Delivery and Distribution : Goal, Explain Your Companies Guiding Principle

Each afternoon the drivers would pick up the children after school. The candy van arrived to pick me up between 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm. Seven days a week from 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm, I sold candy after eating a sandwich at home. The candy came in boxes by the dozen. Each box cost $3.00. One dollar paid for the candy. One dollar paid for the driver. I got to keep the third dollar. $3.00. The first boxes were a loan. After going door to door pretending to be students earning money for a school field trip to the Great America amusement park south of San Francisco in Santa Clara, California, after pandering as a traveling salesman door to door, we paid back the driver for the original candy boxes we carried. With the extra cash, we bought more boxes, and sold them. Our products were bland, but our approach was grand. Students in need, students selling candy, students carrying cardboard boxes from house to house. The drivers would check on us so that they could sell us more candy to carry. By 8:00 pm, we got dropped off at a 7-Eleven grocery store to buy dinner with the money we earned. I often had over $40 in my pocket. $40 I could keep without buying candy. I bought cardboard pizzas in 6” inch boxes, bags of chips, donuts, and a big cup full of soda. After eating, I went back out to sell candy until 10:00 pm. In a few weeks, I had my 501 jeans. I was happy to have quarters now to buy tokens for video games. The arcade owner gave me 5 tokens for a single dollar that usually only bought you four video games. He could see he was loosing a customer. I was not interested in playing with my friends. Video games weren’t so personal. In the van selling candy, we were like a family of entrepreneurs. I remember walking into a house with a family full of foster care children. No beds. No mattresses. The foster mother sat on a sofa. She collected money from each child, sat in front of the TV, and gave the boys and girls a room to sleep in. There was a small section for six children. No mattress, but a bed sheet or roll of towels lined up six for each of the six children. Next to the rolled up towels was a box with belongings: Socks, underwear, shirts. They needed jeans like me. If they were going to get clothes for themselves, they needed to sell candy. The foster mother provided food. From what I recall that was all. We were a family of entrepreneurs. Our business was selling candy. We shared sale advice. Our stories helped to shape better ways to make money.