Articles
7 February 2012

FatBoy’s Expanding Waistline

by Sarah Ryther Francom

07 February 2012—

A taste of Utah is found in the freezers of many U.S. military commissaries around the world in the form of FatBoy ice cream novelties.

            The company, founded by Casper Merrill in 1925, also lays claim to being the top-selling ice cream novelty in the Beehive State, with market penetration in 26 others.
While the Merrill family continues to produce the product at its Richmond, Utah plant, Kerry and Gayle Smith purchased FatBoy’s sales and marketing division in March 2005. Since then, annual sales have risen from $125,000 to more than $9 million, Kerry says. Plans are in the works to expand the production facility and the Smiths recently opened a new office in Farmington.
The Smiths came to purchase the company in a roundabout way. After careers in marketing, particularly with Rhodes Bread, they reached a point where they were considering working for themselves. A Merrill family member belonged to their church, and during conversations they learned that sales at the company were languishing. They casually queried about whether FatBoy might be for sale, and the answer was yes.
“Kerry and I had both grown up [eating] FatBoy [ice cream] especially for family reunions and ward parties,” Gayle says, and the couple was confident that their marketing skills could re-energize the company. Their plan for the first year was to save the brand and expand their sales.
Because they didn’t have the financial resources to mount a large-scale media blitz, the Smiths made the best of the relationships they had built during their long years with Rhodes, urging suppliers to continue carrying FatBoy products. In addition, they purchased billboard space to promote the brand and introduced new flavors such as eggnog, cheesecake and peppermint sundae.
“The response from the billboards was unbelievable,” Kerry says. “We must have had 200 phone calls asking where to find the product.”
He also acknowledges that they “had a few lucky breaks,” including being accepted by the Grocery Guru Ken Roesbery , who promotes FatBoy coupons in the paper.
Coupons continue to play a large part of the business; Kerry estimates that about 80 percent of the product is sold on promotion. That, too, is part of their strategy: By continually having coupons where people will see them, they maintain awareness, he says.
The company strives to purchase all its products from Utah vendors, even going so far as to change its source of packaging to a local supplier. This fits not only with the Smiths’ philosophy about supporting their neighbors, but it also makes good business sense, they say, pointing to studies that have shown that Utah consumers are more apt to buy a product if they know it’s locally made.
“And we believe that if you’re buying a guy’s milk, he’ll probably buy your product,” Kerry says.
            Because they want the brand to connote premium ice cream, Gayle says, “Our products are very, very clean, and that speaks to quality. We’re trying to come up with good products with a good flavor, not a huge amount of calories and not a huge amount of sugar. We feel that marketing our product goes beyond marketing it on a money level. To me, it’s being responsible to a product, and therefore we’re being responsible to those people who are around us.”
            That philosophy extends to their charitable activities: the company sponsors a charity golf tournament and donates product to non-profits for their activities.
            “You can’t just throw things out and say ‘Buy it,’” Gayle says. “[We want to] capture people not just on a product level but on an emotional level that says ‘FatBoy is more than an ice cream and a novelty and something in my refrigerator. I like who FatBoy is. They’re contributing to our lifestyle; they’re contributing to our state.’ We have a sense of fairness and of family that have made our state what it is.”
 


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