Dr. John’s Candies

What brought you to start a Xylitol candy company?

Dr. John’s Candies was founded in 1995 by a dentist, Dr. John, and his wife Debra, a dental hygienist so they would have a tasty sugar free treat for their patients, friends and three small children. With the addition of xylitol, we were able to remove the artificial sweeteners from the candy AND help prevent tooth decay—making our lollipops an even sweeter treat!

Cavity-fighting lollipops? Sounds way too good to be true. :P

It does sound a little crazy… A candy-making dentist with cavity-fighting lollipops! Xylitol is a natural sweetener from fruits, vegetables and birch trees that’s shown increased salivary flow (a dry mouth is bad for your teeth!) inhibits growth, adhesion and metabolism of bacteria in the mouth that causes decay, and even promotes healing of the initial start of an enamel cavity… So when you follow our Simply Xylitol plan, and eat 6-10 grams of xylitol per day, our lollipops, hard candies, chocolates & caramels really do fight cavities!

How has ShipStation helped you with your business?

ShipStation has streamlined an area of our business where previously, large quantities of non-value added work took place. Before, we spent a lot of time on various time wasting tasks: manually color-coding orders to ensure the proper products were pulled, keying in lengthy tracking numbers into multiple software systems, and navigating the idiosyncrasies of three different shipping programs. At the time, each of these steps were necessary, but failed to add any value to the product itself – which resulted in higher costs for us without any direct benefit to the customer. With ShipStation, our products are automatically color-coded to ensure the correct products are pulled for an order, tracking numbers are sent directly to the customer and saved for easy access for us, and with ShipStation’s universal interface, personnel only have to learn one system to be proficient at shipping with USPS, FedEx, or UPS. With so much of our time and energy now freed up from these chores, we can spend our time focusing on getting the best quality candy to our customers as quickly as possible.

What’s your favorite ShipStation feature?

The combination of filters with automation rules just makes our shipping process flow so much more smoothly. Our orders get shipped using USPS, Fedex, or UPS depending on the size of the order and where it will be going to, and with so many flavors and multiple sizes for each flavor there are no two orders built exactly alike. So to be able to automatically separate out orders based on their weight and destination and then automatically designate their shipping method means is another step that has been eliminated from our daily tasks.