Fluffy Crunch on innovating and re-imagining in business
In this episode, hear from self-confessed floss boss, Michael Karamallis, co-founder of fairy floss business Fluffy Crunch. When Michael and his wife, Paola were hit by redundancy they focused on their strengths on their new business venture making fairy floss, by keeping a sharp eye on what Michael calls the 'three F's': fun, flavour, and family.
Fluffy Crunch offers something different to their customers who crave the nostalgia of the carnival classic and doing it in a daring way is key to their brand.
When the coronavirus pandemic forced Fluffy Crunch to move online in early 2020, it turned out to be a canny business move, with sales climbing as they'd never seen before.
Michael said of the move online: "Sales increased by over 500% in that first three months, from March to June. Our online sales weren't very significant, because we were at a lot of events.
"When the events industry came to a halt, we had to transition our customers to buy it online. And it's not something that you do, you know?
"Fairy floss is something you do at a festival or an event. It's not something that you buy online. So it was a very difficult process to get our head around it, but also to get our customer to think, 'You know what? It is something that you can buy. It is a gift. It is packaged nicely'."
Michael thrives on the business aspect of Fluffy Crunch and when asked what advice he'd give other business owners, he said: "Fail fast. And what I mean by that is, test your ideas, test your products, your service, your concepts, as quickly as possible, and as cheaply as possible, just to make sure that your product, or idea, is going to be viable.