MSNBC’s Your Business just kicked off its 12th season and is about to broadcast its 500th show on MSNBC! Here are three brands that appeared on the show as small businesses and have since “made the leap” to become multi-million-dollar success stories.
Edible Arrangements
Tariq Farid founded innovative fruit bouquet company, Edible Arrangements, in 1999.
Farid first appeared on Your Business in 2006. At the time, there were fewer than 400 Edible Arrangements stores in the U.S. Over the next five years, Edible Arrangements exploded across the globe, with more than 1,300 stores opening in nine countries.
“I don’t think in business there is such a thing as growing too fast unless it gets out of control,” said Farid.
Today, Edible Arrangements is a global brand with over half a billion dollars in revenue every year.
Vita Coco
Michael Kirban is the co-founder of Vita Coco. Like Farid, Kirban and his best bud, Ira Liran, hoped to introduce Americans to a different way to get their daily nutrients.
“VitaCoco is the market leader in one of the newest categories to hit the beverage business,” said Kirban of his coconut water brand. “It’s nature’s sports drink.”
Though coconut water had been popular in other areas of the world like South America, Asia, and the Caribbean for decades, many people in the U.S. had never tasted it. Nevertheless, Kirban says that in its first year in operation, Vita Coco was profitable and sold over a million packs.
Vita Coco has since attracted celebrity investors from Madonna to Matthew McConaughey, and has been endorsed by social media darlings like Chrissy Teigen and Rihanna. Bloomberg even reported that Vita Coco was the world’s largest coconut water brand in February, saying that the brand expected “to approach $1 billion in sales” this year.
Vosges Haut-Chocolat
When Katrina Markoff’s Vosges Haut-Chocolat appeared on Your Business it was already a $12 million company. However, her company’s growth had stalled, and Markoff needed an intervention.
“I really, really like to grow,” said Markoff. “I don’t know. It’s some sort of weird addiction for constant improvement and growth.”
Your Business brought in author and business expert, Doug Tatum, to help Markoff figure out where she might be going wrong.
“This is a company classic situation size-wise, where it's too big to be small and too small to be big,” said Tatum. Together, Tatum and Markoff strategized ways to “simplify and restructure” Vosges Haut-Chocolat’s manufacturing process without losing the avant-garde flare that the company had become known for.
Nine years later, Vosges Haut-Chocolat boasts annual revenues of nearly $100 million with distribution everywhere from Whole Foods to Starbucks.
