Part 1 : Genesis of the concept

Ashlie, you have a wonderful concept with City Sampler - where did you get the idea?
The idea for City Sampler came to me one afternoon when a friend of mine moved from Chicago to San Francisco and I wanted to send her a "piece" of home. She really missed Chicago and I thought it would be nice to send her a care package with Chicago favorites; something that would really capture the essence of the city she loved and had called home her whole life.

I searched and searched on the Internet for any company who could offer this type of product but was unable to find any. It got me thinking so I started searching for other cities. There were a couple of companies offering city-specific gift baskets but none on a national level. Therefore...an idea was born.

I quit my corporate job and launched City Sampler in the Fall of 1999 and have been working it as my full-time career ever since. We originally launched as a consumer-oriented company, but have since expanded our clientele to include a large amount of corporate clients, realtors, and wedding and convention orders.

You left a corporate job as a senior marketing professional to work on the venture - any regrets?
Not one. Sure I missed my paycheck, but overall I wouldn't change a thing. I have seen too many acquaintances stuck in jobs they hate or who are too scared to give up their 401K to pursue self-employment.

I guess my motto is to give it a shot - you can eat macaroni & cheese for 2 years then if it's not working out go back to the corporate world and a steady paycheck. You are the only one that can make your dreams happen and you are the only one you have to answer to if you don't pursue them.

What makes you a little different from most Internet outlets is that you are a national service, but with a strong regional perspective through the city-specific gourmet gift baskets. How do you go about developing a new "city" to add to your product line, since this must require fairly specialized knowledge about the food and lifestyle of that city, plus local contacts?
Adding a new city is a very painstaking process. We first have to research the city and the feasibility of adding it to our product line. There are many cities we would love to add but on a national basis they just wouldn't be profitable.

As far as developing the product for the new city, I believe in hiring professionals for what they do best and then letting them continue doing what they do best. We hire professionals in each of our represented cities that live and work in those areas.

I believe there is no better expert on a city than one who lives, works, socializes and conducts business in that city. All of our baskets contain gourmet food items that are representative of that city, state and/or region and these professionals know what our customers are looking for when they order a basket from their area.

We do not simply include items you might find in a local supermarket - all of our items are hand selected gourmet food items from local manufacturers and are truly unique to that area. Extensive research goes in to selecting and choosing each and every one of our products. In fact, many of our basket items are hard to find elsewhere. We have people contacting us all the time telling us that they have searched high and low for some of our products and couldn't find them anywhere else.

Continued...