The Story of the World’s First Deliciously Flavored Sprinkles, Now Available on Amazon in Five Mouth-Watering Flavors
The year was 2012, Alexandra was pregnant with our first of three, and we were addicted to rainbow sprinkles.
We sat on the couch each night — remote in one hand, bowl of sprinkle-topped ice cream in the other. But there was something we simply couldn’t figure out.
Why do all these differently colored sprinkles taste the same? “Shouldn’t the orange sprinkles taste like oranges, and the purple like grapes?”
Our first flavors — Coconut 🥥, Cafe au Lait ☕️, Cotton Candy 🍭, Sparkly Unicorn 🦄, Wild for Blueberry 🫐, Classic Grape 🍇, and Watermelon 🍉.
We joked about it with our dear friend Tommy Schonder who instantly agreed — sprinkles should have taste.
And thus began our decade-long journey to invent the world’s first deliciously flavored sprinkles.
Tommy was on the next flight (no joke) to Wernigerode, Germany to get trained on sprinkle making (also no joke). While there, he scoped out and purchased our very own vermicelli extruder that we kept in the basement of our friend Aditi’s wonderful chocolate shop in SoHo.
Our extruder soon arrived at the Port of New Jersey and we soon learned that things like freight insurance, customs brokers, and import duties are apparently real things. It took us a month to figure out the paperwork, but we finally managed to get our sprinkle-making machine out of hock.
Tommy making our first batch of Jimijams back in 2015.
We bought all the proper ingredients, studied the latest confectionery processes, and even hired three experienced food scientists as consultants.
We also teamed up with the most wonderful food branding and design agency — Miller Creative — run by Yael and Reuben Miller, who came up with our amazing name, tagline, logo, label and flavor designs.
Our awesome tagline was written and designed by Miller Creative.
Our friend and lawyer Andy Mirsky helped secure trademark registration for Jimijams, but only after promising the Estate of Jimi Hendrix that we would not get into the music biz. (True story.)
“Excuse me while I sue this guy.” — The Estate of Jimi Hendrix
Each week we were one step closer to launching our revolutionary business. But after three years of trying, we simply couldn’t figure it out. Our sprinkles were way too soft and couldn’t pack enough flavor. We had failed. We sold all our equipment and gave up our dream of deliciously flavored sprinkles.
Then the strangest thing happened.
While vacationing in Miami, Alexandra and I were introduced to Daniel Feldman.
Me: “What do you do?”
Daniel: “I own a sprinkle factory in Mexico City.”
Daniel thought our idea was awesome and agreed to help us out. He, too, had been dreaming of flavored sprinkles!
Month after month he’d send us new samples to try, each time getting closer and closer to perfection. It took us two years to perfect our first flavor, but once we did, the other flavors came quickly.
Delicious flavor samples were sent monthly from Daniel’s sprinkle and chocolate factory in Mexico City.
Add two more years for us to figure out packaging, FDA certification, kosher certification, Amazon FBA, and — yes — how to actually get our sprinkles here from Mexico (hint: it’s not easy).
Jimijams, captured brilliantly by Whitnee Shulman.
Our first flavors are Cotton Candy, Cafe au Lait, Classic Grape, Wild for Blueberry, and Sparkly Unicorn. Our next flavors — Coconut and Watermelon — will be available in a few months.
Special thanks to our friend Whitnee Shulman who took so many wonderful photos during the pandemic and to our brilliant (and patient) Amazon strategists James Boyd from Treasure and Michael Aylett from ECOMRANK.
To all our friends and family, thank you for your encouragement, laughter, and support along the way. We did it! We hope you’ll try Jimijams. If you like them, please send us photos, let your friends know, share a review on Amazon, and follow us on Instagram. And if you have any ideas for partnerships or our next flavors, please drop us a note!
With love,
Michael, Tommy and Alexandra