We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Crystal Holloway . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Crystal below.

Crystal , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

Big risks for a small family. In 2020, covid hit our family hard. My mom passed away and then my job was just gone. I was in sales and covid shut them down. We lost half our income and my husband, who was working 3 jobs had become essential in his full time job. So to help cover losing my job and his 2 part time jobs we thought let’s open our own business because we are crazy. So Florida Boys Company was born. We made all natural soaps and beard oils . It was awesome, until Florida switched its rules around. So we stopped making beard and beauty care and pivoted the business into Sugar Beards Candy in 2021. Starting another business from ground up was a lot of work. Permits, inspections, food safety classes and more. But we went from 2 cotton candy machines and 10 flavors, to over 30 flavors and working events like The All Star Momster Trucks and The Tackle Women’s Football League. So much fun! We added the best Fresh Squeeze Lemonade and other products like popcorn and snowcones. We have the best customers! And people will travel to find our bright pink tent. And soon we are taking another big risk by releasing our own line of sugars and cotton candy made with HHC. Pot’ncandy will be ready for release September 2022! True adult cotton candy and sugar. Made with high grade HHC. We are so excited to see where this new adventure will take us!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Crystal Holloway and I’m a mom of 2 boys, 2 dogs, 3 giant tortoises and 4 cats. My hubby is Josh and we started our business during the pandemic. We had to pivot our business from beard and beauty care products (2020) and my husband suggested Cotton Candy (2021), and we as a family decided heck yes. Let’s do it! Sugar Beards Candy is a brainchild of a family meeting. We went from 10 flavors and 2 very slow machines, to over 30 flavors and 8 machines. Doing small shows with a couple hundred to doing stadiums full. We have got to meet some famous, some fun, and some awesome people. See shows we wouldn’t have and make money to support our family! We not only have gourmet cotton candy, but fresh buttered popcorn, fresh squeezed lemonade and snowcones. Our customers come from miles away and always stop when they see our bright pink tent! We love our customers! Coming soon is our newest products: Pot’ncandy and HHC sugar for adults! Helping adults chill since 2022!
So we have a wide range of products for the whole family. One stop shop for fair type foods.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2020 we dove head first into making soaps, beard oils and lotions…the only problem? Florida considers beard oils and lotions cosmetics. Cosmetics in Florida are considered pharmaceutical products. Producing that kind of product is stupid expensive here. Soap was the exception and could be made by anyone. Now this was unknown to us. No one once said as we were going through getting licensed and insured, “Hey you know you can’t do that without a manufacturer.” We didn’t know until another soaper told us and I went into panic mode research. And sure enough, we were not going to be producing beard oils and lotions anymore. But now we were out of business a year after starting. So we had a family meeting. It was time to pivot and change the direction of our business. And change we did. Completely. My husband had been saying for a while he wanted to do food. So we did a *LOT* more research this time and figured out that Cotton Candy was a great business that fit for us.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

From the very beginning we did not want to be beholden to an investor or bank for our business. We used savings and credit cards to start both businesses. Now that won’t work with all businesses, but the overhead for Sugar Beards Candy was (of course) the most expensive when we started because we had to buy equipment and pay for a commercial kitchen. But I have a very handy husband that has been able to fix any mechanical issues. We started with 2 mid grade, commercial machines. They were the least expensive with good reviews. We priced different sugars for cotton candy and found the lowest price and started out with a half a case of each flavor. We already had a tent, tables, and a fan. But the most expensive thing we had to buy was a generator. Logo was done through Fiverr and social media platforms are free. Use them to the best of your ability.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Www.instagram.com/sugarbeardscandy
• Facebook: Www.facebook.com/sugarbeardscandy
• Other: @sugarbeardscandy tiktok [email protected]