Daily Camera
BUSINESS PLUS 3
Monday, June 9, 1997

Granny Smith's Colorado Grows with Gift Baskets
Joanne Wheeler Smith's business sells Colorado products from salsa to soap.
By VINA WINDES

When Granny Smith goes to work, tourists get cowboy hats and buffalo salami, gourmands receive raspberry chocolate Chardonnay fudge sauce, babies are given teddy bears - and Granny gets a big kick out of the whole business.

All those goodies and gifts are Colorado products featured in gift baskets by Granny Smith's Colorado a 6-year old business that recently received the 1997 Small business of the Year Award from the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. It was also nominated this year for a similar award from the Longmont Chamber of Commerce.

The granny is Joanne Wheeler Smith who works from her Longmont studio to create custom gift baskets for all occasions, for clients in Boulder County and elsewhere, at prices ranging from $25 to $500.

Her straw cowboy hat baskets - stocked with Buffalo bill's tortilla chips, salsa and other "wild west" products have been paraded around the lobby of a Boulder hotel on the heads of 40 beaming Korean businessmen.

"People visiting from other countries often have a fantasy of what the wild West is," Smith says.

Once, she filled baskets with fancy foods and $100 worth of silver dollars wrapped in gold foil for a CPA firm that wanted to say a special thank you to its employees.

Another time she filled a bed pan (a new one of course) with get well goodies for someone recovering from surgery.

Smith has put together teddy bears, toys and Mama Bear's chicken soup and bear-shaped ginger snap cookies for babies and their families; "welcome to your new house" baskets filled with light bulbs, baggies, aluminum foil a flashlight...just about every "move-in essential" but the kitchen sink...for a service that rents temporary housing to executives relocating to the area; "stress-reducing" baskets of opulent soaps, milk baths, sachets, and candles; and decadent chocolate collections.

Her product list includes at least 350 items, and she's often out beating the byways for others. She specializes in unusual Colorado products not readily available in retail stores. Most of her Colorado foods are natural with no preservatives.

About 90 percent of her clients are local businesses. One manufacturing client, for instance, often orders baskets full of Colorado items for international clients and employees coming to the West for the first time.

"It's a unique way to welcome people to Colorado. It breaks the ice and makes business relationships go smoother. And it's something beside the usual flowers", says her client.

"Saying thank you is not always enough," agrees another client. "Our health care organization presents baby baskets when our employees become parents. Baskets are just something extra we want to do, and it's easy. Granny Smith's Colorado does all the work and delivers too."

Except for that first Christmas, the business never has been just seasonal, although holidays are always our busiest time. We had no idea it was going to be so explosive."

The service, like the business name, is personal. "I feel strongly that incorporating the name of the owner is important to a small business. This business is only as good as my word, and it's been built on referrals. So I work directly with my clients to make sure the gift baskets fit their occasions and budgets, and have that personal touch," Smith says.

In addition to local business, Smith sends gift baskets around the state and country, and last year she shipped to 25 countries.

Reprinted with permission of the Daily Camera