Frankford Candy Finds Solution To Keep Up With Changing Requirements Of Its Growing Business

Historically, Philadelphia, PA based Frankford Candy specialized in manufacturing seasonal chocolate products. Founder, Samuel Himmelstein started out making Easter bunnies in 1947. Now, the company also imports non-chocolate candy products and markets them throughout the U.S. with the marketing help of some of today's biggest children's TV characters and toys. "That was a big shift in our business," said Stuart Selarnick, CEO of Frankford Candy. "For the first fifty years, we were a seasonal chocolate manufacturer. Five years ago, we changed our business model."

Frankford Candy has exclusive license agreements with the Nickelodeon cable network and Mattel, among others. That means it can use trademarks like SpongeBob SquarePants, Rugrats, Barbie, Hot Wheels and Scooby-Doo on candy packaging. The CEO describes it as a high-risk strategy, but one that has helped the company develop a reputation for innovation within the industry. Frankford Candy has overcome competitive disadvantages in the chocolate market against giants like Hershey, M&M Mars and Nestle. "In today's marketplace, you need to deliver branded or licensed goods," he said. "We basically try to level the playing field by licensing and co-branding." The family-owned firm is fast-growing, despite being one of the few remaining independent candy manufacturers in the region.

Frankford Candy's successful licensing strategy led to strong revenue growth that began to tax the requirements of their existing system, a custom developed application running on an outdated IBM System/36. "We needed a system that was flexible enough to keep up with the changing requirements of our growing business," said Nathan Hoffman, VP of Operations. "Our old system was very difficult to change and maintain and we were having trouble complying with customer and industry demands such as UCCnet synchronization and EDI."

Frankford Candy does business with the "Who's Who" of retailers. Customers include names like: Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target, Albertsons, and Kroger. In order to do business with sophisticated customers, suppliers like Frankford Candy must be able to comply with the myriad of conditions placed upon them. This includes the ability to handle special packaging requirements, specific labeling requirements, EDI, and deductions processing. "Finding a software package that could support the requirements of big box retailers was absolutely critical to our selection process," said Hoffman.