Tuesday, July 10, 2018
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Understand how to take your artisan food product or craft to a market, begin selling in stores and launch into the greater marketplace.

There are many aspects you may need to plan for in order to make a cottage industry expansion successful. Learn from these experts about local marketplaces, the ecommerce business and appropriate platforms, how to scale up your production, as well as, trademarks and licensing. Take your cottage craft to the next level! Great for value added and artisan food products, household and beauty products, fabric arts and decor items, jewelry and visual arts.

Our Panelists

Jennifer Spencer

Jennifer Spencer Art
SBDC Creative Consultant

Jennifer Spencer has over 20 years business strategy and entrepreneurial experience with demonstrated results in start-up environments. Jennifer motivates people, produces consistent innovations, pioneers creative work and provides marketing successes with a repeated proven ability to produce superior returns from limited resources. Her knowledge spans multiple industries including technology, banking, retail, wholesale, and manufacturing. She has invented and patented products, commercialized products on an international scale, and run a profitable ecommerce store.

Jennifer's business won a national award for Best New Company & Best New Product of 2011, Stevie Awards, was noted by ABC News on list of Best of CES 2011, Consumer Electronic Show, and received an Audience Choice Award in Berlin, Germany, IFA, 2011. She has acted as a turn around consultant to provide strategy and action steps for a company struggling with profitability to shift into a strong profit position. Jennifer has a BA degree in Economics from Miami University.

 

Sari Kimbell

Cultivate Consulting
SBDC Consultant
  
Sari Kimbell brings over 20 years of experience in the food industry to the SBDC to work with food-related businesses including value-added product makers, growers and service-based establishments such as restaurants, food trucks and caterers looking to start or expand their business. Her experience in farming, purchasing, wholesale, grocery retail, restaurant front and back of the house, starting her own food business and managing a commissary kitchen gives her an understand of the food industry as a whole. Sari is knowledgeable and experienced in supply chain management, licenses, certifications, profitability, retail and wholesale distribution, packaging, ecommerce, marketing, branding, and sales strategies.

Sari has combined her passion for the food industry with her marketing, event planning and graphic design skills to create a unique niche for her own consulting company working with startups, established businesses and non-profits. Her passion is working with food business start-ups, helping them navigate the business development cycle to launch successfully and business ready to grow and take their business to the next level.

Heather Johnson

Co Director LaDeDa Performing Arts and FoCo Fringe Festival

Heather brings 14 years of diverse performance, production, and teaching experience to our community. Her recent focus is on developing new work and teaching actors to devise plays from scratch that are meaningful to them and their community. Heather holds a Performance Arts degree from Westmont College and studied clowning and physical theatre in San Francisco with Moshe Cohen, the founder of Clowns Without Borders, as well as Leonard Pitt and James Donlan of the Flying Actors Studio. Heather has a strong commitment to lifelong learning and seeks out training in movement and physical theatre across the country to share with her students. She also continues to tour original pieces of theatre each summer, most recently taking her co-written two-woman show Mad and a Goat to New York, Austin, Santa Barbara, and Denver, with Portland and Berkley. Heather can be found onstage and behind the scenes locally with Bas Bleu, Open Stage Theatre, and the Fort Collins Fringe Festival. She is also a founding member of the Comedy Brewers with whom she performs short-form comedy improv every month. She is currently Co-Owner/Director/Teacher at La-De-Da Performing Arts.

Dulcie Willis

Co DirectorLaDeDa Performing Arts and FoCo Fringe Festival

​Dulcie Willis holds a Master of Arts in Arts Administration degree from Goucher College along with BA degrees in Theatre Arts Education from the University of Northern Colorado and Musical Theatre from Mesa State College. Dulcie has taught Arts Event Management, drama, speech, film, dance, and English in Taiwan, South Korea, Arizona, and Colorado. Dulcie has directed, choreographed, and produced over 40 productions for high school and community theatre, with award-winning work featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. She most recently directed OpenStage Theatre & Company's production of August: Osage County, receiving the 2017 Henry Award for Outstanding Direction of a Play from the Colorado Theatre Guild. Together with Heather Johnson, she now owns and operates La-De- Da Performing Arts, a local theatre school for children and adults, and produces the annual Fort Collins Fringe Festival, now in its 6th year.