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This story is about how a 21 year old took one idea, three books and five years of hustle to create a $360 million candy company. 

Tara Bosch started Decaled Out when she was a 17-year old university student. They made wall decals with inspirational quotes. It didn’t work out. 

But one day she was talking to her grandmother who mentioned that she regretted eating candy and the impact it had on her. Tara loved candy, just like her grandmother, and an idea hit her. Could you make candy that wasn’t bad for you?

There’s a common belief that ideas are worthless, but I think they’re multipliers on execution. And this was a good one. 

Tara had read Peter Thiels book Zero to One and knew that creating a radical value proposition (her words) was key to building a successful business. You couldn’t just make a small improvement, you had to create something new.  

So she got to work. She picked up gummy bear molds and ingredients from the grocery store and over a summer tested hundreds of low sugar gummy bear recipes in her dark basement suite. 

She finally landed on a recipe and originally called the company Stevi-Sweets, but she didn’t want to be limited by an ingredient so it was later changed to Smart Sweets (and now doesn’t use artificial sweeteners). 

By now Tara was 21, had no assets except a Honda Fit and a dream. She bet on herself, quit university and took out a $105,000 loan. 

She spent $100,000 on her first candy run, the minimum order from the co-packer. She was all in. Worst case she thought, she’d have some debt and be living on a couch. 

Getting into stores turned out to be hard. Tara called, emailed and showed up at a local Vancouver Safeway 50 times before she got a response. But she was tenacious and worked non-stop. 

Tara had also read Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek and knew the power of niches. She decided to market to the weight watchers and fitness communities. She didn’t have a budget so she spent 10 hours a day on social media making connections. If someone showed interest, she would send them a pack of her low sugar candy. 

Her goal was for those communities to feel like Smart Sweets was everywhere. It began to work as people tried the product and started to talk about it online. 

She kept selling to retail locations and when they were in less than 100 stores in Canada, Fox Business reached out and asked if they could do a story on her. 

After she appeared on Fox, Whole Foods called. She had tried sending them messages to no avail, but a buyer had seen the Fox coverage and wanted to launch Smart Sweets nationwide. 

At the end of the first year they were in 1,300 stores and Tara had hired 10 people to help out. They had sold $2.2 million worth of low sugar candy. It was working. 

In Tara’s opinion there was no silver bullet to growth. It was just an accumulation of actions, like a snowball that you had to push uphill. 

And Tara seized on every opportunity. Dragon’s Den (Canada’s Shark Tank) reached out and featured her on the show. Then they landed Kroger and Costco. 

At this point the company couldn’t get anymore debt. A retail partner offered $100,000 for 40% of the business and warned Tara that competitors were coming. She turned down the offer and raised $3 million from other investors. 

Year two sales hit $16 million. Year three $60 million. Year four… $125 million. 

At this point Tara was 26 years old and was looking for a partner to help her grow globally. She sold a majority stake in the company to TPG at a $360 million dollar valuation. She remains the largest single shareholder and is now on the board and works on strategy and product. 

Other interesting notes:

• Tara found a young entrepreneur tech focused accelerator and even though she was working on candy thought “if you don’t try you don’t know”, she got in

• Tara actually googled how to start a successful food company when she started and didn’t know there was a sum function in excel (a finance whiz was an early hire)

• They didn’t spend any meaningful amount on ads until year three

• Tara often thought about the grand vision and worked backwards on how to get there, an example is that she wanted to go global so she wouldn’t launch in a region in a country, she would launch nationwide so everyone who saw it on social media could buy the product

• Tara had pages highlighted from How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis (horrible title, but also one of my favorite books) and now has them framed on her walls

What could you do? 

I think adjusting the levels of ingredients is an interesting way to come up with new ideas. Olipop built a successful company by reducing the sugar in soda. Dan O’s Seasoning built a company on low salt spice options. So when you’re going through your day, think about what you could add or take out of everything you put in your mouth. 

Do instant ramen noodles have to contain 80% of your daily salt intake..?

Great Video on Tara’s Journey

Sources:

• Shelby Church (video above)

• Female Startup Podcast

• Business Wire

• BC Business

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