In 1973, the entrepreneurial mother-daughter duo of Georgia Nash and Pam Strickland decided to open a small, high quality gift shop in downtown Savannah.
When The Cotton Bale opened its doors on River Street, the cobblestoned waterfront was still mostly vacant or abandoned warehouses.
Today, that little shop remains where it started on the now-bustling waterfront, although it’s been known nearly 35 years as River Street Sweets, a name synonymous with such Southern treats as pralines and glazed pecans.
And it’s grown from one small shop to eight stores — including two each in Atlanta, Charleston and Myrtle Beach; a new Savannah store in the Habersham Village Shopping Center and a production and mail order facility that ships around the globe.
The first major transition took place five years after The Cotton Bale — featuring Habersham Plantation furniture, Christmas ornaments and Georgia gift products — opened its doors.
During a trip to the Atlanta Gift Show, Pam’s son Tim was drawn to the aroma of fudge being made in a giant, stainless steel pot. He called his mom and sister, Jennifer, over to take a look and, by the end of the week, the fudge-maker was on its way to The Cotton Bale.
Soon, the rich, made-before-your-eyes fudge was outperforming everything else in the store. So Pam began experimenting with other recipes. It wasn’t long before her buttery pecan pralines were the shop’s signature item and The Cotton Bale was rechristened River Street Sweets.
As more and more visitors were drawn to a now-thriving River Street, the most common question became “can you ship these?”
So they began taking orders, making and packaging them for shipping after the shop closed every day.
Today, mail order is a huge part of the business, with the production facility shipping all over the country and the world, including Saudi Arabia, Russia and China.
Strickland’s children, having grown up with the business, now direct day-to-day operations with the help of a staff of more than 150, while their mother continues to be available for consultation.
Latest plans call for a new production and mail order facility on Gwinnett Street, something they say can’t come soon enough — especially this time of year.
“We stay busy year-round, but at Christmas, it’s insane,” Tim Strickland says, adding that it’s not unusual for the current production facility to ship as many as 7,000 orders a day during the holiday season.
Earlier this year, the company that started as a small shop on the rundown riverfront celebrated 40 years in business. They were also thrilled to be asked by the Congressional Club in Washington, D.C., to provide pralines for the annual First Lady’s Luncheon honoring Michelle Obama.
None of this would have been possible, Jennifer Strickland says, without the early tenacity of their mother and grandmother, the insistence on quality products and first-rate customer service and their extended River Street Sweets family.
“This business is so much more than Tim and me,” she said. “We’ve been fortunate to surround ourselves with the best and brightest, and we have very little turnover. From our managers to the people on the front lines, it’s truly a family business.”
THE PURPOSE OF RIVER STREET SWEETS
From the River Street Sweets website riverstreetsweets.com: We at River Street Sweets are in the business of enriching the lives of our guests, by providing fresh Gourmet Southern Candies served with good old-fashioned hospitality in a clean, fun environment.