In 1981, Cheryl Krueger and her college roomate, Carly Walker, opened the very first Cheryl’s Cookies in Columbus, Ohio. The modest storefront sold six kinds of cookies, along with soda pop. Within seven years, the company broadened its offerings to include gifts and desserts. As the company grew, new desserts were added: gourmet brownies, cakes and fancy cookies, including seasonal cut-out cookies topped with a signature buttercream frosted. Cheryl’s also expanded its gift business by producing seasonal catalogs filled with gift ideas for every occasion, and adding a customer-focused business gift department to better serve all customers.
Today, Cheryl’s is a multi-faceted business comprised of retail stores in Ohio, a high-traffic Internet business and a successful Business Gfit Division, all headquartered in the Columbus suburb of Westerville, Ohio. They specialize in gourmet cookies featuring over 30 different flavors of cookies, although there customer favorite is and has always been the Buttercream Frosted cutout cookie, that changes colors and shapes for every season. They strive to be the premiere dessert gifting company offering all different categories of gifting from Thank You, Birthday, Baby, Sympathy, Thinking of You and all seasonal holidays. Cheryls also has branched out to wholesale business entities such as QVC, Zulily, Amazon Prime and supplies a food service business to Golden Corral, Chicken Salad Chick, Donatos and Roosters.
Cheryls continues to grow and deliver smiles to their customers by providing a delicious cookie gift to brighten their day.
MENTOR SUMMARY
My mentor is Michelle Speaks, she is a Senior Merchandiser at Cheryl’s Cookies. Michelle has always envisioned herself in a merchandising role. She thought that she would always be in the fashion industry because that's where she started out before turning to the cookie field. Michelle realized then that the thought processes and skill sets for a merchant were actually the same whether it was apparel or food gifting area.
She also shared with me some of the main responsibilities of being a Senior Merchant. Those skills include being able to identify assortment plans, develop new products and designs that the customers want. The educational requirements for pursuing a career in merchandising is to have a bachelor's degree in merchandising. She also suggested that any type of internship experience for a semester in college would be beneficial for entering this career field. In addition having work history and background in retail sales would be helpful as well.
Some personal qualities, skills and abilities needed for a career in merchandising would require leadership and organizational skills, and also being ambitious. For a merchant its equally important to be analytical as much as you are creative. The advantages with being a merchant is that it is a very fast pace, exciting career while being responsible for a wide variety of tasks. The disadvantage is that because it is face pace, you have to be very flexible and willing to make changes as necessary for the business and the sales trends.
This career field is a competitive market. Columbus is very fortunate though to have many retailer headquarters based in our city so there are several companies with job opportunities for merchants available, such as Express, Bath and Body Works, Abercrombie, DSW and Justice. This career field impacts your work/life balance a lot. Since Cheryl’s is in the food gifting company, their business is very seasonal based. Therefore during holidays, Cheryl’s is extremely busy shipping out gifts to customers. All employees pitch in during these high peak times to assist. The advice Michelle gave me at the end was to take Marketing classes in high school and college, work in retail sales and gain experience with products and customers. Some other college activities to prepare yourself for this career field is to take the internship opportunities with a home office merchant focus and to stay close to trend and market place awareness.