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Posted on:September 5, 2012 Comments: 67 Comments Categories: Uncategorized

Help us answer “Why K.O. ketchup is so special” and win a year supply.

Help us answer “Why K.O. ketchup is so special” and win a year supply.

We received a comment on Facebook that, while aggressive and a bit random, did pose two interesting questions:

  1. What makes K.O. so special? and
  2. What makes us think we’re going to make it in today’s market?

The commenter cited that our “marketing team” hasn’t done its homework because (and get ready for a random percentage) 67% of people don’t like change.

facebook comment

We don’t usually get negative comments on K.O.’s Facebook Page so obviously this one made us pause to think, why attack small business? Especially in this economy? This is still America right? Where you can open a business (based on an idea, product or service), work hard, offer value and “make it.” I guess that may depend on what “make it” means to you.

So we decided to answer these questions. Not for the disgruntled commenter, but for us and for you – our friends and fans. So we figured, who better to help us answer number 1 than all of you who seem to have found something unique and “special” about our product? But first, let us take a shot at explaining where we stand on question number 2: how we know that our small business has “made it.”

(Keep reading to find out how you can win a year supply of K.O. Ketchup.)

Question 2. What makes us think we’re going to make it in today’s market?

K.O. will have “made it” when:

This is a product we made in our home kitchen and took to picnics. People requested it. So we packed it up in mason jars and gave it out as gifts. Some people give jars of jam at Christmas or homemade cookies…we gave ketchup. And when our friends, and friends of friends, encouraged us to bottle it up and maybe sell it at the grocery store, we did.

So we say, to the commenter from Facebook, all of the above and more has happened in the year since we launched K.O. We just signed on 128 more stores*. We hired a few more awesome employees.
In our eyes, we made it. But thanks for the reminder of how far we’ve come!

Now to the good stuff…

Win a Year Supply of K.O. Ketchup!

Question #1: What makes K.O. so special?”

We’d like you, our dear fans, to answer that.

How?

Leave us a comment on our Facebook Page or this blog post and tell us why you think we’re special (flavor? customer service? packaging? get specific!) by Friday, September 7th at noon PST.
Our favorite response gets K.O. Ketchup for a year**. That’s right, a year.

support small business

Your friends at K.O.

*We just signed Sprouts, Henry’s, and Sunflower markets! More information to come!

Nitty Gritty
**Our favorite comment will be chosen by the staff at K.O. Ketchup. The winner will receive K.O. Ketchup for a year! One bottle of K.O. will be shipped to your home each month for the next 12 months. Prize cannot be split or shared. Comments not pertaining to the contest will be removed. Contest ends Friday, September 7th at 12:01pm PST. Contest winner will be announced Friday, September 7th at 4pm PST.

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Posted on:July 3, 2012 Comments: No Comments Categories: Uncategorized

Meet The KO Ketchup Rally Car Racing Team

KO Rally Car Racing Team UPDATE!

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that Sarkis and the K.O. Rally Team just won our class this year in the California Rally Series when we took 1st place at the Prescott Prix on Sept 29th. The last 5 months have been awesome and we look forward to taking home the ‘W’ in the next round, too.

Stay tuned for more details on the K.O. Rally Team and where you can catch them next.

july 3, 2012

Sure, here at K.O. Ketchup we are heavily invested in quality ingredients, fresh food and great recipes, but we have other interests too… like Rally Car Racing! There’s something awesome about the chaotic nature of it all. No need for clean tracks and pristine vehicles in this sport, it’s sort of a ‘make of it what you will’ game. Less about orchestrated action and more about improvisation, reflex and gut instinct. We like that.

So, we thought why not get together a rally car team of our own. That’s when we found Sarkis Mazmanian, a Amerenian born in Bulgaria who came over to America at the age of 22 and learned everything he knows from his father -a Balkan Rally Champion. Since April, Sarkis has been helming our Performance Stock class K.O. Ketchup rally car and prepping for this season of the California Rally Series.

Seen below are pictures of the stripped and souped Acura Integra in its second race on the California Rally Series circuit in Boise, Idaho last June. Sarkis ended up nabbing 1st place with a huge victory for K.O. Ketchup landing a whopping 564 total points.

But we’re not just sticking to a single class, we want to build a team. In addition, K.O. is also working on a car to race in the Open Class circuit in the coming season. Jimmy Henry – also the son of a long time rally car racer in the 70s and 80s- will man a 2003 Subaru WRX which is currently being stripped and acid dipped in Santa Ana then shipped to Murrieta, CA where we’ll be installing a 12 point, custom made roll cage. In the meantime, we’ll be rebuilding the engine and throwing together Full Open all wheel drive and a CRS rally build. Basically, we’re getting this bad boy in fighting shape. We are hoping to have this ready to race by the beginning of the 2013 CRS season as well as the NASA rally series.
Stay posted for more info updates on the K.O. Ketchup Rally Car team!

PS – If you live in or around Nevada and are interested in catching the next race it will be held in Lovelock, NV on July 6th and 7th. For the remaining schedule of races including stop offs in Mendocino and Frazier Park, California as well as Prescott, AZ click here.

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Posted on:April 26, 2012 Comments: 11 Comments Categories: Uncategorized

Making New Friends: We Shipped 2,400 bottles of K.O. Ketchup for FREE

The Free Ketchup Campaign

For those of you that may have missed out, in an effort to make some new pals, shake some hands, and do a little mingling, we handed out 2,400 bottles of 100% free K.O. Ketchup to all of those who “liked” our Facebook page.

To say the campaign was a success is an understatement. And to say it was an easy win would be a straight up lie.

The truth is, we’re a small operation over here in Downtown Los Angeles, so shipping 2,400 bottles of ketchup required some… elbow grease, to say the least.

When we first thought up this absurd campaign we knew we wanted to get 2,400 bottles of our product into 2,400 pairs of hands, what we didn’t know is that it would only take 2 hours.

We were a bit surprised -to say the least- and definitely had our work cut out for us.

Turns out that 2,400 bottles of ketchup also required 2,400 separate boxes and 2,400 separate shipping labels. We think we sent our printer into early retirement (in fact, you should expect a “Eulogy to a ZB 500 Label Printer” blog post in the near future). It took a full day just to print the labels!

Next, with the packaging all ready to go, we just had to stuff the boxes… no biggie. Except it was a biggie. A three ton biggie. We had THREE pallets (each just shy of a ton) of spicy, tangy burger sauce to pack into 2,400 5 by 8 inch boxes. No way we were accomplishing this alone… so we enlisted the help of our closest friends, relatives and random flavor enthusiasts to help out by enticing them with a massive K.O. BBQ.

Next thing you know…

Voila!

The K.O. ketchup giveway was quite the experience and in the end, we think the chance to make friends with all of you fine folks (from Hawaii and Alaska to Guam and Puerto Rico) was well worth the blisters, backaches and broken bones… ok, maybe not broken but certainly belabored.

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