Have You Heard?

WICHITA — It was more than a year ago when Have You Heard? first reported that Connie’s Cookies owner Connie Hamilton was forming Connie’s Cookies International to sell her products globally.

“It’s kind of like giving birth to an elephant,” Hamilton says. “That’s what I felt like because it took 15 months.”

Now, she’s made her first big sale.

Hamilton has been working with Arthur Kerr, chief executive of Kerr Enterprises in New York, who arranged a deal with Mom’s Pantry, a Canadian-based fundraising company that will distribute Hamilton’s cookie and muffin dough tubs.

Hamilton says the deal will increase her business by about 70 percent.

The process took so long for several reasons. For instance, it took time to make a deal with the company that creates the product for distribution. Also, it was an involved process to take Hamilton’s recipes and create them in large quantities.

“That’s not easy,” she says.

It’s not like doubling a recipe, Hamilton says.

“There’s a lot more involved in it. A lot more science to it.”

The hard part is now done, though.

“When you stop and think about it, once you get something like this going, if you can just keep it going, I really don’t have to do anything,” Hamilton says. “All I have to do is push paper.

“It feels wonderful.”

WICHITA — For years, Connie Hamilton dreamed of doing something big with her Connie’s Cookies.

She moved her business to Sweetbriar at 21st and Amidon. She doubled her space there. And she entered into a licensed agreement for two women to open a Connie’s Cookie’s in Kansas City, Kan.

But she still wanted bigger.

With customers like Tom Devlin and Gayla Carney, Hamilton has always known “I have resources I probably could have called upon.”

“I just never felt confident enough to do that.”

Instead, Arthur Kerr, chief executive of Kerr Enterprises in New York, came to her. And with his help Hamilton took what she calls a “big and scary” move to form Connie’s Cookies International and take sales worldwide.

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