Hey Chocomize Fans,

We currently have a new addition to our creation station. Chocolate label plaques! Our new labels are made of decadent white chocolate with a neat inscription. We currently have a few in stock, including a Congratulations plaque and Class of 2012 (for all your graduating family members and friends). There is currently a poll on our Facebook page asking customers and fans what new plaque they'd like to see added to the creation station.

Cruise on over to our Facebook page and vote for your favorite! Current options include "Get Well!" "I'm sorry," "Happy Father's Day!" and, of course, Other. We would love to hear any suggestions you may have. Post it on our page! While you're at it, check out our Favorites page and the newest additions from our Facebook "Create Your Own Bar" chocolatier competition: Up and at 'Em, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, Captain America bar, and the Sweet and Salty Utopia.

-The Chocomize Team

We're proud to say we have very creative customers. Since our launch, we have received millions of imaginative chocolate bar combination orders. We're still pleasantly surprised to witness new combinations, and sometimes we get so excited that we give the combination a try for ourselves.

It's your turn to shine, you chocolatier.

Anyone that's ordered from our site knows that the combination possibilities seem almost infinite. However, we already know your creations are so carefully crafted - toppings complimenting toppings, sweet and salty converging, mouthwatering combinations - we believe it's innovative art. And we'd like to see your best.

Part 1)

Until Friday, April 13th, visit our Facebook page and write your perfect combination on our wall. Give it a witty and fun name, too. Once your ingenious creation is published on our wall, encourage your friends to visit our Facebook page, like us, and like your chocolate bar on our wall. The more "likes" your bar gets, the closer it will get to the top 10. You can post more than one bar and ask your friends to like it but we will only pick one bar per person (the one with the most likes) for the top 10.

Part 2)

On April 13th 10am EST, we will choose the 10 creations with the most likes and they will be photographed and posted on our favorites page by the following Monday, where they will battle it out. You can use the 'FB share', 'Twitter', and 'Google+' functions on the product details page to create buzz for your chocolate bar, get your friends to find your bar, and LIKE it.

The contest will end on Monday, April 23rd, 10am EST. The most liked bar will be deemed "Choctastic" and earn a permanent spot on our "Favorites" page. The clever chocolatier will win perks that include free chocolate!

Prices:

1st price: $100 Chocomize gift certificate + 3 of your suggested favorite bars

2nd price: $50 Chocomize gift certificate + 3 of your suggested favorite bars

3rd price: $25 Chocomize gift certificate + 3 of your suggested favorite bars

From Aberdeen to Belfast, down through Manchester and London, Chocomize is now shipping to the UK.

That's right. For a flat rate of $9.50, order as many bars as you desire. Our latest weather forecast promises chocolate delivered to Britain during the next year will arrive in mint condition. We're happy to announce that beginning immediately, we will be shipping your wildest chocolate dreams to you. You can run rampant in our creation station now and instead of designing a bar and looking at the preview longingly, you can actually order one and have it delivered to you in a matter of days.

Shop for yourself, your family, loved ones, and friends. Let everyone know Chocomize is now shipping to the UK. Your friends will thank you endlessly for telling them about us. Need another reason to spread the word? You can get 15% off your next order. Simply like us on Facebook and click on our "Refer a Friend" tab. Tell your friends about us and you'll get a special promo code for 15% off your order.

Shipping to the UK and 15% off your order when you suggest us on Facebook.

300 million chocolate possibilities have never been more tempting.

-The Chocomize Crew

Spring is a time of renewal and new beginnings. Believe it or not, spring is also the most popular wedding season. As couples take to wedding magazines to pick themes, decorations, color schemes, food, and flowers, why not add something creative to your reception - say, a custom chocolate bar?

With Chocomize, you can order a bar that fits your taste and suits your wedding theme. Perhaps you've chosen a black and white theme, and calla lilies are your flowers of choice. Your guests can indulge in a white chocolate bar with dark chocolate chips, blueberries, and lavender. Or perhaps - in the spirit of spring - your wedding is colorful. Your guests can enjoy a milk chocolate bar with jelly beans, cantaloupe melon dices, and crystallized rose petals.

Pick your favorite toppings:
Some couples have compromised on one bar, while others have divided the bars between the two and designed two different bars that suite the different tastes of each.

Design your box:
Not only are the bars all you, but so is the presentation. You can customize our traditional Chocomize

box with photos, the date of your wedding, or even a love poem.

Final touches:
Personalize your bar even further by adding our labels made of edible icing sheet and edible ink. Choose words of love, the date of your wedding, or anything else. The label goes right on the bar and is completely edible.

Making your dream chocolate bar for your dream wedding is our mission.

If you would like to get a quote, please shoot us an email at weddings@chocomize.com. The price of each order largely depends on your toppings and the size of your order. If you're overwhelmed by the endless selection, check out our creation station to virtually see what your bar would look like, or get some inspiration from our Facebook page where you will see suggestions other Chocomize enthusiasts have tried and loved.

-The Chocomize Team

Chocomize would like to welcome the newest summer intern to the hardest-working team in customizable candy websites.  I’m a senior at Pace University majoring in Finance, and a veteran chocolate-eater. In my free time, I like playing sports outside, traveling, and eating. On my first day I already tried the milk, dark, and white chocolate bars, but can’t wait to taste all of the 300 million combinations. I’m excited for a great summer with Chocomize and look forward to contributing to Chocomize’s growing success.

A long time has passed since the last time we added new ingredients to the Creation Station. In the last contest, we (or better you!) found such awesome toppings as cookie dough, junior mints, and the ever-popular Kit Kats©. Over the past couple of weeks we have gathered all the new suggestions. Some of them were also suggested the last time but they did not make the top three like black licorice and rice krispies. Other toppings are completely new to us but sound absolutely delicious. And then, there are also some weird ones as always but you'll see.

We are going to try and find the new candidates in two steps. First, we want to make sure that everyone had a fair chance of suggesting their favorite new topping. In addition to the suggestions below, use the comments box to make additional suggestions. We will go though all of them and see which ones we can realistically work with (soft caramel, for example, would be awesome but our tests showed that it would just mess us the entire cellophane bag so we had to decide against it). On Thursday, we will then post the official poll where you actually get to vote on your favorites.

We are excited and can't wait to sample all of the suggestions!

Here are the ones we have so far:

Rice Crispies

S'mores

Blackberries

Diced apples

Fennel

Fruit loops

Taleggio cheese (seriously?)

Rosemary

Black Licorice

Caramel popcorn

Chai powder

Bee pollen granules

The craze over customizable premium chocolate bars has reached many different places since our founding a little while back. We have received letters from the President, have been featured in many media outlets, and have seen our following expand all across the country and internationally.

Now, we even have a rock star to count among the fans of our chocolate bars. Tommy Lee, the drummer for Motley Crue and succesful DJ recently stumbled upon our operation and was moved to share it with his 88,000 followers on Twitter as well as his 99,000 friends on Facebook.

Since our company is a family-friendly one, we'll refrain from posting exactly what he said (rock stars have a tendency to use some colorful language), but we tweeted back to him and ended up sending him a few rocking chocolate bars.

• The Tommy Lee Challenge: Dark Chocolate with Beef Jerky
• Sweet and Salty:Milk Chocolate with Real Bacon and Mini Pretzels
• Potato Chips Reinvented: Milk Chocolate with Potato Chips
• Cookie Bar
• That's Nuts
• The bling bar: Dark Chocolate with 23 Karat Gold Flakes

Mr. Lee has said that he received the chocolate bars and enjoyed them very much (again, in his own special language). We're happy we can count him among our fans, and if you know any other famous rock stars that you think might be in the market for a few tasty custom chocolate bars, be sure to send them our way.

For those of you who have been following the evolution of Chocomize (or who have looked at our press page recently), you'll know that we have been very fortunate in getting exposure in a lot of great outlets.  From The New York Times to The Today Show to Good Morning America and most recently in Good Housekeeping, Chocomize has been mentioned, featured, or discussed in some of the most visible and respected places in the media.

Tomorrow morning, in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day, the ladies of The View will have Chocomize bars in hand for their crowd and will tell their viewers about the ability to customize premium chocolate bars as a gift for the big day.  Make sure to tune in to ABC tomorrow at 11:00 AM Eastern Time to see it.

Also, don't forget that 12:00 Midnight on February 10th is the deadline for orders to be placed to guarantee delivery in time for Valentine's Day. So head over to our Creation Station and make your own chocolate bar for your Valentine!

It's been well documented that the founding fathers of Chocomize are among the sweetest alumni of Columbia University in New York City, having met and discussed starting a business while classmates in Morningside Heights.  Now, one of the favorite spots around campus among students is carrying two different varieties of Chocomize chocolate bars.

Our popular Smores Bar and seasonal Valentine's Day packaged bars are now on sale at the 110th Street location of West Side Market.  So whether you are a student at Columbia, a regular visitor to the neighborhood, or just find yourself on Broadway uptown with a hunger for some premium chocolate with delicious combinations of toppings, you can easily stop by the market and satisfy your craving.

Check out our favorites page to see our two new Valentine’s Day themed chocolate bars. Our ‘Dark Indulgence’ bar is dark chocolate with 23 karat gold flakes, dried cranberries, Happy Valentine’s Day plaque, crystallized rose petals, and a red chocolate heart. Talk about delicious! Our ‘Tasty Temptation’ bar is milk chocolate with raspberries, crunchy almond croquent, Happy Valentine’s Day plaque, and a romance heart. These two bars were extensively taste tested by the partners at Chocomize (best part about owning a chocolate company) and believe me, they are going to put a smile on anyone who is lucky enough to get them for Valentine’s Day.

Feeling creative? We have also added a bunch of new Valentine’s Day themed ingredients which can be found in our decoration section in the creation station. We have an edible plaque that says “Happy Valentine’s Day’, message hearts, chocolate strawberry hearts, chocolate love tiles, and chocolate romance hearts.

Don’t see something that you want? Send us an e-mail with your suggestion and we’ll try to get it on our website before Valentine’s Day is over!

-Nick

-15% of women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day (it’s ok, Eric does the same thing every year, although he claims it’s Kristen Stewart…)

-Around 1 billion Christmas cards are sent every year for Valentine’s Day!

-3% of pet owners will give their pets Valentine’s Day gifts…

-In three days, over 100 million roses will be sold for Valentine’s Day.

-Teachers receive more Valentine’s Day card than anyone else.

-50%  of Valentine’s Day cards are bought in the week leading up to February 14^th, people love to procrastinate!

-There are over 1200 chocolate factors, 21,000 florists, and 30,000 jewelry stores in the United States.

-73% of the people who buy flowers are men (including Eric sending them to himself.)

-California produces 60% of all roses sold in the US, the rest usually come from South America.

-85% of Valentine cards are purchased by woman.

-Valentine’s Day is also celebrated in Canada, Mexico, England, Italy, Australia, and Denmark

Have any other fun facts about Valentine’s Day? Let us know!

-Nick

After one year in the custom chocolate business, Chocomize is growing faster than ever:

- New website and increased workforce to meet higher volumes

- Strategic alliance with Myswisschocolate.ch

Cherry Hill, January 2011. After Chocomize’s first anniversary, founders Eric Heinbockel, Nicholas LaCava, and Fabian Kaempfer look back on a very successful year. The business concept was well received by customers and the demand for custom-created chocolate bars is growing rapidly. As a result, the company has expanded its production capacities and will launch a new website that will sustain the increased traffic.

With increasing coverage from media outlets such as the Oprah magazine, CNN.com, Good Morning America, and the New York Times, the concept of Chocomize’s create-your-own chocolate bars is spreading rapidly throughout the US and Canada. “With increased awareness comes increased traffic on our website” says Eric Heinbockel. “We wanted to make the website cleaner and more user friendly, while at the same time optimizing the load time and order management system,” he continues. These changes were necessary to keep up with the ever-increasing number of orders, the founders say. In addition to making changes to the front end to be able to receive more orders, Chocomize also had to adjust their production capabilities in order to process the orders. The company has increased its full time staff and has purchased additional equipment to guarantee a fast turnaround time. “The Christmas season was proof that Chocomize can meet rapidly growing demand” Fabian Kaempfer explains. “Even orders that were received several days after the cut-off date made it to our customers in time for Christmas and no one had to show up for Christmas empty handed.” Now that the changes have proven successful the founders have confidence that there will be no limit to the company’s growth and success.

Strategic alliance with mySwissChocolate.ch

With the dawn of a new year the Chocomize founders are looking forward to many new and exciting opportunities. In pursuit of these opportunities Chocomize, the largest create-your-own chocolate company in the US, has entered into a strategic alliance with mySwissChocolate.ch. mySwissChocolate.ch is the number one custom chocolate company in Switzerland and one of the biggest players in the European market. Both companies want to identify and develop collective potential in the global marketplace. Furthermore, both companies intend to inspire each other in the areas Social media and Operations. Nick LaCava explains: “Myswisschocolate is the perfect strategic partner for us. Both of our companies are extremely successful in their respective markets and we share the same beliefs and values. The Swiss chocolate guys realize the importance of good customer service just as much as we do and we are looking forward to an exciting business relationship with them.”

Chocomize

1879 Old Cuthbert Rd, Ste 19

Cherry Hill, NJ 08034

Contact person: Eric Heinbockel

Chocomize was just recently featured in Family Circle magazine! They were doing a feature on great gifts for Valentine’s Day, and picked us as one of the ideas. They wrote a fantastic bit about how awesome we are, and they had some great pictures of our chocolate bars. We don’t have a link yet, but you guys should check it out if you get a chance in the store.

Stay tuned for our special holiday packaging that we will be releasing soon, as well as all the specialized ingredients we are going to have.

-Nick

Christmas and New years are over, but that doesn’t mean that the holidays are done for. It’s only a little over a month until Valentine’s Day! As usual, in the lead up to Valentine’s Day we are going to add a bunch of different holiday themed ingredients. We already have candy sugar hearts, rose petals, violet petals, and 23 karat gold flakes, but we’re going to add plaques that say ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ as well as other surprise ingredients!

In addition to adding a bunch of delicious Valentine’s Day themed ingredients, we are going to offer special packaging. Just like the holiday packaging for Christmas, there is a limited quantity, so we suggest that all our fans get in on this early before they run out! They are currently being shipped to our factory, so we’ll keep you updated on the date when we start using them for every order. In the meantime, feel free to get a special sneak peek to what it’s going to look like:

Nick

Last Friday, Chocomize was presented with the New Jersey Small Business Success award, given by the New Jersey Small Business Development Center. This means that we were voted one of the top small businesses in all of New Jersey! A lot of our fans know that our chocolate originates from Belgium, but not a lot of people know that our business itself is located in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. We love the community that we are a part of, and we are really honored to be voted one of its best businesses.

When the idea for Chocomize was first started, we needed a lot of help to get it off the ground. We took advantage of the local business development center located in Rutgers, Camden. There we got a lot of great advice and help that allowed us to make Chocomize the success that it is today. We are so proud to be given this award after almost exactly the one year anniversary of our launch.

As always, thanks to all our fans for making us such a success!

Nick

Almost an entire year ago, we sent President Barack Obama some of our chocolate bars to try. Obama is a fellow Columbia alumnus, and we thought he might enjoy some of our delicious custom chocolate. We sent him a dark chocolate bar with almonds and pistachios, a milk chocolate bar with cayenne pepper and chipotles, and a gift certificate for him to create his own bar. To read the full story, check out the blog post that we wrote here.

About eleven months later, we finally got a reply! It turns out the President of the United States is not allowed to accept monetary gifts, so the gift certificate we gave him was returned in the mail. Our chocolate bars were not given back, however, and now Eric is convinced that Obama actually tried our chocolate. Odds are that some lucky White House  employee ended up eating the chocolate, but we  think it’s pretty cool that there is a chance that the  President could have been snacking on our Spicy Special favorites bar up in the Oval Office.

We did get a signed letter from him. Here is what it said:

Guys,

Loved the chocolate bars, thanks for adding my favorite ingredients! Let me know if you are ever in Washington, you can come by and hang out in the WH.

Your biggest fan,

Barack

P.S. My wife thinks Nick is really cute.

We’ve now got the letter hanging in our office, and we’re pretty pumped about it.

-Nick

P.S. Hopefully You're able to read the real letter in the picture above...

I rowed in the lightweight four in New Zealand along with Will Daly, Anthony Fahden, and Ryan Fox. Although Will and Ryan have no affiliation with Chocomize, Anthony will work in our offices from time to time, and was spotted wearing his Chocomize uniform for one of the practices (check out the picture to the right. Sam Stitt, one of Chocomize’s chief choclatiers, rowed in the heavyweight four event. My boat ended up placing 10^th overall, while Sam Stitt’s heavyweight four placed 5^th.

New Zealand is known for its strict custom rules, but despite these impediments I was able to sneak a couple of Chocomize bars into the country. I was in New Zealand for only three weeks and had a very limited supply of Chocomize bars, so after having spent the past year eating chocolate all day at the factory, I was in some serious withdrawal.  After my final race, I finally broke out the Chocomize chocolate bars (milk chocolate with pretzels and chocolate candy pieces, a recent favorite) and the entire team, as well as some of the foreign rowers, was able to dig into our delicious chocolate.

I’m happy to report that New Zealand was great, but it’s nice being back in the US and back at work where there is an endless supply of chocolate to eat. Thanks for all your support!

Nick

P.S. Here are some pictures of us racing:

Sam Stitt, is second from left in the picture above

From Left, Will Daly, Ryan Fox, Nick LaCava, Anthony Fahden

Great news! We just got our brand new holiday packaging. Check it out on the left. From now on, our all chocolate bars will be using our brand new design, which makes our custom chocolate bars a perfect gift for this holiday season. Unfortunately, we only have a limited supply of these specially designed boxes, so make sure you order before it’s too late.

To give our loyal fans a little more incentive, we are also offering a 10% discount for those who want to get a head start on the holiday rush. Simply type ‘Holiday10’ into the coupon section of the checkout to redeem your discount.

On another note, we’d like to thank Christianne Dawis for the great job she did designing our holiday packaging. The packaging looks so great that you almost don’t want to open it to eat the bar…note the key word almost, nothing could stop us from wanting to eat our chocolate!

-Nick

We recently ended our Halloween contest, and congratulations to Molly Breakiron (and her extremely cute kid) for winning! In case you missed the news, anyone who posted a picture of their Halloween costume on our Facebook page, entered a chance to win our chocolate of the month club. This means that the lucky winner got four specially designed chocolate bars at the beginning of each month for three months! We hope everyone had a great Halloween, and stay tuned for our next contest…

Nick