Ann Clark loved baking cookies, but was tired of the same old cookie cutter shapes in her Rutland kitchen. Wanting to create her own designs, she commissioned a cookie cutter maker to make a “big little pig,” and the maker was blown away by her designs.
It was there that she had the idea to start creating her own range of cookie cutters.
“I used to do craft shows with things I painted and made, and that kind of turned into designing cookie cutters, because I love baking” , Clark said. “It just took off.”
Since she began creating cookie cutters at home with the help of her late husband in 1989, the company Ann Clark Ltd. became the the largest cookie cutter manufacturer in the United States.
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Ben Clark, CEO of Ann Clark Ltd. and son of Ann, said he returned to Vermont to help with the business in the late 1990s and eventually took over the company’s operations when Ann retired. Sitting down for an interview as the holiday sales boom slowed, Ben Clark said a big part of his job is that his family’s creations can bring people together during the holidays to cook and celebrate.
“It’s about taking my mother’s art and putting it into people’s kitchens, which is fantastic.”
As the company moved into the wholesale and custom market in the late 1990s, its first large custom order was made from Pilsbury, Ben Clark said. Ann Clark Ltd. also worked with colleges to create custom mascots and stores such as Williams Sonoma and Bed, Bath & Beyond, he said. In the mid-2000s, the Clarks began selling directly to consumers online, which allowed the company to expand internationally, now serving customers in 19 countries.
Sales increased during the Covid-19 pandemic as people turned to home-based activities, like baking, and the Clark family took the plunge to expand their product line to other products products such as food coloring, dessert mixes and baking supplies.
“With Covid, more and more people are having parties at home, so dinner parties are a lot more popular,” Ben Clark said. “People like good food. They want to serve good food. They want to eat good food. They want food that looks good. They want it to be fun to do. They want it to taste good, and we’re trying to continue to feed that market.
In 2021, Ann Clark Ltd. built a facility for creating food coloring, and again this year the family built another food safety room for dry goods, like mixes for making cookies, cakes, waffles and other treats, as they expand into the “dessert” sector. world.”
“We are now looking at other consumables,” said Ben Clark. “We consider it gourmet at home.”
Ann Clark Ltd. has remained competitive in the international market by creating smaller batches of products more frequently to avoid waste and adapt more quickly to consumer desires, according to Ben Clark.
While Ann Clark Ltd. makes about 4 million cookie cutters a year, Ben Clark said the company only makes 700 cookie cutter models at a time at its Rutland facility. He attributed the company’s ability to expand its product offerings to other dessert products to its use of lean manufacturing and an economically sustainable business model.
“It also allowed us to enter these new markets,” Ben Clark said. “We can try products. We have a lot of successful products. We also have a lot of products that are failures, but we haven’t made many of them, so we can experiment and be really flexible.
The Clarks say they emphasize quality over quantity and are proud that their products are all made in Vermont with the help of 35 employees.
“Everything we sell, we want to be able to make it ourselves,” Ben Clark said. “We like guaranteed quality. We like flexibility, because you have to be able to deliver
As the business grows, the Clarks say they are grateful that their work aims to bring fun and joy into people’s lives, because, as Ann Clark said, “everyone loves cookies.” .