Double Duty

Richmond.com:

FAT Cookie

Whenever When-Dee Morrison’s husband landed a new client, she’d bake them a batch of her unusual homemade cookies. Morrison confesses that she never had all of the ingredients on hand, so she experimented with different mix-ins. “It was mad science,” she recalls.

With the encouragement of happy clients and friends, the Morrisons started FAT Cookie, an Internet-based business that sells custom homemade cookies.

A cross between Cold Stone Creamery and Mrs. Field’s Cookies, FAT Cookie involves three simple steps: 1) choose from a selection of five cookie dough flavors and 80 mix-ins 2) name your creation and 3) select a quantity. The pancake-sized cookies are individually wrapped and labeled and then shipped anywhere in the world.

Oodles of Doodles

Their business cards read: Colleen Robinson, Chief Oodler, and Terri Fantell, Chief Doodler. Neither has an art degree - Fantell has a master’s in education and Robinson has a chemical engineering degree - but they are both artistic.

The idea for their business, Oodles of Doodles, spawned five years ago from a hand-decorated gift bowl that Fantell received. She decided to design her own version for a friend’s gift.

Robinson borrowed the idea and made a decorative snack bowl for her daughter’s coach. A woman saw the bowl and asked, “How much do you charge?” She immediately called Fantell and exclaimed, “People will pay money for these!” That sparked their first order for five items and the business took off.

Robinson and Fantell hand-decorate and personalize useful household items such as plastic snack bowls, tubs, clipboard cases, ceramic platters, bowls, mugs, and bulletin boards and lap desks with themes such as “Life’s a ball” or “Life’s a beach.”