The Players
John Zinck and Michael Jensen, who took over the business last January. Jensen is the sole owner.

The Problem
It seemed the business was for suckers only: Lollipops were a novelty gift, not a staple of anyone’s diet. The shop’s sales were anemic.

The Background
The two men stumbled upon the Lollipop Garden after leaving behind earlier careers. Jensen spent 10 years in the Navy stationed at Norfolk until he retired in 1996. Zinck was a nurse at a hospital in Philadelphia. They thought about going into the upholstery business, or catering. "We kept looking until we found something that piqued our interest," Zinck says.

Then they hit on the Lollipop Garden, a 5-year-old business tucked in a strip mall. It’s run like a florist shop — only it has a kitchen in back where the two men and one employee make lollipops "and then arrange them like a florist would arrange flowers," Zinck says.

They sold balloons and cookies, too, and made a killing during that first Valentine’s Day season. "But when summer came, there was not enough retail business. It was enough to keep us going, but there was nothing else. We wanted more out of the store," he says.

The Solution
In August, Zinck and Jensen met Sheila Guillette, an instructor with the Hampton Roads Small Business Development Center. Guillette teaches a new course called the NxLevel Program. NxLevel is a pilot program that’s actually two courses –– one for start-ups and one for existing small businesses. The second-level course offers businesses help from experienced professionals.

Zinck and Jensen signed up and "got slapped in the head" during Guillette’s first lecture when she started talking about the wholesale market. The two realized they were limiting themselves by not marketing to wholesale buyers such as amusement parks and larger retailers, Zinck says. "Who cares where it goes, as long as we’re selling it?"

Using what they’d learned in that first class, the two developed a plan for pricing wholesale products and creating a catalog. Then they got really lucky. They had begun describing themselves as "wholesalers" on their Web page. In November they received a call from a Maryland-based company working on a Disney on Ice production of the musical "Grease." The company wanted some lollipop samples and asked if the two could create 1950s-style lollipops.

Zinck and Jensen came up with music notes, poodles and lightning bolts. They also created a new item — three lollipops together in the silhouette of Mickey Mouse.

Disney liked what it saw. It ordered 1,300 each of the three Grease-oriented lollipops and 4,800 of the Mickey sets.

The lollipops will go on sale when the "Grease on Ice" show starts in Buffalo, N.Y., this month. The Disney deal has turned them into dedicated wholesalers. The next step is to finish the catalog and get other wholesale customers. They also plan to set up a larger production facility. "We want them all," Zinck says. "All the amusement parks. ... We’re not afraid of work."

If you have a case study in small-business problem solving, e-mail llarance@va-business.com.