Sherri Terao

Co-Founder, Kokologo Chocolates
www.kokologo.com

Buy handmade chocolates for yourself and make someone else’s life better. That’s the notion behind Kokologo, the gourmet chocolate business that Sherri Terao is launching with business partner Cynthia Womack.

Terao says the goal of Kokologo is to help charitable causes benefiting women and children, which are close to her heart. As a psychologist, she has spent 10 years mostly specializing in helping abused children and their families. Both Terao and Womack, a biologist who focuses on developing new medicines, are running Kokologo while juggling full-time careers.

Aloha and Entrepreneurial Spirits

“For me personally, it has always been important to be doing something to give back to the community. I grew up in Hawaii, which emphasizes a family-oriented culture, with the Aloha spirit and the idea of caring and nurturing being important to the local people.”

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

“My first business with the other owner of Kokologo was called Chicago Evening. The idea was to take the guesswork out of how to set up a special evening out in Chicago – we would take care of dinner reservations, flower arrangements, music, etc. But we found it was tough to break into the event planning business in Chicago, where many companies had been doing this for a number of years.”

Try Again

“We spun Chicago Evening into a business-networking company. Every other month, we would get approximately 60 businesses together and each company representative would have 30 seconds to present their company to the group of individuals. Food sponsors and wine distributors donated products to the events. That went quite well for a while, for about a year and a half. We grew our networking and e-mail lists to over 1000 people.”

Sweet Way to Show Your Gratitude

“In 2003, Kokologo was founded when we were looking to provide gifts to vendors who were donating food and wine to our business networking events. We wanted to give them something as a thank-you gift. Both my partner and I like chocolate, but we wanted to personalize it.”

Cocoa + Logo = Kokologo

“Through a relative in Hawaii, I was able to connect with a manufacturer. We partnered to offer private-label chocolates to small- to medium-sized businesses and help them to promote their companies with personalized handmade chocolates. We did that for a year in Chicago and had a good response. People loved the product, liked the personalized labels and were also happy they were not required to purchase large quantities.”

Is There Less Guilt about Eating a Box Because It Benefits a Good Cause?

“A little over a year ago, we created a retail line that enables us to give back to causes that are important to us and communicate the message that when people buy this product, they are also giving back in some way. We continue to do the private-label side of the business, but we are trying to move Kokologo to the forefront of making a difference for these causes.”

“October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we have partnered with several regional Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation affiliates in the cities of Honolulu, Chicago, and Charlotte to provide chocolates for their breast cancer survivors’ conferences and Race for the Cure events. In turn, the regional affiliates will inform their race participants that Kokologo chocolates are available for sale, with 10 percent of the net proceeds of the sales going back to the regional affiliate organizations.”

Getting Your Hands on Handmade Hawaiian Chocolates

“Our Hawaiian chocolate line features hand-dipped, hand-tempered chocolates. We offer whole macadamia nuts in milk chocolate, pineapple snow macadamia nut clusters and solid chocolate breast-cancer-ribbon squares. Right now we’re selling the ribbon squares through Neiman Marcus in Hawaii and Dean and Deluca in Charlotte, North Carolina. The ribbon squares will also be available in-store and online at Nikkei Traditions, a store in San Jose’s Japantown The macadamia nut chocolates are available online at The Breast Cancer Site’s online store and in-store at Tiki Tiki, a Hawaiian store in San Francisco.

Distribution Struggle

“It’s taken a few months, but we’re slowly getting our products into retail stores and Internet sites. We’re targeting retail stores, Internet gourmet food sites, charitable foundations and mail order catalogs. We also plan to have a Web page where people can go to create their own labels for boxes of chocolates and we will drop-ship the products to them. Right now we mainly take orders for private-label boxes via phone.”

Big Move Makes More Time for Business

“The company is myself and my business partner and we still maintain full-time careers. I’ve also relied heavily on my mom, who lives in Hawaii and helps oversee some of the logistical aspects with our Hawaii manufacturers. A year ago, I left Chicago and moved to California. I started a private (psychology) practice here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which enabled me to be more flexible to fit Kokologo in my life. Previously, I had an 8-5 job as a research associate at a university in Chicago, and I wasn’t able to do both.”

Greatest Success

“Developing the retail line and getting our first sale with Neiman Marcus (in Hawaii) was a great feeling. I still remember the elation of getting that first account. That makes me feel like we’re onto a good product. If we can sell our chocolate, we can give a portion of the proceeds back to the causes, and that makes me happy.”

Greatest Challenges

“Maintaining a full-time career in addition to starting a business. I am constantly working around the clock. Funding issues are a big concern. Always having to fund the business out of your own personal pocket is difficult over the course of a few years. Mentorship and support for women-owned businesses is a challenge. When you have limited time and resources, it isn’t always easy to seek out support.”

Words of Advice

“For us, a significant piece of the business has been developing partnerships. We have a page on our Web site dedicated to ‘Ohana,’ which means ‘family’ in Hawaiian. Not necessarily blood-related family, but people who you choose to bring into your life. It’s important to us to promote those companies that we value, so we provide link exchanges (on our Web site) as a way to enhance those partnerships.”