In the heat of ice cream marketing

Starting this month, start-up Happy Cow's vegan ice creams has hit the shelves of four branches of supermarkets Oliver's in Central, Jason's Food and Living in Causeway Bay, Three Sixty in West Kowloon and Marketplace in Repulse Bay.Founded in November 2012 by founding director Isaac Goldstein and his wife Lacey, the start-up went from selling 130 litres of ice cream last August to 1,100 liters in June.  Their factory currently hires four members of full-time staff.The four big-name supermarkets represent a step up from the 27 retailers, many of which stock organic food products, that currently carry the brand's ice creams."We are still very much on the cusp of transitioning from a start-up to a mainstream company.  Now that Happy Cow is available to mainstream consumers at select supermarkets, we are starting to break free of our niche demographic," Goldstein said.He says he employs the same strategy when negotiating with small and large retailers alike.Goldstein said, "I take a very firm stance and remind them that our product is unique and I was offering the same thing to everyone regardless of their size. From my experience, if you treat everybody with fairness and compassion, they usually reciprocate with a similar sentiment."He began marketing Happy Cow using social media and networking while building a unique brand image."We have been able to overcome the challenge of a small marketing budget by making our brand unique and recognizable. This has helped us gain traction and exposure with little to no marketing costs," Goldstein said.In the second half of this year, he plans to shift the focus to in-store marketing in supermarkets and guerilla marketing campaigns such as flash mob ice cream giveaways.While many start-ups use e-commerce to minimise their operating costs, Goldstein doesn't feel that he is losing out on a growing trend by not setting up his own e-commerce website."Ice cream is not something that people want to buy online. To make sure that we are not missing the boat completely, we have partnered with an online retailer who sells and delivers our ice cream," he said.Happy Cow plans to double production in the next six months to keep up with demand and may consider opening their own retail store.