Almond Roca rocks it in China
When most candy companies are ramping up for the Valentine’s Day and Easter crushes, Brown & Haley is also concentrating on New Year’s Day. In China.
Tacoma-based Brown & Haley, a century-old candy maker with 275 employees and an estimated $50 million in sales, has found unexpected fortune in the world’s fastest-growing market—greater China—which includes mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and now accounts for 20 percent of the company’s revenues. The company sells up to 1.6 million pounds of its buttery, crunchy, chocolate-covered Almond Roca candy during the Chinese New Year, which can fall anywhere between January 21 and February 20 on the Gregorian calendar. This makes it China’s second-most-popular gift candy behind Ferrero Rocher, and ahead of such global giants as Cadbury and Nestlé.
Breaking into the lucrative Chinese market can be tricky. Mattel shuttered its flagship Barbie store in Shanghai this year because of poor sales. Best Buy stores also withdrew. But consultants say the Chinese market remains a huge opportunity.
“China has 700 million people who are not really part of the modern market, but are just coming in,” says Sidney Rittenberg Sr., founder and president of Rittenberg and Associates, which advises U.S. companies operating in China. “It’s an enormous, undeveloped market.”
Brown & Haley’s story is a case of how one small company made it big in China. To be sure, the success involved more than a little luck. Roca happens to mean “happy family” in Cantonese, the gold foil in which the candy is wrapped represents wealth to many Chinese, and the red on Almond Roca’s packaging symbolizes good fortune. That happy coincidence makes the candy an appropriate purchase for New Year’s observances. Still, sales didn’t come without some smart strategic positioning.
While Almond Roca was made popular worldwide by American GIs during World War II, Brown & Haley officially moved into China in 1988, when it began offering its candy at the government-run Guangzhou Friendship Department Store. Despite modest success, as recently as 2003 the company sold only about $1 million worth of candy in the country. But then sales suddenly took off. The company won’t disclose precise figures, but its revenue from the China market is now estimated to be as high as $10 million a year.
What happened?
Working with a Chinese distribution partner, Brown & Haley made the decision to establish Almond Roca as a premium Western brand. The familiar candy in a can was
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