Skinny Crisps Has Growing Pains
Donation protected
Dear friends of Skinny Crisps,
Myrna and Cheryl are in great need of your help!
Our business is growing at a rate that we could have only dreamed of when we first started Skinny Crisps . We have secured commitments to carry from retailers across the country. We want to meet that demand and continue to deliver high-quality products that make Skinny Crisps the best gluten-free, low carb snack on the market.
In order to do so, we need more of everything – more ovens and other equipment, more packaging, more ingredients, more employees, etc.
We need to buy those things before the revenue comes in from our increasing sales. We thought we had found a way to economically meet our increasing demand, but sometimes we trust too much, and doing so has led Skinny Crisps to fall upon challenging financial times.
We don’t have the capital to bridge the gap between the cost of meeting increasing demand and the realization of revenue from new contracts, and we cannot incur any additional debt.
Skinny Crisps needs your help to navigate through this time and get back on solid financial ground so that we can continue to make the crisps you have come to know and love. Please read our story and consider a contribution to help Skinny Crisps continue to meet the growing demand.
Any amount you can donate will be greatly appreciated.
Our History-How It All Began and What Happened
Myrna Mirow has always been a fabulous and creative cook, but who knew where that would lead! Not long after she moved to Colorado in 2001, bloodwork showed the beginning of insulin resistance and Myrna was advised to lower her carb intake. Myrna loved crunchy crackers, but this was long before grocery stores were stocking tasty low carb treats. The move toward lowering carbohydrate intake was in its infancy, and most low carb snacks tasted like cardboard. Not a problem for Myrna with her culinary prowess! She set out to design her own recipe for crunchy low carb, gluten-free crackers.
Once perfected, she would bring her crackers to the art gallery where she worked part-time. Myrna’s delicious crisps became all the buzz among her co-workers and she soon was supplying them for the gallery’s art openings. She was thrilled that people liked them, but how good they really were didn’t yet quite register with Myrna. Before she knew it, she was sharing a farmer’s market booth featuring her crackers with a friend who sold granola to Whole Foods, and Skinny Crisps were born! The feedback was awesome and demand was increasing, with people returning to the booth each week wanting more Skinny Crisps!
With encouragement and a huge confidence boost from her friends, gallery visitors, and farmers market customers, Myrna decided to send Skinny Crisp samples to Celiac support groups throughout the country. So much positive feedback…finally a low carb, a gluten-free cracker that didn’t taste like sawdust! Her Celiac group samplers started telling their local health food markets about Skinny Crisps and orders started to roll in. At this point, Myrna thought she might just have something here and decided to launch a website introducing Skinny Crisps to a broader market.
Demand continued to grow and Myrna tried to keep up, baking and fulfilling orders from her home kitchen. She was exhausted and frustrated by her kitchen’s limitations. Myrna’s next-door neighbor, Cheryl Katten, was one of her most loyal local customers. Myrna and Cheryl, sharing careers as successful clothing designers, became fast friends. Cheryl suffers from Celiac disease and was excited to try Myrna’s Skinny Crisps. She loved being able to enjoy a cracker without any ill effects.
One day, when Cheryl arrived to pick up an order, she found Myrna overwhelmed, bleary-eyed, and in tears. Cheryl immediately suggested that they partner, buy a commercial oven and move operations from Myrna’s kitchen to her empty two-car garage. The business continued to grow and before long, a garage operation wasn’t sufficient. With the local Whole Foods agreeing to carry Skinny Crisps, a fully compliant commercial kitchen was essential, and Skinny Crisps arranged to rent space from Justin’s Nut Butter, which also was experiencing success in the market.
Onward and Upward
The shared space with Justin’s worked beautifully for a while, but it soon was too cramped and clear that Skinny Crisps needed its own space. Demand was increasing, with Skinny Crisps for sale at Whole Foods, Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage throughout the Rocky Mtn region and mom and pop stores around the country. Then came a contract with Kroger and interest from Costco. Skinny Crisp moved to its own 3000 square foot facility in 2013, and in what seemed like a blink of an eye, went from local sales out of Myrna’s kitchen in 2008 to gross just shy of a $1,000,000 in 2014.
Myrna and Cheryl were thrilled with the growth but overwhelmed with the day to day operations of what was becoming a large company. They couldn’t run it like a mom and pop shop anymore and were excited when a local food production facility approached them. They claimed that their company could handle production and order fulfillment at a lower cost, leaving Myrna and Cheryl with time to pursue growing the business and maintain a better balance in their lives. With a Costco contract and more extensive exposure through Kroger on the horizon, they jumped at the opportunity, perhaps a bit too quickly.
Some things really are too good to be true.
How Quickly Things Change
Skinny Crisps sublet their current facility, moved their equipment to the production company’s facility and contracted with them for all production and distribution. Unfortunately, the relationship didn’t work. Skinny Crisps didn’t taste like Skinny Crisps anymore, and orders weren’t being fulfilled properly. It wasn’t long before customer complaints were mounting, orders were being canceled, and distributors were refusing to carry Skinny Crisps until the reliability of product and order fulfillment was restored.
Skinny Crisps promptly terminated the co-producers contract and bought out its sub-tenant so it could move back into its facility, reestablish the high-quality product and customer service standards to which its customers were accustomed, and regain its customers’, and the ultimate consumer’s, trust.
Skinny Crisps has loyal followers who are willing to give them a chance to make things right again, but the financial loss from this experience has been devastating.
In a year’s time, revenue dropped by more than two-thirds, and the expenses associated with the co-producer, its termination, associated legal fees, and the buyout of the subtenant left Skinny Crisps in the red for the first time in its history.
You Do What You Have to Do
Myrna and Cheryl believe. They believe in Skinny Crisps; they believe in their customers, and they believe that Skinny Crisps ultimately will enjoy the same success it had before IF they can meet its financial obligations as it rebuilds. They both have put themselves in personal financial peril in an effort to do so. They have refinanced their homes, maxed out their credit cards, and poured all that they have into re-building and making sure that their suppliers were paid.
Through determination, grit, and tenacity they have brought Skinny Crisps back to the high standards that everyone loves. Demand is increasing…many former customers have returned, and new contracts have emerged with Colorado Safeway stores Sprouts and Lucky's Markets. It is clear that demand for Skinny Crisps is increasing, and that it again will be a success if it can meet its financial obligations along the way. There’s no surplus in the bank and Cheryl and Myrna have nothing left to give of their own to make sure that suppliers are paid before Skinny Crisps is paid by its customers.
Skinny Crisps, and Myrna and Cheryl, will be so grateful for your support to get through this challenging transitional period so that they can continually grow their business and to serve the community with the best low carb gluten-free snacks on the market.
Myrna and Cheryl are in great need of your help!
Our business is growing at a rate that we could have only dreamed of when we first started Skinny Crisps . We have secured commitments to carry from retailers across the country. We want to meet that demand and continue to deliver high-quality products that make Skinny Crisps the best gluten-free, low carb snack on the market.
In order to do so, we need more of everything – more ovens and other equipment, more packaging, more ingredients, more employees, etc.
We need to buy those things before the revenue comes in from our increasing sales. We thought we had found a way to economically meet our increasing demand, but sometimes we trust too much, and doing so has led Skinny Crisps to fall upon challenging financial times.
We don’t have the capital to bridge the gap between the cost of meeting increasing demand and the realization of revenue from new contracts, and we cannot incur any additional debt.
Skinny Crisps needs your help to navigate through this time and get back on solid financial ground so that we can continue to make the crisps you have come to know and love. Please read our story and consider a contribution to help Skinny Crisps continue to meet the growing demand.
Any amount you can donate will be greatly appreciated.
Our History-How It All Began and What Happened
Myrna Mirow has always been a fabulous and creative cook, but who knew where that would lead! Not long after she moved to Colorado in 2001, bloodwork showed the beginning of insulin resistance and Myrna was advised to lower her carb intake. Myrna loved crunchy crackers, but this was long before grocery stores were stocking tasty low carb treats. The move toward lowering carbohydrate intake was in its infancy, and most low carb snacks tasted like cardboard. Not a problem for Myrna with her culinary prowess! She set out to design her own recipe for crunchy low carb, gluten-free crackers.
Once perfected, she would bring her crackers to the art gallery where she worked part-time. Myrna’s delicious crisps became all the buzz among her co-workers and she soon was supplying them for the gallery’s art openings. She was thrilled that people liked them, but how good they really were didn’t yet quite register with Myrna. Before she knew it, she was sharing a farmer’s market booth featuring her crackers with a friend who sold granola to Whole Foods, and Skinny Crisps were born! The feedback was awesome and demand was increasing, with people returning to the booth each week wanting more Skinny Crisps!
With encouragement and a huge confidence boost from her friends, gallery visitors, and farmers market customers, Myrna decided to send Skinny Crisp samples to Celiac support groups throughout the country. So much positive feedback…finally a low carb, a gluten-free cracker that didn’t taste like sawdust! Her Celiac group samplers started telling their local health food markets about Skinny Crisps and orders started to roll in. At this point, Myrna thought she might just have something here and decided to launch a website introducing Skinny Crisps to a broader market.
Demand continued to grow and Myrna tried to keep up, baking and fulfilling orders from her home kitchen. She was exhausted and frustrated by her kitchen’s limitations. Myrna’s next-door neighbor, Cheryl Katten, was one of her most loyal local customers. Myrna and Cheryl, sharing careers as successful clothing designers, became fast friends. Cheryl suffers from Celiac disease and was excited to try Myrna’s Skinny Crisps. She loved being able to enjoy a cracker without any ill effects.
One day, when Cheryl arrived to pick up an order, she found Myrna overwhelmed, bleary-eyed, and in tears. Cheryl immediately suggested that they partner, buy a commercial oven and move operations from Myrna’s kitchen to her empty two-car garage. The business continued to grow and before long, a garage operation wasn’t sufficient. With the local Whole Foods agreeing to carry Skinny Crisps, a fully compliant commercial kitchen was essential, and Skinny Crisps arranged to rent space from Justin’s Nut Butter, which also was experiencing success in the market.
Onward and Upward
The shared space with Justin’s worked beautifully for a while, but it soon was too cramped and clear that Skinny Crisps needed its own space. Demand was increasing, with Skinny Crisps for sale at Whole Foods, Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage throughout the Rocky Mtn region and mom and pop stores around the country. Then came a contract with Kroger and interest from Costco. Skinny Crisp moved to its own 3000 square foot facility in 2013, and in what seemed like a blink of an eye, went from local sales out of Myrna’s kitchen in 2008 to gross just shy of a $1,000,000 in 2014.
Myrna and Cheryl were thrilled with the growth but overwhelmed with the day to day operations of what was becoming a large company. They couldn’t run it like a mom and pop shop anymore and were excited when a local food production facility approached them. They claimed that their company could handle production and order fulfillment at a lower cost, leaving Myrna and Cheryl with time to pursue growing the business and maintain a better balance in their lives. With a Costco contract and more extensive exposure through Kroger on the horizon, they jumped at the opportunity, perhaps a bit too quickly.
Some things really are too good to be true.
How Quickly Things Change
Skinny Crisps sublet their current facility, moved their equipment to the production company’s facility and contracted with them for all production and distribution. Unfortunately, the relationship didn’t work. Skinny Crisps didn’t taste like Skinny Crisps anymore, and orders weren’t being fulfilled properly. It wasn’t long before customer complaints were mounting, orders were being canceled, and distributors were refusing to carry Skinny Crisps until the reliability of product and order fulfillment was restored.
Skinny Crisps promptly terminated the co-producers contract and bought out its sub-tenant so it could move back into its facility, reestablish the high-quality product and customer service standards to which its customers were accustomed, and regain its customers’, and the ultimate consumer’s, trust.
Skinny Crisps has loyal followers who are willing to give them a chance to make things right again, but the financial loss from this experience has been devastating.
In a year’s time, revenue dropped by more than two-thirds, and the expenses associated with the co-producer, its termination, associated legal fees, and the buyout of the subtenant left Skinny Crisps in the red for the first time in its history.
You Do What You Have to Do
Myrna and Cheryl believe. They believe in Skinny Crisps; they believe in their customers, and they believe that Skinny Crisps ultimately will enjoy the same success it had before IF they can meet its financial obligations as it rebuilds. They both have put themselves in personal financial peril in an effort to do so. They have refinanced their homes, maxed out their credit cards, and poured all that they have into re-building and making sure that their suppliers were paid.
Through determination, grit, and tenacity they have brought Skinny Crisps back to the high standards that everyone loves. Demand is increasing…many former customers have returned, and new contracts have emerged with Colorado Safeway stores Sprouts and Lucky's Markets. It is clear that demand for Skinny Crisps is increasing, and that it again will be a success if it can meet its financial obligations along the way. There’s no surplus in the bank and Cheryl and Myrna have nothing left to give of their own to make sure that suppliers are paid before Skinny Crisps is paid by its customers.
Skinny Crisps, and Myrna and Cheryl, will be so grateful for your support to get through this challenging transitional period so that they can continually grow their business and to serve the community with the best low carb gluten-free snacks on the market.
Organizer
Myrna Mirow
Organizer
Boulder, CO