The Wages of Sin

I don't have the entrepreneurial gene, but sometimes I forget that minor detail. I once had a crackpot idea to open a hot dog franchise in Washington selling the wieners I grew up with in Syracuse, N.Y.

Then there was the phase (don't laugh) where I was going to get rich buying early American, rare gold coins. My wife put the kibosh on that.

But I admire entrepreneurs, both those who succeed and those who just try. Kelly Harman succeeded in building Zephyr Strategy, a Manassas marketing firm for technology companies, but her venture into monthly-delivered desserts -- with the tantalizing name Spoonful of Sin -- fell flat.

I called Harman and she agreed to do a postmortem on what went right and wrong with Sin.

The name came to her after a big Italian dinner -- martini, Caesar salad, pasta -- in New York a few years back, when all she wanted was a small dessert and some coffee to top it off. The restaurant was offering giant-sized desserts only.

"I came out of the restaurant and I said to myself, 'All women want is a spoonful of sin.' I fell in love with the idea of the name and the brand 'Spoonful of Sin,' " said Harman, 46, of Manassas. "I wanted to make a business around the brand."

And that, said Harman, was her first mistake. She said she should have had a good product in hand before worrying about the clever marketing. She even imagined selling the company before she had delivered her first dessert.

"I knew and felt like I could build a brand, not a huge empire, but something that was attractive for acquisition by somebody else," she said. "That was the wrong way to go about it."

Harman did some homework, attending food and candy shows, networking with women's business groups, talking up her idea in her monthly wine group. Not shy, she would prowl around bakeries and then follow customers out the door, peppering them with questions on how much they would pay for desserts. She learned that $25 was the tipping point for what people might pay for a monthly dessert.

"People who have business ideas are always afraid to share that idea because someone might steal it," she said. "That's not the case. I shared it a lot and got a lot of ideas that way."

People warned her not to make the desserts herself. Be a middleman, they told her. You don't want the headache of building a kitchen, obtaining a health license, stocking food inventory.

Harman eventually landed on the idea of a Sin of the Month, which would be a specially made dessert delivered to a subscriber's office for $24.95 a month. Customers primarily would be individuals who wanted to give a gift to a friend or loved one. Harman also envisioned a big customer base in the corporate gift market.