Enterprise: Sticky
Social media impact: At the height of the pandemic, David’s shift to social media posting made Sticky one of the most viewed brand pages on Facebook, just behind TikTok and Red Bull.
David King has long had a fascination with the process of creating candies, particularly the artisanal techniques that are involved in the process. “There was something uniquely creative about the process that really captured my imagination and I thought I could do something unique and new with it,” he shares. At the same time, he has always dreamed of owning his own business, so he opened the confectionery store Sticky in December 2001 with a shop in The Rocks in Sydney.
The business enjoyed continued growth until the pandemic hit in March 2020, when it not only faced the closure of its store but also had to contend with the abrupt disappearance of retail traffic and events for which Sticky was booked. In a challenging time for the business, David decided to tap into Sticky’s existing social media pages and leverage them by creating new content to reach customers who were stuck in their homes. “It was a bit of a no-brainer,” he exclaims.
For content, David decided to capture the theatrical aspect of what Sticky does through videos, including livestreamed content, with the story as the most important element. Sticky Candy-makers use traditional techniques transformed and updated for a modern market. Every day, they sculpt their creations right in front of customers, crafting molten sugar into something fascinating, educational, beautiful, delicious and fun.
“If you have a good story to tell, a decent handset, a 4G network and the platforms, you can literally reach billions of people around the world at the touch of a button,” David enthuses. “It’s then just a question of finding the human and the social in what you do, which really is what people want on social media.”
Given the number of followers Sticky already had on Facebook and Instagram, David initially focused his social media marketing efforts on those two platforms. He then realised that the content he was making could work well on other platforms, particularly TikTok and YouTube, so he started posting on those channels as well. “The demographics on the different platforms really are very different,” he explains. “One piece of content shared in multiple spaces really does reach different customers.”
There was also an aspect of contingency in the decision to expand Sticky’s social media presence. “I had an experience of being hacked and realised that depending solely on a single platform is risky,” he explains.
Sticky’s social media marketing push has helped the business not only survive the pandemic but also thrive. “We are now around three times the size we were pre-COVID,” David shares. “We sell direct to customers through our website in over 30 countries.” While the initial growth has somewhat slowed down as of late, it has not in any way diminished the traffic the brand is getting across platforms. Sticky now has over 12 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. In fact, for a short period in 2022, it was one of the most viewed brand pages on Facebook, just after TikTok and RedBull. “Pretty crazy for a silly little lolly shop in Sydney,” David remarks.
David is keen on diversifying and enlarging his product line, leveraging ‘blue-sky thinking’ to realise the ambition. “What we do is actually quite difficult and hard to scale, which is one of the reasons people like watching what we do but it also imposes limits on growth,” David admits. “The key is to focus on our core offer, but to broaden that into a more extensive line of products, and continually work on what we do to keep it fresh. Social media is, and will continue to be, our primary marketing channel.”
This article first appeared in issue 45 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
