school."

In an entrepreneur class, Moffit met
one of his future business partners,
Runi Hadiprajitno. The two were
working to reposition a cheese
product in an up-scale market for a
small manufacturer. Hadiprijitno had
a friend named Monica Sentos, an
MBA student at the University of
Kentucky. Both women had
expressed interest in starting a
business, so they teamed up with
Moffit.

The partners were originally
interested in the import and export of
food products. They soon realized,

however, that their real strength was
in new food product development.
They analyzed data from the food
and beverage industry and saw that
ninety percent of consumer contact
was in the form of consumer
complaints. They saw an opportunity
to overcome the problem with
consumer-developed products.

In 2000, Moffit and his partners
started work on a business proposal.
Eight months later, they approached
their target market for ideas on a
feasible product. They figured that
the market they knew best was
people like themselves. Therefore,
they chose to target individuals in
their late teens to early thirties. What
the partners did not expect was to
stumble across an accidental market
of truck drivers and other individuals
who consume caffeine to keep up
with their professional endeavors.

in those places." However, Moffit
says the biggest problem with
international customers is that he
first has to import the candy from
Asia and then export it back out
again. It's an expensive process.

The Moovitz team currently operates
out of a leased warehouse in
Madison, Wisconsin. Runi
Hadiprijitno, one of the partners, has
a family friend in Asia who produces
the candy at a large manufacturing
plant where the three entrepreneurs
recently had all new production
equipment installed for the Moovitz
product line. Hadiprijitno travels to
Asia to take care of production
decisions and her brother serves as a
liaison for Moovitz when she in the
U.S.

Moffit says, "It's difficult enough to
outsource the production of one of
your products when you don't know
the people who are making it. The
fact that we do know them and are
able to communicate with them
honestly is very important. They are
on our side and want us to be
successful."

Sales of Moovitz vary among the
different distribution methods Moffit
and his partners use. Just setting up
a distribution chain was new and
challenging. Moffit says, "When we
first started the company, our notion
of distribution was simply to
warehouse the candies and ship
them to coffee shops. We still do
that, but we learned very quickly that
was the least efficient way to go."

Today, Moovitz are sold through
direct distribution, via mail order and
the Internet, wholesale distributors,
and confectionary brokers. Because
of the attributes of the product,
Moffit utilizes two categories of
brokers.

"There are specialty and gourmet
brokers who try to get small niche
accounts. Then we have mainstream
brokers who are looking for large
chains. While we receive more
frequent sales with the specialty
brokers, the few we do get with the
larger chains are worth a lot more."

"We had an idea for a soft chewy
candy, but the actual flavors, and the
fact that they are caffeinated, was
based upon consumer research. Our
consumers desire quality, so each
candy is made with real milk
chocolate or real Sumatran coffee.
The price point is also much lower
than competitive caffeinated candies.
Everything about how we market and
sell the product is based on getting
as much feedback as we can from the
consumer," says Moffit.

Outside the U.S., the largest market
for Moovitz is the U.K. Moffit says,
"We went to an international food
show and there was a lot of interest
from the U.K., New Zealand, and
Australia. We couldn't figure out
why. After some research, we learned
that Sumatran coffee is very popular