The CropChocolate.com Family

About six months ago we asked for volunteer designers to participate in a program called the Chocolatiers. It was a wildly popular program that never really got off the ground. We sent out 90 free kits in the first month of the program and the Chocolatiers sent pictures back of amazing creations and ideas. At the same time we rolled out this program, we had some gigantic growing pains--we had so many orders that our warehouse could not keep up with the demand and most of you patiently waited while we made huge changes to our warehouse operations and now we're close to being in the sweet spot.

The Chocolatier program went silent while we were going through re-organizational pangs and as of a few weeks ago, it was flat on its face. Then we got an email from Megan, a CropChocolate.com member and contributor, about reviving the Chocolatier program. From that email, Megan and McCall started putting together a strategy to revive the program. As of this week, it has been churned, poured and hardened into a program that we hope will be greatly successful--not only for the Chocolatiers but for all the contributors and family members at CropChocolate.com.

Here's what we've done; we're no longer shipping free product to the Chocolatiers, we're giving them CropCredit; and in return, we've asked them to share pictures, instruction, experiences and more so that the visitors and contributors on CropChocolate.com can get ideas and share more ideas on how to use product.

This weekend our goal is to have a few new features on SweetTALK. One of the features will allow contributors to post pictures of their creations. This feature is open to all users on CropChocolate.com and for the Chocolatiers, we have some very specific requests. We are going to run this as a quarterly program for now and as we grow we will increase the occurrences to monthly. There will be times when a Chocolatier will not be able to create during the quarter or month and in this case, we will open the program for substitutes. Although the group is relatively small--140 out of 15,000 viewers and contributors--this number will be increased to many of you who so often share comments, ideas and more.

We are continually amazed at the talent we see as you post pictures in your profiles. When the Chocolatiers emailed their pictures to us of their creations from those 90 give-away kits we were blown away. We are grateful for their response and their support. Just this week McCall asked them to reach out to their favorite brands so they were so quick to jump right in. Already, from their hard work and time, we have a number of new relationships starting to form. They waited patiently as we engaged, discontinued and restarted the Chocolatier program and for that we say THANK YOU!

Our hope is that this group will give more tools and ideas to YOU! And that a few of them go on to become the next Tim Holtz. We have not felt from them that they feel they are an exclusive club but a bunch of family members at CropChocolate.com who have volunteered to give their time and design ideas to YOU and to help us succeed!

We are continually grateful for each member that contributes to CropChocolate.com and each person who spends their hard-earned money to support this growing company. THANK YOU!

Warmest,

CropChocolate.com