The Story

Bonjour, Hello, Hola, こんにちは,

This is an exciting moment as it is my first post as a blogger.

My name is Frederic Kuzyk but I go by Fred. I like things simple.

Born and raised in France, I moved to New York to better fulfill my career 4 years ago. I have always been into food and even became a light vegetarian at 15 of age. I say “light” because I still love fish… and chocolate. How rebellious of me.

I felt lucky to work in Manhattan as MarieBelle’s VP Sales & Marketing. Not only did the Owner inspired me with her wonderful packaging creation [really], I also got to review many products for market monitoring and research & development purposes and it opened my eyes to quite a few good foods I had not encountered before. In November 2007, I stumbled upon a fantastic Japanese jello. Why fantastic? It really tasted like fruits because it was all natural (a key criteria) and it was nested in a very cute and unique glass packaging. This day was a turning point in my career…

It was actually a perfect fit to my diet but I could not buy it anywhere in the US, how frustrating…

So I began buying the ingredients to make it myself in the kitchen. I managed to come up with a great, refreshing fruit juice-based jelled dessert which my gourmet friends tasted, helped me tweak, and finally loved!

That was it. It was time I spread the love by launching a line of such healthy dessert. Jelaia was born.

The main lesson I retain from this whole experience lies in the power of observation which triggered a great deal of inspiration in my head: The product, the packaging, the brand name and the logo are all the direct result of what I learned from observing things carefully: a Japanese creation, my ex-boss’ talent, great marketing campaigns and strategies and so on. Business answers are often surrounding us.

Merci de me lire, Thanks for reading, Gracias por leer, ブログを読んで下さり、ありがとうございます。これからも、どうぞよろしく お願いいたします。

Fred
PS: my thanks to Cory, Sue, Reiko, Raquel, Najwa, Kiko, Simone, Maribel, Toyoko and Stephan