Since Exporting Globally, Business for These Two Founders Has Been 'Nuts' With the right partner, BNutty peanut butter has found customers and grown its business around the world.

The explosive growth behind Carol Podolak and Joy Thompkins' peanut butter empire is, for lack of a better phrase, completely nuts. What started as an idea to shake up the annual fundraiser for their children's travel soccer team has transformed over the past eight years into BNutty, a full-blown business that delivers gourmet peanut butter to customers worldwide.

"This truly was supposed to be a one-time fundraising opportunity," Podolak explains with a laugh. "We were so tired of selling candy bars and wrapping paper to raise money for our kids' tournaments, and Joy thought, 'there's got to be something better or healthier out there for us to raise money.'"

So, Thompkins started making peanut butter at home. While watching one of their children's soccer games, Thompkins urged Podolak to taste her homemade peanut butter to persuade Podolak to abandon the candy bars.

"I basically ate the entire jar in one sitting, it was that good," Podolak remembers. So, the pair decided to go for it and turn this fundraising idea into a reality. "Fortunately for us, people totally fell in love with our fun flavors. We were making white chocolate and pretzel peanut butter, milk chocolate and toffee peanut butter, and blueberry peanut butter, and people wanted it more than just once a year," she says. The demand for this delicious product was undeniable.

Keeping up with demand.

Soon, the fan base for their peanut butter was increasing faster than they could get the product out. After being featured on QVC and taking their product online, Podolak and Thompkins decided it was time to move operations from a rented commercial kitchen to their very own manufacturing site. They quickly outgrew that space though, and now operate out of a 27,000 square foot production facility in Portage, Ind., they call "The Nuthouse."

"We never expected to be business owners, we just wanted to find a way to help our kids play travel soccer for the potential opportunity to earn college scholarships. But, with this growth, we now can provide our own college scholarships and resources, and we have built a beautiful, six-field soccer complex just down the road from The Nuthouse," Podolak says.

As Podolak explains, since the two of them never intended to be business owners, they had to navigate unique challenges as their passion project scaled at such a rapid pace. Since their demand began going beyond the U.S., their local small business development center in Northwestern Indiana signed them up for an export accelerator program. "This 12-week program helped us target where we wanted to sell, as well as introduced us to some companies and trade missions. But as we continued this journey, we realized we were still very inexperienced at exporting and we didn't want to get ourselves in a situation where we were causing cash-flow issues that could affect our domestic customers," Podolak explains.

Peace of mind: An exporting partner focused on small-business success.

During this program, BNutty was introduced to The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), the official export credit agency of the U.S., to begin their journey of exporting to the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.

"EXIM has offered us the peace of mind so that we feel comfortable with our export purchases because they are standing behind us to make sure that we get paid, that we are supported, and that we have a resource to go to when we're not sure on how to collect on an invoice," Podolak says. "Their support has allowed us to say 'yes' to more opportunities and be comfortable with this new stage. And for a small company, that means the world to us."

"Our mission has been to let peanut butter be the vehicle to help change lives and exporting allows us to expand our horizons," says Thompkins. "It has been so much fun to 'spread' happiness with our peanut butter."

Through this partnership, EXIM has helped BNutty gain a better understanding of global shipping terms, where liabilities might occur, and how to reduce risk as their product travels, as well as provided BNutty with insurance policies that protect their business.

"There were a lot of potential pitfalls that we could have encountered if not for EXIM," Podolak believes. "They really took the time to point out things that other customers or small-business owners encountered or made mistakes on, and we were able to take those lessons that other companies learned the hard way and avoid a lot of that. It really has just been such a positive experience."

As BNutty continues to grow, their partnership with EXIM has extended beyond just an invoice insurance policy to now utilizing even more of EXIM's solutions, such as their Working Capital Loan Guarantee. "We're taking on more and more export business as we gain experience, and we're looking forward to continuing this partnership," Podolak says. "At the core of it all, EXIM reinforces that peace of mind for us. We know that we are protected, and that's an amazing feeling."

Click here to learn more about how EXIM can help your business with global growth.