We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sofia Hudson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sofia, appreciate you joining us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?

I have had many career pivots and look forward to more in my future. I began college, at Parsons School of Design, in the fashion program and moved over to furniture design when I learned of a fashion designer that was turning her fashions into furniture pieces.

After working as a furniture designer, in New York, for many years I returned to my hometown of Kansas City to launch a furniture gallery where my mother-in-law made desserts for our monthly gallery openings. She created delicious decorated sugar cookies and people started coming to the gallery just to eat them, so I eventually launched it into a business.

After many years of running both companies, side-by-side, I closed the furniture gallery and went to work for a sheep cheese company to learn the grocery industry. Five years ago, I decided to focus on the cookie company, Swoon, full-time and I am currently working to grow it into a nationally recognized decorated cookie company. However, I would like to sell it, eventually, to next work on tackling the problem of food waste in the restaurant industry. I’m sure that won’t be the last venture either!

Sofia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Swoon – Cookie Crafters creates exquisite buttercream cookies that are personalized for celebrations, events and corporate branding campaigns. Through our exceptionally delicious and thoughtful products, attentive client services and pain-free fulfillment, we deliver our customer’s sweetest sentiments. Nothing makes us happier than to see the joy on people’s faces when they see their personalized cookies for the first time.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We had to move our business four times in four months, in the fall on 2019. We had been in our previous location for ten years and had finally outgrown the space. We found a new tenant for old space and a new location. When we moved into the new space, we quickly found that it was falling apart and we could not safely build out our new bakery. We were able to use our amazing network of entrepreneur friends to secure several temporary spaces until we found our new, and even better, space for our current location, The power of community helped us overcome that hurdle and we settled into our new space, just before the pandemic hit. . .

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Swoon began as an experiment while I owned a furniture gallery. We were offering our decorated sugar cookies for gallery opening and people started asking if they could purchase them. The company began in our home kitchen, on evenings and weekends, and after several years we realized we needed a commercial space to produce the product. We launched one of the first Kickstarter campaigns to fund a small kitchen and we met our goal. We built our small kitchen in a shared space, with an architecture firm, and at holidays there would be pans of cookies covering every computer desk and drafting table!

When the architecture firm moved out we found another bakery to share the kitchen with while we continued to grow our business. Once that baker moved on, we took the leap to keep the space for only ourselves. Our small kitchen was where we produced cookies, sold products, taught classes and officed. It was in a constant state of flux to adapt to the project of the day.

After 10 years in that space, we finally acknowledged that we had outgrown that space and tripled in size to our current location. We scaled up in equipment and purchased as much as we could used and from auctions. We continue to add equipment, piece by piece, as we are able to afford it.

I had invested a lot of “friends and family” funding into the furniture gallery with an idea of how the business would work and had to make many changes to make the company successful. After that experience, I wasn’t willing to do it again, with Swoon, so I continued to work full-time while hiring young artists to work at Swoon. When I finally realized the salary I was making was less than what I was paying out, I made the leap to working at Swoon full-time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.justswoon.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justswoon/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justswoon
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/justswoon

Image Credits
Heather Morrow Photography 8183 Productions