Seattle Chocolate Story

Seattle Chocolate Company LLC is a private company founded in Tukwila, Washington state in 1992. Chocoholic Jean became a part of 18 years ago. In 2005 she and her husband became sole owners of the now 11 year old company. She has the enjoyable job of packaging and marketing different lines of truffles and premium chocolate. She was an at-home mom for 12 years and before that she worked four years as an account manager in marketing and communications for Microsoft. She Claims the experience of working in advertising and packaging at Microsoft, was really helpful to her business. Seattle Chocolates is a chocolate gift company; we buy the chocolate from Germany and make confections from it. My main job is packaging we want to give it a premium look that is as good as the chocolate inside. Since most people judge a book by its cover, we wanted the packaging to be as enticing as possible; it’s the best way to get people to try the product.

She was driven into the business when her youngest child went off to kindergarten and was looking for something to do. It was her husband that suggested she join Seattle Chocolates, who was on a downward spiral and he felt could use her help. At the time her and her husband owned a stake in the company. She started working from 9AM to 2PM without pay and six weeks into the job the CEO quit. She did not have any experience running the company; however, it did not take her long to know that is what she wanted to do. At Microsoft she was not a target for the products, but chocolate, she was always a chocoholic. She quickly assumed the role of CEO and yes she is now getting paid. It was a 100% learning experience and she learned by working hands on with the staff, helping them with on the job first hand problem solving.

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Seattle Chocolates Story Continued:

It was the first manufacturing facility she had ever worked in, it was a huge learning curve. When I first joined the company it was in survival mode with a lot of fires to put out. Also since the former CEO handled operations, I lost my operations manager and there was only one marketing person, so I pretty much had to do everything. A day with Jean at Seattle Chocolates could not have been more varied and she loved every bit of it.

Today she focuses on developing and maintaining a good internal structure, making sure the staff in place are the best. She does not manage from an ivory tower; she is totally involved with product development and in touch with marketing and her accounts. She attends all the trade shows so she can talk to customers and other vendors at the show; this keeps her up to speed on the latest developments in the field. The company has come a long way under Jean and now employs between 60 to 100 people with several Vice Presidents working with her running different facets of the company.