Unexpected viral TikTok video is sweet success for Massachusetts candy company
By Doug Meehan
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HOLLISTON, Massachusetts (WCVB) — A Massachusetts candy company is finding out firsthand the power of social media.
At Pure Sugar Candy, they hand-make all things hard candy. First starting with hollow Christmas tree ornaments that look like blown glass — if it can be molded and made with sugar, the Holliston candy company can make it.
“Sometimes I just go, ‘Look what’s going on here. We have pallets of candy going out to Williams Sanoma.’ Like, how did this happen?” said owner Stacey Marks Nectow.
It all happened when Marks Nectow was just 10 years old. A home economics class began her love affair with making hard candy. Later in life, as a television news executive, Marks Nectow would still find herself working on the weekends on her candy craft in the kitchen.
“From Saturday morning, I’d still be in my robe. I’d go downstairs, and I would start making candy until Sunday night and would bring it all to work,” she said.
In 2013, Marks Nectow left a 30-plus-year career in corporate America and poured everything into her sweet venture.
But when she decided to take a popular Swedish candy called Bubs and cover it with her own hardshell topping, business really started to boom.
“So, we take the flavors that are inherent in the Bubs, and we coat it with raspberry and drizzle them with lemon, and it becomes a whole other thing,” Marks Nectow said.
Word would soon spread about the unique candy combination. And that included TikTok and reality television star Bethenny Frankel. When Frankel posted her love for the candy, no one was prepared for what was about to happen.
“It was April 23: all of a sudden, all of our phones were going off because you get notifications. And like, in 20 minutes, we had over 600 orders. And I was like, ‘Well, we have Williams Sonoma Halloween. I have a million skulls to make, how am I going to do this?'” Marks Nectow said.
Marks Nectow and her team are doing it — to the tune of 50% of sales now attributed to online buyers.
“No matter how much inventory we put on TikTok, it sells out instantly. So, as much as we can make, we can sell, which is crazy,” she said.
Now as far as how Frankel found her candy in the first place, Marks Nectow says she doesn’t have the foggiest idea.
“She doesn’t know me. I don’t know her. And if she didn’t like it — she often does say, ‘That’s awful. I’ll never eat that,’ — and that’s a risk you take, but I didn’t take a risk at all because I didn’t send it to her. But I’m glad she got it,” Marks Nectow said.
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