Hershey’s Online Store Closing
Oh Hershey. What the hell is wrong with you? You strike a deal with Barry Callebaut so that you don’t have to bother making chocolate any more. You move your candy production to Mexico. You buy two small artisan companies, then shut down their factories and lay off their staff. You can’t keep a Sharffen berger company store open in NYC despite it being a well-respected brand…even after you bought it. And now you’re shutting down your online store.
Okay, ecommerce is not child’s play, granted. It can be hard to capture customers’ attention and make them return to buy more. But Hershey is the most famous chocolate company in the US. Ladies and gentlemen of Hershey, you have our attention. You’ve had it since we were five years old. You have distributors set up already. You’re big enough to get good prices on shipping, big enough to hire solid programmers to build a site that’s just right for your customers on the front end and just right for you on the back. You have enough marketing dollars to ensure that your website is placed before us at regular intervals.
All you had to do was provide interesting products and services.
But you couldn’t. Hershey has been too busy trying to put their brand name on some kind of hybrid cookie product in the snack isle. (Btw, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the dark chocolate Reese’s…where are they?) I don’t know whether to pity them or go buy a Snickers and hasten the company’s inevitable demise.
Products at hersheygifts.com are 25% off until the site goes dark at the end of July. If you’ve been meaning to buy your favorite chocolate blogger a Reese’s baseball cap, now is the time.
Tags: industry, mainstream, News