How a 19-year-old content creator helped to save her family’s struggling candy shop by building up a huge TikTok following.

This as-told-to article is based on a conversation with Annabelle King, a 19-year-old Social Media Manager at a candy shop based in Sydney, Australia, which specializes in artisanal, handmade sweets.

I started working at Sticky just to keep it going for my parents. Before then, I never saw myself working at the store at all.

Sticky was on the brink of collapse after the pandemic seriously impacted sales. We went from busy to bust. Desperate to turn things around, I took to social media to save the struggling business and it worked.

The TikTok account garnered more than 1 million followers in its first month of launching and is now close to 5 million. Now the store is drawing a healthy amount of customers and we are hiring again, as opposed to letting people go.

The most obvious job I do is content creation for the store. I spend about three-quarters of my week taking photos of the candy-making process at Sticky for Instagram, or videos for TikTok and YouTube. I spend between two and five hours each day turning what I film in the shop into something interesting.

To make good content about a subject, I believe you must be involved with it yourself. I try to participate in the process as much as I can when I film content on candy construction.

My daily responsibilities change so much that the only thing I am sure I do every day is to grab coffee for myself and Dad. I do a little bit of everything. I serve customers, make candy, clean, pack lollies, and handle online orders. Whatever needs doing, I’m your girl for it.

The team aims to create around six batches, equivalent to 60kg, of candy a day. Sometimes, we have very quick and easy designs, and we get more candy as a result. Other times, the designs take ages and you get less rock. A roaring demand for Sticky’s candy has meant that we do not have any lollies going unsold.

The hardest thing is keeping candy in stock in-store and online.

Everyone in the shop decides the flavours. We have more than 50 single flavours — some more popular than others.

The excitement for us comes from the flavour combinations. Sometimes, someone will think of a new meld of flavours that ends up being so good. Recently, it was mangoes and cream. I really hope we keep that one for a while.

Now that I have been working at Sticky for well over a year, I can say that I do not see myself leaving any time soon. And having worked in other confectionery stores, I admit — with a fair amount of bias — that working at Sticky has been my favourite job so far.

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Source: Business Insider