We spend more time on TikTok than we’d like to admit, so we’re putting our excessive screen time to use by spotlighting the emerging brands and intriguing trends crossing our FYPs.
“I’m opening a candy shop in the West Village,” is the first line of nearly every TikTok Elly Ross (@ellybellyeats) has posted since July, a simple hook that’s drawn in millions of viewers to loyally follow the opening of her NYC shop Lil Sweet Treat.
The pick-and-mix candy store—featuring gummy candies imported from Spain, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, and more—opened its doors just a few days ago, but Ross has already amassed a community of “candy connoisseurs” who’ve followed the equal parts sweet and sour journey of opening a retail store, from location scouting through renovations and eventually her soft opening late last month.
Ross grew up in a “very Korean household,” immigrating to the US as a young child, falling in love with sweet treats by trading snacks from different cultures with her classmates, she told Retail Brew. But with the importance of financial stability “ingrained” in her, she’s since worked in tech (she’s currently head of product at e-commerce startup ChaChing). That was until the Swedish candy craze took hold, especially in New York City, revealing to Ross a gap in the market for a shop offering unique international sweets she felt she could fill.
“A lot of the skill sets that I’ve honed and grown as being a product manager have really helped me think about critically, ‘What is the user journey for someone coming to get candy, and how do we make every single step in that journey the most magical it can be?’” she said.
Many of those questions have been answered by the candy connoisseurs on TikTok—a platform she’d used for food reviews before shifting it in July to chronicle the opening of Lil Sweet Treat—who are helping not only build hype but inform decisions she’s made along the way.
Taste test: With her videos, Ross set out to detail the ups and downs of her journey, aiming to foster excitement and inspire other founders. In one video, she shares that she forgot to put a call to action on the “coming soon” poster hung in the shop’s window, amassing 1.9 million views. She’s talked about the shop’s outside wall being graffitied (which got 1.7 million views), delayed candy shipments, finding the perfect shelving, and running through the city in her pajamas to sign for a delivery.
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“If me documenting my journey and sharing not only the successes but the failures and the setbacks and the iterations that we’ve had to do can help some other founder in their journey, or inspire someone else to take the leap to follow their passion or their dream, to me, that’s everything,” she said.
The responses to her videos, especially the seemingly mundane ones where she removes the film from her shop windows, “shocks me every single day,” Ross said. Her TikToks have garnered more than 600K likes, a comment from Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran, and a community that’s acted as a sounding board for many of the shop’s details. The candy connoisseurs have offered their insight for the bags offered at the shop (they wanted small and large options) and loyalty program (they wanted it to be free, and pay off relatively quickly, like Dunkin, many said.)
“If you’re not listening to your customers, you’re not building something for the community, you’re building something for yourself,” Ross said. “And that’s not something I want to do.”
Her TikTok presence has also helped her find an artist to create a mural on the brick wall outside the shop, secure hundreds of email subscribers, and find brands like Poppi and Swoon to partner with for the shop’s opening. Ross and her husband are bootstrapping the business thus far, and thanks to the word spread on TikTok, have no plans for paid marketing efforts.
Now, a search on TikTok for Lil Sweet Treat yields not only Ross’s videos, but a slew of consumers chronicling their trips to the store and taste testing and reviewing the candies they picked. Next, Ross plans to open a Lil Sweet Treat e-commerce store, and aims to integrate treats from additional countries, she said.
Main character moment: When it comes to TikTok, Ross said “your voice and your perspective is really the main thing that differentiates you” on the platform, and she’s found a sweet spot being “vulnerable” and “transparent.”
She’s also found that TikTok has helped her keep the customer in mind constantly, especially as she’s answering questions about the business decisions she’s made in her comment section.
“If someone asks, ‘Why’d you do this as opposed to this?’ there’s a response, there’s a lot of thought that goes into everything,” she said. “Being able to share that is probably, in my opinion, one of the most important things that you can hear from a founder.”