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One of the toughest challenges a consumer product company faces is the battle for shelf space at a major retailer.
Competition for the right to merchandise a new product among the older, usually larger, more established companies is fierce. Space on the shelf is finite, and if a new player is awarded any of it, somebody else is going to have to be moved out.
The salsa business is particularly competitive, as dozens of companies vie for space alongside giant brands like Pace, Tostitos, Taco Bell, and Old El Paso.
But for Helen Lampkin, founder of Rogers-based company My Brother’s Salsa, winning over retailers, and ultimately, consumers, seems to come as easily as her effortless southern charm.
A family recipe
Lampkin’s first career was one spent in the home, as a mother taking care of her family and raising her children. As an avid cook and frequent entertainer, she developed quite a rolodex of recipe cards that she created or adapted from some of her family’s favorite dishes over the years.
One of those was a recipe originally conceived by her brother, John Hoover. As Lampkin tells it, Hoover gave her a jar of salsa that he created at a family gathering. She asked him for the recipe, and began making it every week, subtly tweaking it here and there to make it her own.
“When I’d make it, I’d say ‘Here, try this. It’s my brother’s salsa,'” she said. “And that’s how it got its name.”
It became such a staple at parties and get-togethers, that Lampkin’s family and friends began urging her to consider marketing and selling the recipe.
After years of encouragement, she decided to give it a shot.
Lampkin took the recipe to Steven Seideman, a food processing professor at the University of Arkansas to begin testing the salsa for shelf life, and for advice on how to begin manufacturing the recipe.
With that, Lampkin’s second career began as the president and CEO of her very own salsa company.
Becoming a business
Lampkin incorporated in 2003, created a logo based on one of her own original paintings, and set out to turn her brother’s salsa recipe into an actual company.
She found a small batch manufacturer in central Arkansas that could make 25 cases of salsa at a time, and started shopping the product around to regional retailers.
For the next six years, Lampkin worked as a one-woman operation handling everything from sales to delivery for her burgeoning brand. All the while, the number of retailers interested in carrying her salsa continued to grow.
In 2010, the company had reached a critical mass, and had become so much work that Lampkin decided it was either time to take the company to the next level, or close up shop.
Continue reading about My Brother’s Salsa at Fayetteville Flyer.
More women-owned businesses in Arkansas can be found here.
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